Content Warning:
Language
A Note on Worldbuilding
Just a skosh. I decided to take a look at the map and the adventurer book (which I was pretty ready to just ignore, like I usually do). I see now that the solo stuff takes place in the same area. The map is beautiful but the scale is nonsense. As it stands, at a glance, it looks very much like the whole valley is maybe two miles across. Something you could cross in about a half hour to an hour’s walk. I was basing that initial estimate off the houses of the larger map before I read into Outskirt. I figured it had about 20-30 houses surrounding that ruined temple in the middle there but it actually has something like 50. That’s really less a village and more of a big camp, but the description still fits. Even adjusting for that size (I notice they forgot the crops in the closeup), the valley can’t be more than a few miles across. Here’s the thing, the book insists the valley is nearly a hundred miles across. I’ve seen comments noting that the valley looks more like 10. And that, at least, makes a modicum of sense based on what I’m looking at. But then, doing my due diligence as a google scholar, I find that valleys can be pretty fucking enormous. At this point, I can tell I’m hyperfocusing on trivial details (even if I am being handwavy about the precise measurements) so I’ll just treat it like it was probably meant to be treated: abstractly.
Fantasy maps are never to scale but this one was clearly made to be pretty and to put stuff in a vague context. Like, yeah, the Misty Isle is on the opposite side of the valley from where the Breach sits. This POI is the nearest POI to that POI in this or that Cardinal Direction. It’s a more visually attractive way of putting things on a grid. It’s a flowchart, basically. Which makes sense, because that’s how they suggest you “map” out your dungeons.
Okay, solid. They say the valley is kind of hard to get to and seems to be sparsely populated by adventurous types. Outskirt is a frontier town, for sure. The breach is said to be “leagues” deep, so we’re talking at least 7 or 8 miles underground and probably far, far more than that. With how it's described as being labyrinthine and basically unmappable, I gotta imagine the entire area under the whole ass valley and much of the surrounding mountains is riddled with caverns and passages. Even if the majority of the underground web is centered around the breach and extends down the western side of the mountains, I’m good with that. I like to imagine that the valley sits a little higher, nestled into the surrounding mountains. Gives plenty of room to descend and spread out before you get down to sea level on whatever the hell the surrounding areas look like in this world. On that note, I don’t mind, I really don’t…one of the earliest lessons I learned as a GM was that more could happen in a single village during a whole campaign than in the whole stupid planet you’ve spent countless prep hours building. I respect it.
Underground stuff then. Just caverns are not good enough. They do give us some clues as to what else could be down there, though. The most concrete things are the cultists and what Old Saggy Pants’ spear wrought. I imagine they carved out lots of places over the years, working from all the fissures and destruction the demon punched into the earth. We also know the Dwarves took to the southern mountains, which is in that area, so there must be both dwarven ruins and manned blockades around the edges of what the Breach encompasses as a whole. Finally, the vaguest notion, that demons and dragons used to fight makes me think that there are ancient draconian ruins buried even beneath the feet of dwarves.
As for me, sorry, I have to push Okald and her brother to the side. I already decreed in character creation that the smithy was mine and that I’m the village’s blacksmith. IF I continue using the Misty Vale as my setting for this gameplay, I actually kinda do want to keep their lore (god, it’s so much easier to do that sometimes). But I don’t want to set up some kind of competing business thing with the twins. I’d replace them outright but I don’t have any idea if they’re going to serve as questgivers in any adventures I might pull from. That probably wouldn’t be challenging to shift around but the easier solution is to just have them work for me. The smithy is run by three people. I own it, Okald runs the storefront, and Badinor works alongside me to fulfill the orders of all the dumb adventurers who come through here looking to score big in the rift. We’re both master blacksmiths (so there’s no apprentice situation here) and we’re both introverted so, weirdly, we work well in silence together. Having a couple of others at the smithy makes my quest make more sense as well. They can mind the shop while I range abroad and gather materials. I can handle special orders and deliveries while Badinor handles the assembly line stuff. Even though I think his Crafting is slightly higher than mine…which makes no sense because we should have the exact same strength score of 17, which gives a 7 base chance, which is doubled to 14 when trained. So.
I see the chapel just up ahead, so I quicken my pace to shelter inside. I know of it, of course. Its name is lost to time and it was standing long before I ever arrived in the valley. I’ve heard of adventurers into the Breach using it as a staging area in between delving raids into the deep, when they didn’t feel like trudging the hour’s walk back to Outskirt. I never paid them much mind, though, so I never really learned anything more. I’m happy to collect their coin and do my work and besides, the place always seemed like a deathtrap. A lot of adventurers never made it back. I never planned to venture near the place. But. I sigh. Well, here I am anyway. I guess everyone’s greed gets the better of them eventually. It’s not like my goals here are entirely selfish, but still.
I climb the handful of broad stone steps that adorn the front face of the chapel and squeeze through the gap between one heavy oaken door hanging slightly off its hinge and the wide doorframe. From here, just before I fit my considerable girth through the opening, I can see the Breach out there in the dark, faintly glowing with a reddish hue cast from below. Yeah. All I have to do is just not die and maybe come back with a pretty chunk of rock Badinor can sing the secrets from.
I shake myself and my equipment off and set my pack down on a nearby pew in the back row by the door. I stand by the door a minute, watching through the gap as the hellish light outside seems to shift and shimmer. A voice from the pulpit on the other side of the room draws my attention back indoors. “Taking shelter from the storm, are ye?” it asks in a raspy, throaty growl. Not aggressive but distinctly like the sound rocks make when ground together. A candle flares to life and it casts its scant light across the shadowed face of a wolfkin. Priest by the looks of his robes. A poor one by the state of them.
Do I recognize this priest?
I’ll make a Myths and Legends roll with a Boon because I’m a Blacksmith who’ll probably recognize his weapon. 2 and 17 tells me yes, I do.
“Stone-Gaze, now,” he says laughing and showing just the barest hint of fang, “but yes, I am he.” He reaches up and taps the stone eye with one long, clawed finger. The sight is unnerving, to say the least.
“I’ll be damned,” I say slowly.
He gives me a sharp look. “I sure hope not.” Thunder rolls outside and lightning flashes through the broken stained glass windows.
I all but audibly gulp. Suddenly, he doesn’t look so old and frail. “Kidding,” he says, smiling slightly again, “Please, make yourself at home. I’ll fetch us a hot drink.”
“You live in here?” I ask without thinking. I regret the tone and choice of words almost immediately but he doesn’t seem to take any offense.
“Aye. Not a fan of travel. And here,” he raises his hands, gesturing broadly around him, “is the easiest place from which to watch over the Breach.”
“You know, I can probably get that door fixed for you,” I offer.
“Could you? That’d be lovely. Damn thing creaking and banging all through the night while I’m trying to sleep.”
I nod and look around as he disappears through a small side doorway. I can hear him tinkering around with a pot or a kettle in the other room. There’s a wide table behind the pulpit, cast in the soft glow of several dozen candles. Across its surface are spread stacks of maze-like etchings scrawled across various shapes and sizes of scrap parchment. An inkwell and quill like carelessly to one side, gunked over with ink, the surrounding papers spattered with it. The faint whiff of incense burning wafts forward from the back of the staged area and I can see some low ledges back there in the dark with a couple burners spaced between rows of various herbs and bottles.
I’m about to go take a look at those when he returns from the other room bearing two steaming cups. “Maddening, aren’t they?” he notes and nods toward the drawings as he hands me my mug. I take a sip and the warm beef broth fills my belly.
I nod. “What are they?”
He points his nose in the direction of outside and says, “The Breach. Impossible to map with any accuracy.”
I perk up a little and take a closer look, setting my mug down and leaning slightly over the table. “Ah,” he says a little too knowingly, “have ye come to delve the Breach? There’s good to be done, justice to be dealt, and riches to be uncovered – if ye’ve the mettle for it.
I snort. “How many adventurers have fallen for that line?”
He laughs and finishes his broth before answering. “All of them. So? How about it?”
I pull my gaze away from the drawings and regard the old wolf seriously. “I have. I’m hoping to find some new materials for the forge. I think it’ll do the town a lot of good. Only…”
“Only what?” he asks.
“Only I’ve not got in mind any damn fool heroic quest and I’d like to make it out alive.” I pick up one of the top etchings and gesture with it. “Seems you’ve got a better eye than most for what’s down there. Can you guide me?”
Next: Issue One, Into the Breach, Part 2
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