Darkness at Hope Cross Outdoor Map

Here's one more item for the adventure:

Update

Well, I've added the village map - but now I need to update the building descriptions to conform with what I've drawn (man, what a process that was, too - hand drawn, scanned, printed, redrawn in ink, rescanned - made blue, numbered, bleah...).

Anyway, I have a cover in the works and I'll have extra map pages to fill with some more encoutner areas unless I do a tri-fold cover. Still have to get the outdoor map together.

So - probably need to come up with a map for Seeley's Glen and maybe one or two other smaller areas. Hag Island is too big to include in this adventure... Maybe the druid's grove, and give the druid a greater role in the potential adventure...

Darkness at Hope Cross Village Map

Here's a copy of the Village Map in pseudo Old School Blue:

Daen-Ral

My original world is Daen-Ral (well, that's the name of the main continent, anyway). I was thinking, rules-wise, a couple things that make Daen-Ral unique.

First, of course, is geography and politics (not rules-based, but unique). More on that later.

Second: Cosmology. There are hundreds of gods in Daen-Ral (nothing new there) and they all exist either on the Prime Material Plane or on some other plane - but they are not really gods. They're the equivalent of very powerful demons and devils. And there really aren't very many planes. There is the prime, of course, and then there are the five elemental planes (air, earth, fire, water, void/darkness) and the abyss & hell, the grey plane (kind of the astral/ethereal/purgatory), paradaise. I think that's about it. I'll have to unpack that more, of course, but that's really the cosmology.

The reasons for this adjusted cosmology is that I'm taking a more monotheistic approach to worldbuilding. There is one creator God. The story is that there was a rebellion in heaven when the Creator fashioned human beings and gave them the choice to serve God or serve their own desires. The fallen angels wreaked havoc on creation and a spiritual war has been going on ever since.

The fallen are called to repent. Immediately some did. The Creator gave those angels the task to be guardians of creation (Daen-Ral) and gave them human-like forms (elves and dwarves - the Exiles and the Dwarvanna, respectively) and charged them with guardianship of the world. They were settled on the continent opposite that populated by human beings (Baroth). They acted as secret guardians of the world. Slowly, humanity began exploring the world at large and discovered the continent on which the Exiles and Dwarvanna dwelt (Daen-Ral). The guardians of the world had, over the centuries, forgotten their purpose and even forgotten much of their worship of the Creator God. Some re-allied themselves with the Firstfallen angels - major demonic and diabolic creatures who became as gods to the world.

There's more to the history of the world, of course, but that is a taste of the difference in cosmology.

Third, Ecology. On Daen-Ral, there are creatures, there are monsters and there are supernatural beings.

Creatures are natural animals, people, etc (generally, human beings and many creatures with animal intelligence).

Monsters are fabricated of magic, elements and evil - goblins, orcs, shambling mounds, beholders, etc. fall in this category. Pretty much any creature can appear in Daen-Ral, without "ecology" considerations, since monsters don't have to eat, sleep, procreate, etc. They are raw elemental evil monstrosities. And, while they don't have to eat or procreate, they sometimes choose to (for any of a variety of twisted reasons). Thus, there are some half human- half monstrous beings in the world. Consequently, there are no baby orcs, no female goblins, no Beholder young that could be considered "innocent". Every monster encountered was fabricated by magic to spread chaos and violence.

Supernatural beings are elves, dwarves, faerie, dragons, and a number of other "monsters" that have gained a certain amount of...mortality. For example, the first of the elves are completely immortal - yet they began to breed with human beings (thus the Firstborn) and then intebreed among the firstborn...each generation following living shorter lives (though the Firstborn are nearly immortal, living tens of thousands of years) - thus, many elves & dwarves have actually become creatures (with special abilities) and all have some human "taint"though most don't know it. Dragons, too, are among the Firstfallen, the Exiles. All supernatural beings have a preferred shape, though all can shapechange.

I will at some point try to codify all the creatures/monsters/beings of Daen-Ral in some kind of a tome (I'm trying to find a free pdf editor - good luck, I know - so I can put together the various monster pdfs that I have into a Daen-Ral book - I know foxit is only a hundred bucks, but it's about 90 more than I have to spend on rpg stuff.

Update

I changed some of the settings on the blog because the white letters on black were making my eyes buggy... If I can find a template that I like, I'll probably go with that. But for now, I like what I have.

I'm editing the evil elemental gods - and now I'm at a crossroad with this project (yet another) - how much detail on origin? The gods are just super powerful demons, does it matter? I'm probably going to end up with a radically different cosmology than "standard" AD&D anyway. But how much explaining of Firstfallen and Firstborn and Twicefallen do I really want to deal with?

I've posted maps for Hope Cross - the village and regional maps are coming along - should have it all packaged and ready for artwork...of which I have none...by the end of the week.

I pulled my file for Eversnow Mountain and Whitestone Hall and Torgoth's River Canyon (which is little more than a sketch).

I've updated the Stuff I Want to Get Done post.

The Elements

Okay - turns out I might have more to say about world building stuff and classes and the like than I thought I would. Oh well...

So it turns out that I've got a more Japanese take on the elements than traditional AD&D - that is, five basic elements (air, earth, fire, water, void - or darkness). In what I'm doing, Darkness is the first primordial element - darkness and chaos. From darkness come the four traditional elements - and hence the elemental gods of evil (which I'll detail later - but are loosely based on the Cthulhu mythos).

Now I have to figure out how these elements interact - since they aren't likely to directly counter one another - maybe. So I need to work out the interrelationships among the various elements - and do I want to have quasi or demi or para elements (you know - dust - between earth and air, magma - between earth and fire, mud - between earth and water and ....what happens when earth and darkness combine?)

Okay - so maybe it's the four traditional elements radiating out from Darkness at the center - and since darkness touches all of them, evil touches all of them...

Earth/Air - Dust


Earth/Fire - Magma


Earth/Water - Mud





Air/Fire - Ash


Air/Water - Vapor


Air/Earth - Dust





Water/Air - Vapor


Water/Earth - Mud


Water/Fire - Steam



So, I've got the interrelationships between the elements nailed (sort of).

Knights of the Elements

Elemental Avatars
The Knights of the Elements

FREQUENCY: Unique
NO. APPEARING: 1
ARMOUR CLASS: -3
MOVE: 12"
HIT DICE: 14
% IN LAIR: Nil
TREASURE TYPE: Nil
NO. OF ATTACKS: 2
DAMAGEIATTACK: 1-12/1-12
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Spells
SPECIAL DEFENCES: immune to charm, hold
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 75%
INTELLIGENCE: Genius
ALIGNMENT: CE
SIZE: M
PSlONlC ABILITY: Nil
Attack/Defence Modes: Nil
LEVEL/X.P. VALUE:

Though the five elemental evil gods are imprisoned and sleep in eternal slumber, a tiny bit of their essence is still tied to this plane of reality. Each of the Knights appears as an 8 ft tall humanoid in full black platemail wielding a greatsword. The platemail, while black, glows softly with a differernt color based on the element the avatar represents.

Fire - Red

Water - Blue

Earth - Brown

Air - White

Darkness - no glow - gloss black

Elemental Knights