The Kith’takharos setting map only measures 15 by 20 miles. Yet this small area contains vast possibilities for adventure. Three reasons immediately spring to mind. First, travel is usually slow and difficult. The best route to any place is seldom a straight line. The dense foliage and irregular islands force travelers to laboriously cut overland paths by hand or take circuitous routes by water. A well-prepared adventuring party could spend days traversing the map. The best maps drawn in Kith’takharos show only a few prominent locations.
Second, the swamp is an exotic environment filled with unknown dangers. Even the Swamp Men do not know every animal and plant, and the most perilous can spring upon wary adventurers with little warning. Each Kith’takharos adventure holds some new swamp creature, and still we will never describe them all.
Finally, the ruins, artifacts, and other remnants of the fallen Harlass Orn civilization are scattered throughout the swamp. While some of these are described in Kith’takharos adventures or on the White Haired Man web site, there is plenty of room for so much more. Anything could lay hidden beneath the character’s feet, or stand only 20 feet away, obscured by trees and brush.
So how much space does a setting need? Not much, in the case of this swamp.
White Haired Man consists of Viz and myself. Viz tends to the writing, electronic design for Fantasy Grounds II modules and the latest setup of this customized WordPress driven website. While I sip soda and…design layouts, create floor plans and maps, attempt credible artwork, and the bulk of our marketing. I have also recently taken the lead on creating our first tangible products: hand crafted perfect bound adventure books.
Needless to say I’d like to see more product hit the digital and proverbial shelves. So what is stopping us? It takes us an average of six to ten months to release a full scale adventure. We also create smaller works as in our Simple Scenario line. These do get to market faster, but they slow down our primary adventure creations. The writing is coming along fast enough but the artwork is not.
I find myself considering what it would take to speed up the process without breaking the non-existent bank. How can we create high quality art faster? It is hard to admit but we could use help in this arena.
So far we’ve been blessed with our association to Four Ugly Monsters. Devin Night is the owner and just ”gets” what White Haired Man is going for. In fact, we’d likely not be as successful as we’ve been without his generosity of spirit and personal mentoring towards me as a Graphic Designer/Artist, let alone his gifted tokens and illustrations.
We tried working with some freshmen illustrators, with the promise of placing their name in the credits and ensuring they had copies for their portfolios. This plan fell apart quickly when they thought they should be paid instead. I can’t say as I blame them, but I was clear about what we were offering and they agreed to the terms.
I know there must be a way to bring high quality product to market with more alacrity though the answer is elusive.
This Warten Confederacy story takes place after The Unseen Man and is written from an AD&D/OGL 3.5 perspective. White Haired Man may develop this setting in the future.
The sea shone like glass below clouds made translucent by moonlight. Yet it was only a temporary calm, already betrayed by a gray-tinged horizon. Soon the Visserian army would hammer us against the anvil of the sea. I could not sleep, and so I held the watch, thinking over troop dispositions before the inevitable attack.
The sea was behind us. Swampland and a river protected our center and right. A shallow ditch was the best we could do on our left. The bare coastland offered no trees for an abatis.
The left was mine. My men would die to protect the withdrawal when the navy broke through the Visserian blockade.
A spot on the sea shimmered for a moment. I did not believe in optical illusions or coincidence in war, but I did believe in true illusion. In two steps I was shaking Kail Lightfoot, my best scout. “Check the sky for gliders,” I told him. “Shoot at will, we might as well get this thing started.” He nodded and strung his longbow. Continue reading →
Many years ago, I ran an EarthDawn campaign. EarthDawn includes creatures of supreme malevolence called Horrors, and the Horrors often create constructs as servants. The most powerful Horror in my campaign fashioned a construct in the shape of a young man with white hair. He carried a two-handed sword in a scabbard on his back. He also had small mouths in place of eyes, and enjoyed using the mouths to extract the eyes of victims.
The characters chased the construct across a large portion of the campaign world. He committed a series of heinous crimes that seemed capricious yet threatened the security of their homeland. As the characters became more entwined in his schemes, they felt compelled to give him a name: the White Haired Man.
The White Haired Man loved twisted games and left numerous clues for the characters, often in the form of poems such as the following.
Enter town under cover of night
In succulent morsels I do delight
Wet popping sounds, and then they are free
Swallow once, swallow twice, now I see!
West through the forest, follow the river
Past elven lands, then to consider
When you finally bridge the chasm between us
Will you find the next clue, my arcane genius?
I resurrected the White Haired Man for another campaign years after the first. Andugus was in that campaign, and recalled that memorable bad guy when we were looking for a company name.
Our company logo is a crouching White Haired Man with his two-handed sword rising above his shoulders.
The Kith’takharos setting seems to contain clear protagonists and antagonists. The Order of the Jade Leaf are the good guys, while the Transit Guild strives to undermine the Order. I admit that we considered this relationship pretty black and white when we created Kith’takharos.
But things change when people actually use the setting. In this case, we are the people and the place is our Savage Worlds Kith’takharos campaign. One of the players created an albino character named Mistress Bianca. Most of Kith’takharos shuns Bianca due to her albinism, a custom adopted from the nearby Swamp Man tribes. However, Meryl Dunestal, leader of the Transit Guild, befriended Bianca and raised her as a daughter.
The other characters began with no affiliation with the Order of the Jade Leaf. Because of Bianca’s connections, they started using the Transit Guild compound as a meeting place and began to view Meryl as a benefactor. They saw the Transit Guild as composed of real people and not faceless bad guys.
As the campaign progressed, the characters did perform some missions for the Order of the Jade Leaf. Yet the relationship was always uneasy compared to the friendship with Meryl. Tension built between the characters and the Order. In the current state of the campaign, there is an open breech between the characters and the Order, and it is not clear how it can be healed.
One of my favorite aspects of roleplaying is how characters take things in directions I would never anticipate.
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