The Kingdom of Large (temporarily named while its reorganized after defeating the previous rulers, the Empire of Gnok) is, well. Large. And in quick need of renaming, but other than that, it is fairly diverse. Large fields. Large forests. Suspicious-looking caves scattered about the place. Plenty of farms when there isn't a fight going on nearby. And most of all considering its history of conquest, reconquest, and rereconquest, castles.
Castles everywhere, from small stone forts to previous capital cities before they got burned to the ground by invading conquerers. Most of the ones from the Empire of Gnok however, were built mainly of wood to spite whoever attacked them, and are little more than large scorch marks on the land now. The ones not claimed by victorious invaders, bandit kings, or temporarily independant lords are for the most part empty, except for the oldest ones.
The oldest, smallest, and least touched by consistantly-changing lords are the ones who were home to the true, actual, and quite extinct as far as official record is concerned natives of the land; they attract monsters by the hundreds (in the worst cases thousands) from the still-lasting death curses of their lords. Many a conquest through history has been cut abruptly short by the sudden death of all the leading warriors after they enter one of these to prove curses don't exist and that there can't be more than a handful of demons in there. Occasionally explorers stumble upon new ones, in even less probable locations than before, like the bottoms of lakes, or the entire interior of hills. But they are not impenetrable fortresses to the excessively-prepared, or to leaders with entire armies to risk claiming a more prestigous castle at terrible cost.
Like you and your small group of fellows. You may have lost 95% of your force in the effort, but the few of you who remain meet in the grand throne room itself, having finally cleared out the place over the vicious complaints of the previous hundreds of monstrous occupants. The smell of some of the rooms will need to be purged with fire at somepoint (you can't exactly get much done in there with the sort of overwhelming smell they've left behind in them), and the curse still needs to be dispelled before it recognizes you are not the monsters you pretended to be. Aside from that however, it seems to be in poor, if entierly intact condition, and with it the group finally has a place of its own, no longer sleeping in massive camps surrounding towns with too-small inns.
You must have taking a worse beating than you thought however, because you don't remember a thing about the group besides who you are, and why you are part of it. The others look similarly weary, but it seems like they're waiting for you to start. Well then.
---
So, we need an
Organization, and a
Leader. Being in control of one of the Ancient Castles, while the group may be a tattered ruin of its former self, it has significant respect from anyone who finds out about the capture, at least until the news starts to get old. Short of an unexpected siege, they won't be bothered all that much yet while they recover as a result.
The Organization needs:
A Name!
A motto/battlecry/saying. Doesn't have to be all three.
Were we more on the side of smiting evil when we set out to conquer this place, or of a more evil intent in need of a fitting lair?
A color(s) to distinguish us from other land-holding groups, such as the newly-crowned King's Red Warfleet.
Between 1-3 surviving advisors of somekind, related to the group.
A goal! (if we don't have a goal, the default goal is 'Conquer the Kingdom and proclaim our castle as the new capital of the succeeding government.')
A general description of what the group actually is (ex. a group of angry, hard to kill barbarian half-men from the north. Or a Paladin order who came to smite evil and flip tables, but forgot to bring the tables. Or a collection of former dukes who brought their armies together to claim the place for themselves and divide the land up later. Or a couple old wizards with enough experience to have not gone crazy from the practice, who bewitched an army out from under some lord's notice and led it to their doom in the process of claiming the cursed place. The only requirement is that it could've been a group with enough fighting ability, either by themselves or bought/stolen/etc to kill essentially an entire major dungeon's worth of random encounters and not all get killed in the process.)
Our Leader needs:
A name, of course.
A race of some sort (general fantasy ones or normal person, either works).
A gender, probably.
Something important about them (Being a duelist, being a wizard, being a banished problem to a more important lord, being an insane mage, being nondescript, glowing purple and being able to punch opponents that aren't in melee range, etc.)
On magic:
Most of the magic comes from sources within the old castles, which means most of it is tangled up with the curses the natives left behind in them. The successful casters manage to seperate the magic from the curses enough to not have terrible side effects.
I'll edit the title once we have a name.
Anyway, I had some ideas about how to rework the map in Crystalline to not just be gianthuge images everywhere when we're covering a major potion of the planet. But I wanted to see if they'd work first before I added it to the rest of the not being stuck on where to go in that anymore, and I wanted to make another game anyway. So here it is, a game about a group of people of currently-unknown-alignment or goals, after they reclaim a castle for themselves to own.
Author
Topic: The Comradely Association of Adventurous Beings of Various Shapes and Sizes (Read 3384 times)