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Thursday 5 August 2010

Brymstone

Brymstone is a coastal town in north-east Ellesland, close to Thuland's border with Albion. Created originally by Robert Dale as the base for an ongoing campaign, it was suitable for a medium-sized party of characters around 5th rank and was intended to appear in DW Book 7 - except, of course, there was no Book 7. (What is it about those pesky half-dozens?)

A partial version of Brymstone ran in a short-lived fantasy gaming magazine that called itself Red Giant in order to show how it really wasn't overawed by White Dwarf at all. Red Giant appeared in 1990 but lasted only two issues. The RG publishers (one of whom was Gary Chalk, the illustrator of the Lone Wolf books) had no products to sell, unlike their rivals Games Workshop, and of course such a magazine on its own was not going to be self-sustaining. A pity, as it ran some fine articles before gravitational collapse reduced it to neutron dust.

RG's demise left the Brymstone campaign incomplete. And so the material, like the Ophis campaign pack, remains limbo-locked. It was nine-tenths ready for publication, but that last 10% leaves it largely unusable, even in blog form. All the same, I'll try and find some of the material that can work as a standalone. And for a much better (full-colour) map, pop over to Lee Barklam's site The Cobwebbed Forest.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Dave !
    I remember very well that Brymstone was located in Thuland, where they speak Visic, a language related to Mercanian (Scandinavian). I had deviced a full dictionary of "Vidisk". My only criticism at the map is that the place-names sound terribly English ! They should rather sound Scandinavian. For example, Thuland's capital is "Katorheim" not "Katorhome", then I should except "Brymstein"; indeed, my version of Visic had "stejn" for "stone" ("ej" is pronounced like "I" in English).
    Mansj tak !

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  2. Good points, Olivier. In fact, Robert's original name for Brymstone (which also got called Brimston at one point) was Sneypa, which of course is Old Norse. Maybe we should revert to that?

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  3. We haven't had any luck finding Robert yet, Dave. I might see if theres a possiblity Mr Chalk may know his whereabouts.

    I'm feeling very enthused recently about getting some free 'mini-ebooks' out there for DW.

    Bulya( Damian May)

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  4. Come to think of it, Damian, my wife is probably friends with him on Facebook. I'll check that out. I'm with you on the idea of mini-ebooks. Just thinking maybe that's also how the Invaders & Ancients material could be released.

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