Two decades old and all-new

Tomorrow we’ve got a blast from the past – a scenario that’s now more than twenty years old, written originally for the Invaders & Ancients book. This is going to be its first publication anywhere. Blimey, it’s like opening a time capsule and finding my old Action Man.

It’s curious for me reading the scenario now. There’s very little in the way of planned set-piece combat, for a start. Back in those days, our group played a minimum of once a week, not counting the messages and one-on-one sessions that took place between the main games. The role-playing was intense and very “method”. The characters had real relationships quite distinct from the players themselves, making for a game that ran off the interaction, rivalry and alliances between the leads – more Sopranos than CSI, say. So it would have been quite easy for the GM (or referee, as I prefer to say) to set up a scenario like this and expect a tense drama to unfold without ever having to say, “Suddenly a pack of jackals come bounding across the plains towards you.”

Now that I only get to play once a fortnight, I have a better idea what casual role-playing is like. If you run tomorrow's scenario with a group that meets only occcasionally, the players are going to sit around waiting to see what the external threat is. Since our group doesn't nowadays spend the whole session in-character, it would be almost impossible to generate the kind of immersion this kind of scenario expects; it's Elia Kazan, not James Cameron. And, with the exception of the uncompromisingly committed Oliver Johnson, I don’t think any of our group would be able to delve down into the Rod Steiger level of immersion needed to turn the finale into the pressure cooker of paranoia and greed that was intended.

So if I was running it today, I’d probably throw in some kind of a fight in the third act. Not necessarily anything real – it could be a shared hallucination intended to crystallize the scenario’s themes. Perhaps a desert ruin full of disturbing angles, where some dark tentacled beast (representing Greed itself) lurked to seize a party member and hold them to a difficult bargain over the last of their water, something like that. Not that I wanted the adventure to go that way, you understand, but otherwise I think the point would be lost. Of course, if your group are willing to throw themselves body and soul into the story you won’t need a monster to make it work.

I haven’t provided stats because those that were in the scenario, for Hodansyr and the Rinder brothers, were first based on RuneQuest and later on the one of the protypical DW2s. Neither of those is going to make much sense these days, and anyway you’ll want to adjust them to be in line with your player-characters.

A final note: on first reading I was surprised by the scenario’s moral slant. Then I remembered that Dragon Warriors is indeed a moral universe, unlike the disinterested fate that governs the Fabled Lands or Abraxas or Tekumel. So let it stand. This was the scenario as written; here you have it.

More Precious Than Gold – in three parts, starting tomorrow. You’ll need the map and you’ll find it here. Then in a couple of weeks we'll be bringing you the real DW2.

Invaders & Ancients - full contents

As a starting point for our survey of all the Invaders & Ancients work, this is how we broke down the material originally designed for QuestWorld to form the book or books that would have become Dragon Warriors #7 and after:

Invaders & Ancients

Introduction

Part I

Awakening (r)
Players prepare their characters by constructing an astrological chart that sets the traits they will develop in the course of play.

The Marches (b)
Background history and maps of the remote northern region where the game begins.

"Behind the Arras” (s)
The first scenario deals with skulduggery at the castle of one of the March warlords. The storyline allows for improvisation without undue emphasis on the game rules at this stage.

Part II

Combat (r)
Sword styles and special combat maneuvers.

Warlords of the North (b)
Descriptions of the most powerful lords of the Marches, along with details of their alliances, ambitions and infighting – a sticky situation that could easily embroil the player-characters.

"Thrill of the Chase" (s)
An adventure that appears on the surface to involve a simple boar hunt in the retinue of the Marquess of Ormolu (see Part I). In fact the party stumbles onto a Beowulf-like situation involving much more dangerous game.

Part III

Paths to Glory (r)
Travel by road and sea, including weather, tolls, bandits, and encounters along the way.

Deliverance (b)
A guide to the first and mightiest of the Sovereign cities, which will be the basis of the characters’ adventures from now on.

"The Festival of Light" (s)
The player-characters' first week in Deliverance coincides with the annual festival - on the surface, a week of ingenuous revelry, but behind the scenes there are guild politics, smuggling and nefarious roguery.

Part IV

Honed to Perfection (r)
How character’s professions affect the improvement costs of different skills, and the abilities that can be gained at high skill-levels.

Saints and Sinners (b)
The religion, superstitions and social system of the Sovereign (or Invader) Race, to which the player-characters belong.

"The Rain Dragon Mystery" (s)
A mysterious death and the theft of a valuable antique sword from a dueling academy - the link between these events embroils the players in a web of intrigue.

Part V

Magic (r)
How magic works, with the effects of astrology and the lists of spells available to sorcerers of the various academies.

Times of Old (b)
The history of the Old City across the straits from Deliverance. Also further details of the Ancient Race who were the original inhabitants of the continent, including the Ancients who still rule up the coast in the Courts of Oblivion.

"An Interest in Curios" (s)
Engaged by an elderly captain to find out what happened to three of his former shipmates, the players encounter sorcery and sinister dealings in the backstreets of Deliverance.

Part VI

River Trade & Travel (r)
Rules dealing with the transport of people and goods up and down the Ophis. Opportunities for adventure abound, as river merchants often need guards for their wares - and players may also wish to invest in river trade (or smuggling) themselves.

The Cities of the River (b)
The Ophis cuts east-west across the continent and is navigable by ocean-going vessels for several hundred miles. This section deals with the inland cities that prosper because of the constant river traffic.

"Buried in Air" (s)
The player-characters become associates of Sokaris Longshore, a scholar and treasure-hunter who has discovered some ancient cave-tombs in cliffs overlooking the river. The tombs do contain valuable artifacts, but the dead are reluctant to yield them without a fight...

Part VII

Nightmares Become Real (r)
Details of such uncanny beings as the ghastly Serug, the Cacerins, the life-stealing Mausogoths, and other ghosts and bugbears of folklore.

The Old City (b)
Accounts of the ruins of Serafax which face Deliverance across the Ophis - a place said to be haunted by things uncanny and terrifying.

"Shadow Selves" (s)
Thieves break into the house of Sokaris, whom the player-characters encountered in the last scenario. The artifacts stolen suggest a ritual of the Ancients, and this is backed up by an old acquaintance of Sokaris who claims that an enclave of assassins from the Courts of Oblivion have formed their base in the Old City. Like it or not, the players have to journey across to the ruins and investigate.

Part VIII

Working Miracles (r)
The thaumaturgy of the Ancient Race wizards.

Ancient Tales (b)
The mythology and religion of the Ancients.

"Bad Moon Rising" (s)
A sorcerer of the Ancient Race plans to resurrect an extinct god and make himself high priest - an elaborate plot in which the player-characters could easily become burnt offerings if they do not keep their wits about them.

Part IX

Wild Life (r)
The natural fauna and flora of the continent.

Over the Mountains (b)
The gazetteer ranges further afield to cover areas away from the well-travelled paths of the merchant caravans.

"A Tale of Treachery" (s)
Sheltering from a storm at an old fortified plantation, the player-characters uncover the still-burning embers of a decades old feud.

Part X

Myth Levels (r)
How game adventures move beyond the day-to-day "reality" of the fantasy world and into the realms of epic and myth.

Here be Monsters (b)
Source material for the virtually legendary regions of the continent: the Miasmos swampland, the Wastes of Gizen, the Tessellate Causeway and the Rime Vasts.

"Inheritance" (s)
The player-characters escort a friend who is heir to a vineyard on the edge of Miasmos. Before he can collect his inheritance, however, the ghosts of the past must be laid to rest.

Part XI

Devil Magic (r)
Summoning and negotiating with the aboriginal spirit-gods of Ophis – which, in the faith of the Sovereign states, are of course seen as demons and devils.

Sardonyx (b)
Far upriver lies the last and greatest city of the Ancient Race – a marvelous relic of a glorious past, where the surviving Ancients lie sunk in opium-sleep and dream of their former grandeur.

"More Precious Than Gold" (s)
The player characters get caught up in the theft of a set of priceless jewels from one of the great Houses of Sardonyx. Forced to flee across the desert, they must contend with the harsh heat, the demons sent to pursue them, and the threat of their own greed. Survivors, if any, will truly have tales to tell.

Appendices: Further details of the history, languages, calendar, architecture and peoples of the world of Ophis.

The letters (r), (b) and (s) denoted rules, background and scenarios respectively. I'm not sure now how this would have been divided across three (or more) books. And it is still possible in this outline TOC to see the project's beginnings as a RuneQuest book, whereas in our re-edited material the DW flavor comes across much more definitely.

More Dragon Warriors over the next week or two with an all-new scenario ("More Precious Than Gold", mentioned above) plus Tim Harford's and my notes for DW2. Truly, you don't want to go touching that dial.

When we crossed the sea of stars

You Dragon Warriors enthusiasts have sat quietly while we worked our way through all that Abraxas stuff, so you must be wondering when we’d get back to the Ophis campaign material. Extensive as the concept art and background for Abraxas is, it’s a drop in the ocean compared to Ophis, which was fully-fleshed out and even playtested (using RuneQuest rules) by me and Oliver and would easily make a whopping great 300-page hardback. And maybe, one day…

In the meantime, here’s another amuse-bouche. A couple of years back, while preparing his eye-poppingly brilliant book Shadowline, original Ophis artist Iain McCaig got in touch about showcasing some of the work there. These are the notes I sent him:

First the name. The world is defined by the Ophis River, miles wide at its mouth, that snakes right back into the interior through marsh, jungle, mountains and finally the high desert where the Ancients live. The first and largest of the Invader city-states, Deliverance, is on the south side of the delta at the river mouth, facing the ruins of an Ancient city which has become the necropolis of the Invaders. The Ophis is the thread that both divides and connects the Invaders and Ancients. Hence that is the name of our project: Ophis. The title Invaders & Ancients refers to the first campaign book.

We already said a little bit about the habdigar slave-race on whose backs the civilization of the Ancient Race was built. Habdigar natural society is organized around alpha males. The Ancients partially castrate habdigars in infancy to prevent the emergence of alpha males, who would be hard to control. The disposition of habdigar beta males is to attach themselves to some authority. In the absence of the natural leaders of their own species, they associate that authority with the venerable houses of the Ancients. If we lived among habdigar, we might admire this trait and have expressions such as "loyal as a habdigar". But the Ancients are too decadent to venerate a quality like loyalty.

The habdigar are given names that describe their function. Third Cupbearer of the House of Vodallion. Lord Yeshtar's Cloak-Train Holder. etc. Think of the servants in Gosford Park, then turn that up to eleven.

Habdigar are not allowed writing, but they are allowed to sing. In song, they record their history. As they are long-lived, an old habdigar of Sardonyx might remember a song sung to him by his own grandfather of the coming of the Invaders - even though that was over four hundred years ago. A huge ship - an "ark" or “incunabula”, the songs call it - was swept up on the shore near the mouth of the Ophis. It was many stories high, and said to be crewed by children, though it is not clear whether that is literally true, or simply the way that a habdigar, long-lived and brought up to be part of the traditions of the Ancients, would view these brash newcomers.

What our elderly habdigar probably wouldn't know is that the Invaders have stories of their own that describe how they came to this land. On the journey there were adults. Some stories say the journey ("the Crossing") took many generations, and by the time it ended all the adults were dead. The oldest children, like Merendaum in this story, were the ones destined to become the new colony's leaders. Incidentally, in Sovereign myth ("Sovereign" being the Invaders' own name for themselves) the Crossing was over a sea of stars. Make of that what you will for now, as the secret is not to be unveiled in the first book. However, this excerpt from our novel The Land Below the Sunset may inspire some theories of your own:

"Each of the Founders had his sacred treasure. In all other cases these were artifacts they had possessed in the Aforetime, but not so Astralis... Ah, but you must have heard the priests at the Chapel speak of this many times."

"No, they told plenty of stories about the founding of Deliverance, Merendaum's battles against the Ancients. Nothing that took place before the Crossing."

"Before the Crossing?" Chendu chuckled. "It would be a rash man or the greatest of sages who would speculate on those times. No, this occurred during the Crossing. Astralis was only the apprentice to Merendaum's original navigator - did you not know that? His master died on the voyage and, with an infinity of sea and stars surrounding the fleet, it was left to Astralis to scry out the route to dry land."

Hearing the tale, Kethar felt once more like a child, huddled by the warm grate letting the fire paint imaginary pictures against the darkness. He could almost see Astralis, standing proud and tall on the deck of Merendaum's flagship. Previously when listening to the old myths he had always envisaged him with a face like Propriano's father. Now it was with Propriano's own youthfully earnest features.

"And then they made him one of the Nine Founders?"

"No. He was still an apprentice. Many argued that the responsibility of chief navigator was too much for one so young. They said that the fleet had lost its way, that another among them should be given the task. They said that Astralis did not enjoy the favor of the gods.

"For a long time it seemed they must be right. Supplies aboard the ships dwindled. Day by day it grew colder, and the stars wheeled overhead in unfamiliar patterns, and still they had no sight of land."

"Ah, but then the Celestial Beacon - "

"Patience, that was much later. There was no sign of any kind to guide them. They wandered on the grey swell, lost, frightened, abandoned by the gods. A storm sent rails of rain to pelt the decks. Others had advice to offer Merendaum, but only Astralis knew what must be done. You may have heard that, to this day, when storms carry a ship out of sight of land, the sailors will sacrifice an animal to propitiate the spirits of the sea. It's a practice that has its origins in older, wilder times. Then, more often than not, the sacrifice was human. From birth Astralis had been steeped in sea-lore; he understood his duty. And so he stood without sleep or shelter for three days and nights until his waking moments had become blurred with dream, then he cast himself into the sea and was borne away on the waves.

"The fleet fared on for three days more, and then they came to a great pinnacle of ice jutting from the sea. It was like an island of glass, so vast that in its bays there was safe harbor for all the fleet. While they waited there for the storm to blow itself out, Merendaum sent his men to explore the island. Skidding from ledge to ledge, they found a cliff inside which the sunlight marked a human figure. They hacked away the ice; the man dropped in their midst. He was clad in marvelous war-gear but his skin was lavender and chill. They bore him back to the flagship and warmed him by the stove, and the sheath of ice cracked and fell away from the features of their young comrade Astralis."

"I've never heard this tale," breathed Kethar in awe.

"It is part of the Church's clandestine lore, not usually revealed to outsiders. But I am widely read."

"The caparison of war he was wearing when they found him - ?"

"The priests declared them artifacts of the gods. Astralis resumed his post as navigator and none now questioned him. When he had steered the fleet to anchorage at the mouth of the Ophis, Merendaum acknowledged him as the ninth of his champions."

Our habdigar holds a bundle that he says he has stolen from his former masters in their grand house in Sardonyx. He may have seen a habdigar who stole food from the kitchens and was flayed alive for it. And he remembers an Invader who came to Sardonyx, pretending to trade, and stole a jeweled sword. For that outrage, the Ancients had his limbs removed, the wounds cauterized. They drove him mad with drugs and had him tied to a pole in the midst of the poppy fields, so that he could live out his days as a living scarecrow, screaming into the wind.

Our habdigar says, "They will not do that to me. They will not look for me when I am gone, nor send out agents to punish me. This treasure is one they do not value - the most precious thing in their household, and yet they care less for it than one grain of gold, or the tiniest ruby. For they are monsters, truly, these creatures called Man."

And then he shows us the bundle of "treasure": the glimpse of a baby's face in the folds of the blanket he's holding.

And that's where we cut.

Abraxas: the Cabiri Archipelago

More background material from Jamie's and my Abraxas project today. You may wonder whether all this detail is actually needed for a massively multiplayer game, and indeed the short answer to that is it's not. MMOGs should be and are defined by the players themselves as the actual inhabitants of the virual world. Any attempt by the game designers to impose a culture is only going to go as deep as costume and architectural styles.

However, we never intend any of our projects to only be one thing. Our philosophy is to design for cross-media right from the outset. So Abraxas might have started as a MMOG, but the concept bible also allowed for it to be used in solo CRPGs, paper and pencil role-playing games, gamebooks, novels, comics - in principle, even as a movie. It doesn't take a whole lot more effort to design something that way (what we call "root class development") and it's certainly a lot less effort than having to go back and retrofit it to other media later.

And with that, on to today's topic:

The Cabiri are a seafaring people inhabiting a number of small city-states spread throughout an archipelago of many islands and white coral atolls. The Cabiri trade with the ports of the mainland, but to them property is less important than custom. Property can be lost, but the right to fish in a certain bay, etc, can never be taken away. Such rights descend through the female line and form the basis of the Cabiri economy.

Cabiri society is shame-based. To insult a Cabiri obliquely or even simply not to take his word for something is to shame him. To avoid disgrace, a man will choose blood feud, exile or even suicide. Cabiri who have been deeply shamed without possibility of redress will say "Lady Moon has turned her face away" (the Moon being one of their gods) and become fatalistic and withdrawn until some happy stroke of luck encourages them to fight for their good name.

There are twenty-four clans, each of multiple lineages. All clans are represented in every township. Nine of the clans comprise the Pelagian Cabiri, and these have responsibility for matters concerned with the sea: fishing, coastal trade and the navy. The other fifteen clans are the Chersonese Cabiri, who are concerned with matters relating to the land: farming, crafts, markets and the army. The township's two rulers are the heads of the paramount clan in each faction, and they rule on alternate days.

Each clan is responsible for certain rituals, many of them relating to government. Eg, for a city-state to declare war requires twenty-four rituals to be performed. War therefore cannot happen without the consent of all the clans. But a lesser state of aggression can be declared by only nine Pelagian Cabiri rituals, giving those clans considerable sway when it comes to foreign policy.

The people of the archipelago are human-like but recognizably not like other men. Their flesh, bone-white with a yellow tint, is luminescent and their pale-gold hair glows like gold. Somerset Maugham puts it best:

She glowed, but palely like the moon rather than the sun, or if it was like the sun it was like the sun in the white mist of dawn.

Cabiri society is matrilineal, with inheritance passing through the female line. The clans are exogamous: men marry outside their lineage and clan, going to live with their wife's family. As in old Celtic society, a man is usually closer to his sister's children than his own, as they are the ones who will inherit his family's responsibilities, rights and property.

Okay, that's the last Abraxas post for a few weeks. Dragon Warriors fans have been very patient, so we'll shortly be unveiling some more Invaders & Ancients material from the Ophis campaign, including a complete scenario. Don't touch that dial.

The archetypal lost city

The original Chorazin was a splendid oasis in the heart of the Akali Desert, its people impregnable from attack by reason of the leagues of scalding black sand that surrounded them. Pipes deep beneath the desert brought water from the Delenda Mountains to fill the city's cisterns. But Chorazin was destroyed when a meteorite laid a pall of poisonous iridium across the mountains, polluting the water so that the inhabitants became mad and fled into the desert.

Now there are two Chorazins. One is the half-buried ruin where bands of eremen(desert folk) make their lair. The scholar Zaverchand has speculated that it may be in imitation of the crested helmets of the ancient murals that the male eremen's dorsal fins have grown so exuberently large. The other Chorazin is a twin of the original, cut off in its own pocket dimension at the time it was abandoned. This Chorazin is the destination of wizards seeking a place to meditate and expand their arcane knowledge.

The Akali Desert itself is an unwelcoming region whose jet black sand forms huge rolling dunes. Tors and crags of blinding white stone stand above the desert, blasted by the wind into baroque shapes. Who knows what ruins lies buried under the sand, or what creatures dwell in the interior of the desert? No explorer has ever gone there and returned to tell of it.

Shadow King

Having opened the Pandora's Box of material Jamie and Russ and I developed in our days at Eidos, I'm surprising myself with how much of it there is.

This is from Shadow King, which was originally conceived as a Max Payne-ish action-adventure game for the PC. A bullish Victorian adventurer travels in time and returns to a world completely devoid of people - or so it seems at first. In this timeline, Dracula has driven the few remaining humans into hiding. Our hero wanders through a deserted, half-overgrown London, defending himself from hunting vampires while trying to find a way to repair what has befallen his world. Russ pulled out quite a different style for this one.

After leaving Eidos, we pitched it to Flextech, who liked it except they wanted it completely changed, so out went the vampires and in came some sort of plot about the world suffering an apocalypse in the middle of a Big Brother eviction night, and all the survivors were the rejected TV contestants. Or something. (It was 2000 and every hip dude in television could think of nothing but Nasty Nick.) Needless to say, Jamie and I decided to forego the pleasure of working on their reinterpretation, figuring that one day we may do it properly as a comic or a novel.

This snippet of script gives you some idea of the flavor:

Through falling snowflakes, an aerial view of London. Not the city we know, but a sprawl of fantastic Gothic edifices that stand, dark and silent, over streets white with frost and a sprinkling of snow.

Down, to find a single figure in the whole vast empty city. He’s curled up in an alleyway under a few sacks. JOHN SANGRAIL is big man, well-fed and full featured. He wears the fine clothes of a Victorian gentleman, only now they’re shabby and torn.

We watch as he sleeps fitfully. Our point-of-view drifting like a detached retina as the snow swirls past. We might be God looking down on him, or a guardian angel. Or his tormentor.

He tosses and turns, talking in his sleep.

SANGRAIL (softly but urgently)
No, no. Something’s gone wrong.

CUT TO a ball in the early 19th century. A woman turns, looks across the ballroom at us, and reacts in horror –

SANGRAIL (V/O)
She could see me –

An overhead drifting view of Napoleonic soldiers slogging along through the mud. Desaturated colors. The way the soldiers are walking is strange, stiff. Late afternoon sunlight casts long shadows ahead of them.

SANGRAIL (V/O)
Something went wrong with the past.

Our POV tracks over the soldiers and down, turning so that we’re now facing the way they have come. An overcast sky and a long road stretching back to bleached-out sunset.

SANGAIL (V/O)
I know. I was there that day...

The column goes marching inexorably past us, away from the sunset. Their collars are turned up, faces downcast. We know there’s something sinister about them, but we can’t see enough to be sure...

SANGRAIL (V/O)
How could that be? I wasn’t born yet.

A figure appears in the middle distance, cresting the hill, striding confidently through the anonymous throng. His greatcoat flaps behind him in the wind. His peaked cap is like the one Napoleon wore. We can’t see his face yet, but he’s approaching at a swift relentless pace.

SANGRAIL (V/O)
It was the day he came back.

The figure looms towards us and into close-up. Closer, closer...

SANGRAIL (V/O)
The monster ... the loup-garou. The day he returned from hell.

And he lifts his head towards us and now we see the face under the peaked hat. A hollow-cheeked, sallow, dead white face with glistening fangs. SMASH CUT to

Sangrail sitting up, suddenly wide awake. For a instant, the vampire’s face lingers like an afterimage superimposed on Sangrail’s face.

In a panic, Sangrail slaps at his neck. He looks at his fingers - no blood. The vampires didn't find him in his sleep. Heart racing after the nightmare, he heaves a sigh and sits watching his breath steam in the cold air.

Abraxas: the Vadem Causeway

Now that I've started rooting around for Abraxas material, I'm amazed how much concept work we did. I've hardly even scratched the tip of the iceberg so far, what with the clothing and architecture for each city-state, the flora and fauna inspired by Dougal Dixon's book After Man, the adventure locations, history, NPCs, and on, and on.

Neill Blomkamp's written-off concept work for the aborted Halo movie apparently cost several million dollars, and although we didn't get anywhere near that figure, the principle of concepting in games is the same as in movies. It makes more sense to get these details worked out before you set 100 coders, modellers and animators working away on the thing.

The idea behind the Vadem Causeway was so that players in the MMOG could rapidly move between the main "safe" locations (the five cities) but, if they wanted to travel to smaller towns or go exploring off the beaten track, they would need to strike out on foot or get hold of a sky car.

The Vadem Causeway is not a physical road but a network of teleportation routes extending between archways close to each city. The Vadem gates consist of raised platforms with steps leading to a circular arch of ancient star-metal. Each gate transports the user to the next on the circuit, allowing rapid travel from city to city. A rapid burst of light is seen streaming away from the arch after a person steps through.

As the Vadem Causeway is a potential problem in wartime, each city has its own safeguards against an influx of enemy soldiers appearing outside its walls. Utesh is protected by the straits that cut it off from the mainland. Vertis has constructed a grille that can be dropped across the archways. Argistillum has a dam that, if opened, floods the vicinity of one archway; the other is kept dead in the sights of the city's one plasma cannon. Tamo Anchan has surrounded its archways with high walls with only a narrow gate out; Eibon relies on its own city walls and the fact that any invading army would have to endure the scouring desert winds.