Havards Blackmoor Blog: Thorn's Blackmoor

Showing posts with label Thorn's Blackmoor. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The Last Days of Blackmoor

In 1975, Dave Arneson's players launched their first expeditions to the City of the Gods. Did they already at this point consider what bringing high tech artifacts back to Blackmoor would mean for a fantasy world? The DA modules hinted at dark consequences of these events in the centuries following King Uther's reign. The cover of module DA3 certainly sparked the imaginations of many about a sci fi heavy future of Blackmoor.

One such Blackmoor fan is RobJN who occasionally appears in this blog with his Thorn's Blackmoor.This Weekend RobJN announced his plans to start a Play by Post Campaign hosted at the Comeback Inn. Right now it looks like the campaign may be set a either a thousand years after Uther's Reign, or during the Beastman Crusades, "only" a few centuries into the future.

Those interested in such futuristic versions of Blackmoor may also be interested in this discussion about Blackmoor 2000. More details on RobJN's project will undoubtedly be revealed in the months ahead!

Stay tuned!

More discussion of this article: http://blackmoor.mystara.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=2831

-Havard

Blackmoor Covers by RobJN

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Thorn's Blackmoor: Kingdoms of the Twilight Empire

It is time for this month's guest entry for my blog and a new visit from RobJN who takes a look at the monsters of Thorn's Blackmoor:

Before the Great Unification, the southlands of Skothar were teeming with woodlands, and the Fey outnumbered men and elves and halflings and dwarves nearly ten to one. But as Men pushed ever outward, the forests fell, lands were cleared, and order was brought to the wilderness. Then came the plows and the farms. The chaos of the wilds withered beneath the onslaught of the laws and ways of Men, and most of the Fey withdrew, either receding further and further to the North, or simply… fading away.

By the time of the Mage Wars, the Fey were nearly extinct in the Southlands, with a few secreting themselves among Men out of curiosity, observing, puzzling over their ways. The main concentrations of Fey situated themselves among the forests and lakes of the North, and collectively referred to their nation as the Twilight Empire.

Their rulership was something only vaguely understood even by the Wizards of the Woods. At times, the leadership changed with the seasons. Other times, it seemed that wagers among certain groups, won or lost, determined who would reign over a given pocket of the Fey. The Wizard of the Woods, Pete, was said to have observed rulership hinging on who won a staring contest between two pixie lordlings.

No one is sure of the exact date, but Morgana seized the Twilight Throne some time between the end of the Mage Wars and the time that the lands of the Egg rose up from the Black Sea. It was then that the Equinox Pacts were forged among the Summer and Winter fey, combining those two nations, to better fend off the depredations of the Egg of Coot, which only grew stronger as years passed.

Though Morgana was dark of hair and eye, as was Uther Andahar, there has been some speculation that the golden-haired twins may very well be court hostages of the Summer fey, given over to a neutral party for safekeeping….

Rob’s blog and website (which close on July 30th) are in the process of moving. The new blog is already up, and continues to chronicle a bit of a darker take on the Mystara presented in the D&D Gazetteers. Thorn's Chronicle is posted semi-regularly on the Mystara board of The Piazza.

Image Sources

Spotlight Witch by Wayne Reynolds

Thorns Chroicle logo by RobJN

-Havard

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Thorn's Blackmoor: Monsters of Thorn's World That Was

It is time for this month's guest entry for my blog and a new visit from RobJN who takes a look at the monsters of Thorn's Blackmoor:

Aside from Beast Men, there were relatively few non-human menaces in the North. The summer months saw the yearly influx of sahuagin from the southern shores of Skothar. While most of the fey-folk avoided Men, bands of Red Caps and Satyrs were known to cause trouble to those straying too far from the roads and trails through the woods. Pixies and sprites were more mischievous than malicious, more a nuisance than threat. Occasionally, giants would stray from the Stormkiller mountains, but for the most part kept to the peaks in their near-constant war with the Dwarves.

The rising of the Egg of Coot some time around 4030 BC (970 in the Calendar of the North) changed all that.

Some sages posit that the different so-called monstrous races were results of selective genetic strain manipulation by the Egg. Mountains and forests became home to the spidery, spindly offshoot that became known as goblins, while “orcs” were nurtured for work and fighting in the hills.

Over the decades, more and more specialized species began to spring up, and the Men of the North could not help but notice the consistency in appearance and types of monsters that crept into their lands: bigger, hairier goblins that had some modicum of discipline, yapping, dog-like humanoids that skulked at the fringes of the frontier towns. When pies cooling on windowsills went missing, or a piece or two of the day’s washing disappeared, parents could not easily discount the excuse of “it was a kobold.”

One of the most terrifying creatures to lumber forth from the Realms of the Egg, though, was the troll: ten feet of ravening destruction, a mass of claws and teeth housed in a thickly-muscled, rubbery-skinned hide. Nigh indestructible, the wounds of sword and pike and axe closing moments after landing, limbs seeking to keep fighting even when severed, they were nearly the undoing of the armies of the North.

Scholars tell of Uther singlehandedly fighting off a trio of the beasts, but recent accounts recovered from Uther’s lost personal diary reveal that he was not alone, but traveled with the twins at the time. His account tells of Rowena and Leansethar attacking the creatures in a fury that bordered on madness. It was through their battle that Uther learned of the trolls’ susceptibility to fire, and it was after that point that every squad patrolling along the borders of the Realms of the Egg were equipped with pitch and flame with which to edge their weapons upon encountering the great, lumbering monsters.

The deep, nearly-psychotic hatred between the Sidhe and Trolls seems to originate from these years before the Great Rain of Fire. Were trolls the result of experimentation done by the Egg to blend Beast Man and Sidhe stock? The waning of the numbers of the Sidhe in the North, and growing numbers of Trolls could have been coincidental… but the two events may also be inextricably linked.

Rob’s blog and website chronicles a bit of a darker take on the Mystara presented in the D&D Gazetteers. Thorn's Chronicle is posted semi-regularly on the Mystara board of The Piazza.

-Havard

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Thorn's Blackmoor: The Source of Woe and Ruin

In this months guest entry for my blog RobJN takes a look at the darker side of magic in Thorn's Blackmoor:

The North was rich with magic, the lands and people saturated in it. Fickle, temperamental, the magic refused all attempts to tame it. At best, it could be said that some few men wrestled the forces into something of a stalemate: Robert the Bald; the Wizards of the Wood, Pete and then Sildonis. It is said that Jallapierie simply asked the magic nicely if it would cooperate.

In the frozen wastes even further north, the beast men saw the magic used by men and coveted it, yet their own chaotic nature would not allow them to master it.

And beyond the north, beyond the world itself, others saw the same magic, and craved it just as did the beast men. On some fateful, starless night, the two desires crossed somewhere in the misty realms of the Ethereal plane, where Dreams and Nightmares walk, and in the Dreaming was forged a pact: The beast men would have their power, in exchange for bodies, physical vessels for the churning, formless hordes of the Dark Beyond.

And in the dark of the next new moon, the beast man shamans gathered, and made their sacrifices: blood and the dying breath of of men of the North, flakes of the black rock on which their Castle would one day be built, water from the lake called Hope, fire, from the wooded home of the fey along the lake’s shore.

Thus were brought into the world the beings that would come to be known as demons: parasites, drawing on the lifeblood of a host, and the magic inherent in the land. When the parasite grew strong enough, it changed the very form of its host, taking it over completely. Some say the beings drove their hosts to insanity. Others insist that what men call ‘insanity’ is the normal thinking of demonkind.

To the men of the North, it was only one thing: Evil. The magic men used to build, demons only used to destroy. Magics men would use to heal and to help were turned against them. Where men would make light in the darkness, demons made only deeper darkness, their flames bringing blindness and devastation.

It would be nearly a thousand years before demons grew weary of the chaotic blood of the beast men and leapt to feast upon a new host, the savage mountain tribes under the thumb of an ambitious priestess…

Rob’s blog and website chronicles a bit of a darker take on the Mystara presented in the D&D Gazetteers. Thorn's Chronicle is posted semi-regularly on the Mystara board of The Piazza.

-Havard

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Thorn's Blackmoor: Wild Magic of the North

Here's the second installment from guest blogger RobJN. Read his first entry here. Rob is also a regular at the Comeback Inn Forum.

After a thousand years, the last thing the Great Thonian Republic wanted was disorder creeping into the cogs of its structured and ordered society. They were content to let the lawless barbarians have the lands to the North, with their swamps and endless lakes and forbidding mountains.

The North was the last refuge of natural chaos on Skothar — its forests and rivers and lakes were home to ever increasing numbers of dryads, nymphs, and sylphs driven from their ancestral lands by men from the South and their farmland and cultivation.

Like the moon and the oceans, the magics of the North ebbed and flowed, waxed and waned. At the center, as awash in magic as it was the waters of the Black Sea from which it rose, was the spire of black stone, at once natural and unnatural.

While some magical effects could be guessed due to the phase of the moons, or the stage of the oceans’ tides, more often than not mages were as surprised as their opponents when any given spell was cast to disastrous effect.

It was found, though, that in successive generations born in the North, those who had the ability to use magic suffered fewer and fewer mishaps. Some few were said to be able to use the North’s unpredictability to their own advantage, empowering their own spells while their opponent’s spells failed, misfired, or ran wild. It was unknown whether or not this ability was something inborn, or was something men of magic could learn.

Elves and the fey, of course, found Men’s blunderings with the wrinkled fabric of magics of the North rather amusing. Several Wizards of the Woods write of fortunes won and lost among the sidhe, who watched the wars of men from behind their Veils, wagering on the effect of this or that spell on the battlefield…

Some historians have guessed that it was the exposure to the “wild magics” that tamed the Beast Men, causing their stock to stabilize into the “common” goblinoid species men know of today. Some might go so far as to surmise that Blackmoor’s crusades against the Beast Men were as much in retaliation against their demon-worshipping ways as it was backlash against the growing incursions into the lands of men. Were the Beast Man invasions their attempt to reach and put an end to the source of energy that caused the steady decline in their own chaotic influence?

Given the effect tampering with those powers had in purging the planet of the scourge of demon kind, one shudders to think what could have happened with that kind of power bent to the will of the Beast Men and their Immortal patroness.

Rob’s blog and website chronicles a bit of a darker take on the Mystara presented in the D&D Gazetteers. Thorn's Chronicle is posted semi-regularly on the Mystara board of The Piazza.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Thorn's Blackmoor

That Blackmoor rose to great heights and then fell in a cataclysmic Rain of Fire is about all that is remembered of the kingdom and empire from four thousand years in the Known World’s past.

To most people of the Known World, the sable on argent represents a Black Eagle of Karameikos, not the Sweeping Hawk of Andahar. That name, if it is known, is only whispered in the deepest recesses of the great libraries in Sundsvall or Glantri City. The words of that house, though, live on in toasts raised over feast day tables, spoken after oaths and handshakes sealed a treaty that ended decades of war between Thyatis and Alphatia:

“Once and Always.”

Truer words have never been spoken. While the destruction and devastation of the Great Rain of Fire caught the Immortals off guard, the men of Blackmoor saw it the more they worked on Project Valkyrie.

For hundreds of years, the Northern Marches were all that stood between Tuska Rosa and her goal in the heart of the Thonian Empire. The Afridhi, which had crushed the Vales and ground the Duchy of Ten into submission found their fury thrown back into their teeth on the lances and swords of a ragtag, patchwork army of Northern barons.

The Afridhi came, again and again, stronger every time, their numbers bolstered by demons of shadow and flame.

But Blackmoor had the wild magics of the North, and Uther’s bargain ensured that the powers of the North would fight at the side of the barons.

“Once and Always,” was the oath spoken over that covenant.

While Blackmoor perished, drowned in fire and then the cold waters of the Northern Sea, the promise— and the line that had made it— was not broken.

Uther’s daughters survive, and will do so until the threats brought into the world by the Afridhi and the Beast Men are extinguished once and always…

Rob’s blog and website chronicles a bit of a darker take on the Mystara presented in the D&D Gazetteers. Thorn's Chronicle is posted semi-regularly on the Mystara board of The Piazza.

***

The Above is the first blog entry on this blog written by guest blogger RobJN, who also frequents the Comeback Inn. I have for a long time been fascinated by his ongoing series Thorn's Chronicle and I am very pleased when he agreed to write this piece for us. This might not be the last we hear from him here either!

-Havard