Revamping Dragon Warriors

A guest post of sorts today from my very dear friend and fellow gamer, Tim Harford, who has achieved fame in the mundane world as the Undercover Economist, but who is better known to us as the brilliant GM of the very best Legend games ever, as well as being forever remembered as the creepily untrustworthy Kal Ki-Lan Tor, Krarthian mage and ne'er-do-well.

A few years ago - well, all right, a decade or more - Tim and I were chatting in the canteen of the Clapham Picture House about doing a full revamp of the Dragon Warriors rules. This wasn't just to be the continuation of the series contemplated with the Invaders & Ancients books, but a ground-up overhaul to create a system that would really deliver the land of Legend as it "really" is.

In our own campaign we use a variant of GURPS, but it's not ideal, particularly as far as magic is concerned. The task of actually writing DWII will probably have to wait until Tim and I have retired and have idle days on our hands (neither of us plays golf) but in the meantime I'm going to run the first-pass design notes he came up with after our discussion. To kick off, here is his design philosophy for the new rules:

On REALISM

Any set of game rules needs to honour the 'reality' of the game world rather than any kind of historical reality, however construed. Judge Dredd RPG rules [the version by Marc Gascoigne and Rick Priestley] allow an experienced Judge to get of well-targeted shots eight or nine times in a round while an inexperienced perp will be lucky to get off a single shot. The rules are completely 'unrealistic' but true to the source.

In contrast, the old Middle-Earth Role-Playing (MERP) rules feature ubiquitous spell-casting, which really doesn't chime true. At the same time, the rules also need to trade off faithfulness to the source against speed of play.

On ALIGNMENT

Alignment fails to do justice to Legend. There are more variables at play: a character's status, his face, his faith (with various heresies imaginable), etc. Then there are the Ta’ashim, who are quite outside the standard world view defined by the 'True Faith'. Elves are also neither good nor evil. I've not found rules-based approaches which help me much here.

On WHAT'S WRONG WITH DRAGON WARRIORS

I don't feel DW needs an overhaul to improve its 'realism'. It's fast and fun, which is one of the appeals. But it would be nice to get some more player-choice into combat. Dave's later systems allow simple choices: full attack, two half-attacks, half-attack and half-parry, full parry. Without going crazy it does improve the quality of the combat experience, which in DW is either mindless die-rolling, or improvised out of all connection to the combat rules.

I think DW's magic system also fails to do justice to the spooky nature of the background. It's all too predictable and too regularised. There are lots of ways this might be done:

Frazer Payne has a system which draws heavily on Maelstrom's magic system. The idea is that magic is easier if it doesn't noticeably contravene the laws of nature. You can teleport up to a high window to make an escape, providing you're out of the line of sight: after all, it's just conceivable that you climbed up instead. Similarly, people falling over, gusts of wind blowing windows shut, etc. This introduces a nice and elegant constraint on spell-casting.

Alternatively, magic might need to be performed in advance. Sorcerers would carry with them all kinds of trinkets and scrolls into which had been embedded one-shot spells.

I toyed for a while with making most magic a battle-of-wills with otherworldly forces. Sorcerers don't cast spells, they summon sprites or sandestins (faltyns) and force them to cast the spells instead. This makes every spell risky and also leaves open the possibility of favours being traded, hard bargaining, and so on. Sorcerers can make enemies, but also allies, in the Otherworld.

An option is to allow sorcerers to cast spells directly rather than relying on spirits, but to suffer permanent damage as a result.

GURPS Magic has a nice but under-developed system of 'rune magic'. Each rune is a verb or a noun (of a quite generic nature, such as 'flesh' or 'stone', 'create' or 'move'). More elaborate spells need more runes and more skill. Bonuses for using proper runes (runestones, runes on scrolls) and penalties for improvised solutions (tracing runes in the air or in the dust). In my own long-running campaign, Cynewulf Magister, Montombre's court sorcerer, was a formidable rune mage. None of the players had a good idea of how he was doing it (and indeed I was playing fast-and-loose with the rules). I am not sure the rules would really cope if played straight.

Monsters. The monster list in DW is just daft - a relic from a bygone age when people thought this kind of thing was a good idea. There is little enough sign of such foolishness in Dave's DW scenarios: most of the monsters are eerie (wights, boggarts) and the most memorable ones are human.

In the most recent game Dave ran, set in Krarth, we encountered: the freaks from a gypsy circus; Koschei the Deathless (a fleshless apparition who stole the skin of others as a disguise, and whose heart was contained within a silver box in a silver minaret); a strange giant stork-like bird (Oliver Johnson found a titanic egg in the ashes of its burning nest and pronounced 'This is the egg of the world, my friends' before breakfasting upon it); and finally a sorcerer who had been hurled into a glacier twenty years previously and was thawing out, having been horribly disfigured by the long, slow journey to the bottom. There were no orcs and no sign of a Malgash.

In my own game there are some staples, like trolls - but they are not the humanoid battering rams of D&D, but skulking creatures who (guess what) have been known to lurk under bridges. Strangulation is a favoured method of attack. Think of a 9-foot tall Gollum.

Magic items, when encountered at all, show invariably be the kind of unique artefact described in Book Six.

Myth and heroism. I like the 'skills of the mighty' section but feel that such skills should get ever closer to magic... such as 'The Ghost Road', where the defender evades the attacker by turning out to be standing behind him, or 'The Elf King's Parry', where the defender parries a sword bare-handed, only for it to turn out that the defender who has the sword and the attacker whose hand is wounded.

We also need to go further in exploring the idea that a character is of mythic proportions and the rules just aren't the same. Dave gives the example of Little John wrestling with a disguised Richard the Lionheart in Robin of Sherwood. King Richard beats Little John and lifts the man-mountain high above his head - at which point everyone realises who he is. Why did King Richard beat Little John? Not because of superior strength or wrestling skill, but because he's THE LIONHEART, of course.

This is where the idea of 'myth levels' comes in - although the name is clunky. Let's say there are four levels: normal, notable, heroic, mythic. Most characters start off as 'notable' and that would give them certain advantages. For instance the 'Hand of Glory' puts 0th rank characters to sleep, but not ranked characters. In the new language, that's a magical effect which works on normals but not on notables.

Being of a higher myth level should allow you to shrug off quite a bit of what is going on at a lower myth level. Mythic characters, like Hunguk the Pirate King and Sa'aknathur, simply don't get bumped off by mortals. It isn't the way the world works.

Mirror mirror

An artistic curiosity today. We see two versions of my Virtual Reality gamebook Down Among the Dead Men - or, in French, Le Pirate des Sept Mers. I remember that when I got some copies of the French edition, I was immediately struck by how much more powerful the cover image looked when mirror-flipped like that. And it reminded me of a book I wrote in the mid-80s to tie in with the TV series Knightmare. When my dad saw the cover, he turned it upside down and said, "See how much more threatening it looks?" He was right; try it for yourself and see. (Dad was an electrical engineer, incidentally, not an artist.)

In the case of the Dead Men cover, I don't know if the artist or the art director was responsible for the orientation on the English edition. I suspect the latter, because that would explain why ol' Billy Bones there has the sword in his left hand. Although to really have maximum impact, his head should be turned so he's facing us or looking over our right shoulder.

Incidentally, you can try the same mirror-flip trick on yesterday's Blood Sword cover.

Drenched in blood

This may be of interest only to the most ardent gamebook collectors or lovers of trivia (hmm, possibly two completely overlapping sets...) but, after all, what's a blog for if not to show off the most obscure of curiosities?

These were the original covers for the Blood Sword gamebooks, which later became the basis for my kids' fantasy series The Chronicles of the Magi. There was a general feeling at the publisher, and Oliver and I agreed, that these covers just didn't have "it". New paintings were duly commissioned. We weren't complaining. It was nice to know our publisher cared.

My only regret: when I had finally been persuaded that the series should be called Blood Sword, I said, "Okay, but what I'd really, really hate is if the logo has blood dripping off it." You see, in the '70s there had been a great little periodical called The Magazine of Horror, which reprinted stories from Weird Tales and other pulps of the '30s and '40s, and the editor, Robert A W Lowndes, and most of his readers were forever lamenting MOH's crass, gore-drenched masthead. Thankfully for Lowndes, he finally managed to get his art director to see sense.

When the new Blood Sword covers arrived, the art director had added a new logo. With, of course, lashings of bright red blood. Arrrrrgh.

Big, green and mean

Okay, I can’t condone the use of Vaals (see "More Precious Than Gold") in a scenario. And it’s pretty hard to imagine the player-character party that wouldn’t just run screaming from such an encounter. But the stats were there in the original Invaders & Ancients book so I guess I shouldn’t hold out on you. We never had any illustration of a Vaal, I’m afraid, but just imagine the Juggernaut (I mean Mr Cain Marko) crossed with Jack Kirby’s Destroyer and then redesigned by Philippe Druillet – who would incidentally have been one of the biggest influences on us when creating the world of Ophis. As you'll see, Vaals were supposed to be very tough indeed - though no match for a 3rd rank elementalist if you allow the "raw power" rules. (Hint: don't!)

VAAL

ATTACK 30
Fist (d10+2, 10) or Lightning (SPEED 15, 4d6)
DEFENCE 20
Armor Factor 8
MAGICAL DEFENCE 20 (and see below)
EVASION 4
Movement 8m
Health Points 50
Rank-equivalent: 25th

Each of the Houses of Sardonyx has at least one Vaal. These great armored sentinels stand immobile, sometimes for centuries, animating when the mansion is invaded. They do not act to prevent infiltration by spies, thieves or assassins so it seems that only a military assault will awaken them. The truth of this is known only to the Vaals themselves.

Under the massive plates of jade-like armor, the Vaal must be of hulking but humanoid form. All that can be seen of the creature within is a wan, flickering limelight shining behind the mask when the Vaal is active. Any nonmagical weapon that penetrates the Vaal’s armor is exposed to the raw energy within, reducing the weapon’s Armor Bypass Roll by 1 (in the case of edged or thrusting weapons only) until the damage can be repaired by an armorer.

Each round, a damaged Vaal regenerates 1 HP. A Vaal cannot be affected by spells that control the mind, including those that create fear or illusions. It is protected at all times by a 2-point Spell Screen (like the Warlock spell).

The Vaal’s own magical attack is a bolt of pale green lightning that it can project up to 40m. It must be free of melee for one round in order to build up the charge for this bolt, which is then released at the start of the following round. The bolt strikes one target with SPEED 15, and if not evaded causes 4d6 damage less the target’s Armor Factor, if any.

A Vaal’s purpose is to protect the mansion and the family members who live there. It is not under the control of members of the House, but acts to protect them as it thinks best.

"More Precious Than Gold" - part 3

IN THE WASTES OF GIZEN

Barely an hour after dawn they will be starting to rue ever having got embroiled in the theft, as the sun beats mercilessly down on their unprotected heads. Seedob is able to give a ray of hope, however, as he has a chart which he bought in Tamary which purports to show the position of oases along the fringes of the desert. "We follow this wadi north and west for ten leagues and it'll bring us to an oasis," he snaps. Discomfort (and, perhaps, guilt) are fast taking a toll on his temper. "We can refill the pitchers there, then head on north into the Jumbles and rejoin the Ophis at Baristan or someplace like it."

Their primary concern must be that the Ruash family will have sent out a party of habdigar soldiers to track them down. By means of incidents such as false sightings and unexplained sounds at night, you should do your best to let this worry play on the protagonists' minds. The thought of these habdigars bearing down in relentless pursuit becomes a metaphor of the protagonists' guilt and will give the mood of the scenario a special resonance.

Although some of the protagonists might conceivably hail from arid regions of the world, there are no human cultures indigenous to true sand deserts like the Wastes of Gizen. Therefore players cannot legitimately claim full advantage for levels of the Survival skill: all rolls are at -3. If no characters in the group have Survival, they will have to hazard a guess at how best to survive. In fact their optimum course is to eat as little as possible, and to sip water no faster than the rate at which they are losing moisture due to sweating. It takes no special knowledge to see that they must travel by night and rest by day, as any attempt to cross the sands when the sun is up is tantamount to walking in an oven. Talking should be kept to a minimum, but Seedob has plenty to say about their predicament, and about how he intends to spend his share of the loot, and no doubt protagonists will be unable to resist arguing as the situation declines.

Each character will be carrying about two and a half liters of water. Used sparingly, this ought to enable them to last three days. They will be able to cover about fifteen miles a day on the shifting sand. Since the oasis shown on Seedob's chart is no more than twenty five miles distant, the situation seems unpleasant but not catastrophic. However, a person getting this bare minimum of water will soon become weakened, disorientated and irritable. Seedob's already poor disposition becomes almost intolerable. He whines endlessly about how he ought to get a larger share because it was he who stole the gems in the first place. Hodansyr tersely points out that they wouldn't have been in this predicament if not for Seedob's greed - a remark which forces Seedob into a crazed paranoid silence. He begins to prey on the protagonists' personal weaknesses, seeking out those most likely to support him. By the second day he will have started sidling up to various characters whom he imagines to be kindred spirits, offering them larger shares if they support his claims. By that evening, as they resume their journey with the oasis still not in sight, his thoughts will have turned to murder...

RUNNING THE DESERT EPISODE

The purpose of the scenario is to present characters with a moral choice. There will be a distinct contrast between those who completely give themselves in to greed – allowing them to compound their theft with ever worsening acts of villainy – and those who oppose the Rinder brothers from the start and who go along with them only because they have no choice. The players themselves ought to recognize the tone of the scenario (particularly if they have seen The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) and those who feel they must take the "evil" path to remain true to their roles will presumably realize quite early on that they are probably doomed. Feel free to manipulate any strife or attempts at murder to help "virtuous" characters to survive. Their chances should be borderline, though, so that only determination and intelligence will see a character out of the desert alive.

Focus the action on minor details, events that would be too trivial to fully enact in a normal scenario. An argument can be sparked by Hodansyr's insistence on drinking gin even when warned that alcohol is dangerous in such conditions, since Sootan will not take kindly to an employee answering him back. As the situation worsens, Seedob creeps off by his own while the others are sleeping and buries the rubies. He marks the spot with a belt-buckle, but a breeze covers this with sand and it is only later that the others discover that their precious treasure has been lost. By the time they reach the oasis, they should be at the end of their tether: exhausted, virtually delirious with thirst, constantly at one another's throats and with Seedob on the verge of committing murder.

Then things take a turn for the worse.

THE FUTILITY OF GREED

The oasis turns out to be dry. Between dusty bushes of scrub they find only a pool of foul black water that no-one could drink. A weary conference can produce only one course of action. They must try to get back to Sardonyx and throw themselves on Tian's mercy. With only a liter of water left to each of them, the journey back is even worse. Any characters who survive to reach Sardonyx will be almost dead on their feet, with blistered lips and skin burned black by the sun and the hot desert wind.

The irony of the adventure is that Tian did not care that they had stolen the rubies. After a moment of pique he thought no more about the incident, and did not even bother sending out the expected hunting party of habdigars. In a spirit of whimsy he will allow the survivors to leave unharmed in the barge in which they came. They will return to Tamary having learnt a great deal about themselves and about human nature, and they will have proved that in the final analysis they have the “right stuff" to be heroes.

As for those who succumbed to their worst instincts, their bones will by now be buried under the shifting desert sands.

"More Precious Than Gold" - part 2

ARRIVAL IN SARDONYX

The barge is moored at a jetty of moss-clad marble and the protagonists approach the city through half a mile of sculpted gardens and domed pavilions. All are reduced to staring about them in awe. Nothing they have encountered in their whole lives has prepared them for this vast, shimmering city. Their senses are staggered by the sweeping avenues of white stone, the monumental buildings, lawns and colonnades of the great Houses. The streets are vastly empty.

Coming to a canal where an Ancient lord sits in a punt trimmed with gold and gems, they get directions to the House of Ruash. It may be their first face-to-face encounter ever with a pureblood Ancient. Ancients tend to be pale of skin with white or golden hair. They are a couple of inches shorter than Invaders on the average, and slighter of build. Their clothing is elaborate and impractical, as they customarily do nothing more strenuous than sit being served by their habdigar servants all day.

Beyond a plaza flanked by two rows of grimacing stone idols, they find a collection of colossal buildings set in carefully tended grounds that are dominated by a single trapezoid manse. From the scale they could be rock formations rather than human edifices. The party make their way up a wide stairway that leads up to the main entrance on the third floor of the manse. There they are greeted by a habdigar major-domo who takes the letter of introduction from Seedob before showing them to a side chamber.

"Please wait here," it says in its burring voice. "I will show your document to Lord Tian Zi-Yastu."

IN THE HOUSE OF RUASH

Shortly the major-domo returns with several other habdigars. "These slaves will attend to your needs," it says. "Lord Tian Zi-Yatsu invites you to lunch with him on the South Terrace when you have washed the grime from your bodies.”

Habdigar slaves come forwards with jars of perfumed oil that in Deliverance would fetch a good sum. Their orders are to clean the Invaders thoroughly before they are allowed into the presence of Lord Tian. The characters are likely to find the sensation of being massaged by a habdigar quite unpleasant, and Seedob at least insists on washing himself without their help.

As they are led to their meeting, they pass through the cool shadows of the great hall, a space as large as a cathedral. Standing against the wall below the massive stairway is a ten-foot tall statue consisting of plates of jade armor decorated with golden bosses on which runes are inscribed. It looks like a giant, empty suit of armor with a visor resembling the face of some frightening demon out of myth. The major-domo will tell them this is the House Vaal. “A statue?” asks Sootan. “A living sentinel,” insists the major-domo, though admitting that the Vaal has not stirred from its place in living memory.

The Vaal will only come to life and fight if the House itself is endangered. The protagonists will want to avoid that. Combat stats, etc, should be redundant, therefore, but if you really need them then consider something that would give the Malgash a workout. Aficionados of Prof M.A.R. Barker’s work will recognize the Ru’un as the inspiration for this creature.

AUDIENCE WITH AN ANCIENT LORD

They are taken to the South Terrace, where white marble masonry shines dazzlingly in the noon sun. A trellis of blue-leafed vines provides shade for a low table set with viands and pitchers of cool wine. Lord Tian Zi-Yastu Ruash sits waiting for them, sucking at a hookah from which wisps of omatique smoke escape to leave a heady scent in the air. He smiles a trifle distractedly and gestures for them to join him.

This scene should be played to accentuate the huge cultural gulf that exists between the Invaders and the Ancients. Even superficial details display the pervasive otherness of Sardonyx: the low chairs in which Invaders find it difficult to sit comfortably, the intricate glass goblets and the array of specialized eating-utensils, the bitter wine and the odd disharmonious music that drifts up from the plaza below.

As the conversation proceeds, it rapidly becomes clear that, in addition to superficial differences, the two cultures also cannot see eye to eye on a fundamental level. Lord Tian Zi Yastu has no interest in forming trading links with the Sovereign states, and in fact holds all mercantile affairs in deepest disdain. To demonstrate his disregard for wealth, he reaches into a coffer and produces a huge pearl which he drops into the wine-jug. "Wealth dissolves," he muses. "It evaporates. It becomes meaningless. By this action, do I destroy a great pearl, or sully a fine wine?"

"Both!" snorts Seedob. "If you can describe this rotgut as wine!"

"Both or neither." Tian Zi-Yastu shrugs languorously. "In my library there is a casket containing ten great rubies each the size of a slazzart's egg. My great-great-grandfather Koya En Yastu Ruash brought them back from the Sacred Volcano in the seventh year of the sidereal veil. You could buy the ten best boats on the Scarab with them, and their cargoes also, but I have never even troubled to open the casket to look at them. I doubt if my father did, either."

Sootan is looking very troubled. Sharper witted than his brother, he has realized by now that their hopes are turning out to have been a house built on sand.

Seedob still thinks Tian is just negotiating to gain an edge. "You're worried about your cut," he says. "It's understandable. You Ancients have been in a lot of deals with us Sovereigners over the ages, and it seems you're always getting the worse side of things. But this deal has enough for us all to profit. My brother and I, we aren't greedy. It'll be one for us, one for you, all the way down the line."

Tian exhales a curl of omatique smoke and laughs. "We shall have equal shares in nothing, then, for that is what the venture must come to. It is all very well, but I have my comforts seen to quite adequately as things stand. In my thickest omatique dreams I want for nothing at all. Furthermore, as I have no great wish to see Sardonyx's streets filled with lice-infested and stench-ridden Invaders - my pardon for the discourtesy - I shall have to refuse your offer."

"We could take this offer elsewhere..." suggests Sootan. "To another House."

"Do you have introductions to the heads of other Houses? I doubt it. And without them you would be ejected forcibly by the habdigar gate-keepers. In any case, to pursue the matter would be futile. Your concepts depend on a crucial misunderstanding. Our interests do not coincide in any substantial particular, and commerce between Sardonyx and the Invaders is thus an impossibility.”

SKULDUGGERY

The rest of the day is spent under a cloud of disappointment. They may see other Ancients around, and conversations can be extemporized using the source material for Sardonyx. They go early to their beds, intending to depart back to Tamary on the morrow.

They have all been put in one chamber, a room partitioned with lacquer screens, on beds made up of thickly padded brocade cushions. In the early hours of the morning, the protagonists are woken by hushed voices. Seedob and Sootan are discussing something in tones of great urgency. When they realise that they have woken Hodansyr and the protagonists, they whisper for them to come over.

The brothers are crouched together beside a candle in the darkness. Its flickering light sends ominous shadows across the decorative screen behind them. They have the look of two men caught in the act of discussing something of great wickedness. The protagonists see at once that Seedob is fully clothed, and in his lap he has an open casket. Inside, on a velvet mat, lie ten large, gleaming rubies.

"Okay, so I stole the family heirlooms," grunts Seedob. "What of it? What's the Ancient going to care, seeing as he never looked at them anyhow? He won't know they're gone."

"His habdigars will," says Sootan. "They patrol the House at all hours. They might come looking for us at any moment, and they will come with drawn knives. We cannot expect Lord Tian to care if his uninvited guests are butchered for thievery in the dark of the night."

Hodansyr eases his sword from its scabbard. "Let them come. Knives aren't a problem."

It is up to the protagonists to point out the shortcomings in such an approach. Since it is unlikely anyone could get back to the library without being spotted, the rubies cannot be replaced – not that Seedob has any intention of allowing them to do that anyway. Sootan and Hodansyr have already begun to see the advantages of the situation, in that at least they don't end up empty handed. The protagonists have no choice but to go along with the others (presumably some of them, at least, will need no urging) and must now argue over their share. Seedob will maintain strenuously that these rubies do not count as "spoils" but fall more properly under the heading of "profit". He needs the protagonists, though, and he knows it. Finally even he will agree to equal shares for all.

MOONLIGHTING

With the jetty area well patrolled by habdigar guards, and populous agricultural lands to the north and south, the only escape route lies across the Wastes of Gizen. The hostile, scorching heat of this region is well-known and Sootan has Hodansyr fetch pitchers to use for carrying water.

The party make their way across the plaza to the Tessellate Causeway – the mosaic funeral roadway that runs out of Sardonyx into the desert. Everything has taken on an unreal cast in the moonlight. Somewhere, far out in the desert wastes, an unknown creature raises its voice in a solitary, mournful howl. The faint mist veiling the moon is considered an ill omen in Invader folklore, and the protagonists ought to feel that the very stars are looking down in horror at their greed and their betrayal of hospitality.

Come back in two days for the concluding installment.

"More Precious Than Gold" - part 1

Overview of the adventure
The protagonists are hired as guards by two river-merchants from Deliverance who have a letter of introduction to one of the Houses of Sardonyx. Once in Sardonyx, the merchants find their plans for trade foundering, and decide to steal a casket of priceless gems. The entire party is forced to flee across the desert west of Sardonyx, where greed and the self-preservation soon take their toll on civilized conduct.

INTRODUCTION
[This section can be read or paraphrased to the players.]

After your last adventure you spend some time in Tamary looking for employment to take you back downriver to Deliverance. A few days later you are shopping for food in the market. It is still early morning, but already the bustle of traders and carts has raised a choking red dust from the city streets. Sweltering in the heat, you are finally forced to take refuge in the shade of a tea-seller's awning where you order a refreshing flask of the local tekoa brew.

While sipping this sweet aromatic tea you are approached by two men who have the look of river-merchants. They smile and nod, then seat themselves on stools beside you. The tea-seller scurries to take their order, but one of them tosses him a couple of silver Gentins and waves him away.

"Allow us to make our introduction," says this man. "I am Sootan Rinder and this is my brother Seedob. We are merchants from the coast, as you may have guessed from our garb." He indicates his thick fustian tunic, adopting a rueful smile as he mops his damp brow with a silk handkerchief. "Not entirely appropriate for this clime, but it is important to present a prosperous image in our line of business."

"Let's come to the point," interjects Sootan, who is clearly less patient and easy-going than his brother. "We hear you've been looking to sign on a boat heading downriver. But how about upriver? My brother and I, we did a service for an old Sardonny who lives down Lamentation way. Got him out of a spot of bother. The fact is it was us that got him into the bother in the first place, but there you are. Anyhow, being so grateful and all, this fellow gave us a letter of introduction to his family in Sardonyx. We're going to see if we can establish a trading depot there. It would be the first Sovereign depot established in Ancient territory, so we're talking big business. Other merchants around here have got wind of it and are getting green with envy – poisonous green. That's why we need guards with a good rep to see us safely in Sardonyx. People like you."

He grins and puts a fat bag of gold dust on the table in front of you.

REFEREE'S INFORMATION

Everything these two have said is true. They are prepared to pay the protagonists eight Argurs a day each, plus shares in any spoils that happen to accrue along the way. By "spoils" they mean any plunder there might be from river-pirates or the like. They are not offering a share in their mercantile profits, and they will make this very clear. They have a legal document which sets out at length the full terms of employment. This is binding throughout the Sovereign states. Unless one of the protagonists has the Lawyer skill, assume that the Rinder brothers can use this document to get their own way in any dispute over contractual arrangements. This means that the protagonists will be assured of 8 Argurs a day and a sixteenth share of spoils (the minimum recognized as "a share" in law) but nothing else.

Sootan is quiet, even-tempered and thoughtful. He is the brains of the team, and often needs to exert a calming influence on Seedob, who is the more charismatic and abrasive of the two. Both have no loyalty other than towards each other, and will cheerfully treat any companion or employee as expendable if they perceive a chance to turn a profit.

They have a team of low-class servants to act as bearers and have chartered a barge for the journey to Sardonyx. This is crewed by ten Tamary boatmen who should be treated as average 6th level Swordsmen in the event of trouble. In addition, the Rinder brothers are accompanied by a bodyguard called Hodansyr Pallisade.

Hodansyr belongs to an impoverished cadet branch of one of Deliverance's noble families. He is an expert swordsman and a feared veteran of many duels, but he is an alcoholic. The brothers know that as long as they keep him away from the bottle they can rely on him for their personal security, but they need men and women of the protagonists' caliber to see to the more unusual obstacles that might arise. Portray Hodansyr as a foppish dandy, fastidious about his looks and ever ready to erupt into hot temper at the slightest hint of an insult to his honor.

THE JOURNEY UPRIVER

Though the players will hopefully be anticipating trouble, have the voyage to Sardonyx pass without serious incident. You could throw in some minor encounter if your players need the exercise, but remember that the main thrust of the storyline revolves around the transformation of this venture from a simple trading expedition to a raw, tooth-&-claw struggle for survival. Any significant threats arising before they reach Sardonyx would only dilute the effectiveness of the plot.

The journey takes about a week. For most of this time there is nothing for the protagonists to do as the boatmen have everything in hand. The weather is idyllic: a cloudless blue sky overhead, sparkling amber river and fertile green fields to either side. A gentle breeze prevents the heat from becoming too stifling. They can spend the days dozing on the deck, fishing, drinking, chatting to the Rinder brothers and gambling with Hodansyr. Most of the protagonists will probably be able to swim, and this is an ideal way to cool off in the hottest part of the day, just before lunch. The Scarab River is in fact inhabited by crescta: river-dwelling carnivorous reptiles looking something like a ray or a waterborne pterodactyl. These might give chase to a swimmer and supply a moment's frisson of fright. Players could believe their characters do be in real danger, but in fact you should ensure that the crescta's prey manages to scramble back on board before the creature catches him. Such an encounter will be more effective if it ends with a snapping of frustrated fangs and a gale of relieved laughter than if you turn it into an underwater battle like something from a Tarzan film.

As the barge travels upriver, they pass the fields where the Ancients' habdigar thralls work at the complex irrigation systems devised long ages past. The protagonists will have seen habdigars before, but to see them teeming in groups, engaged in such a commonplace activity as farming, sets them in a cultural context which to humans must seem eerie.

Eventually, around midmorning on the fifth day out from Tamary, they round a bend in the river and catch their first glimpse of Sardonyx. Coming into view to on the starboard bank there are the extensive poppy fields from which the drug omatique is produced. Beyond lies the city itself, its white and rose towers slender as needles against the clear azure sky. In the far distance, miles beyond the city, a line of silvery grey demarks the arid plateau of the western desert.

Part 2 in two days.