A World a Week, or so: Frog Bog (first glimpse)

 

So, before titles...

If only campaigns formed like yarns coming together to make a Christmas sweater. Instead they usually come from something on the outside world, that Real one, getting my attention to suddenly granting a cool image in my head. This one started coming to me while driving past a temporary bog along a highly industrial area in late April. Because of some very warm temperatures, the frogs were out in enough numbers to overcome the noise of the area as well as my work van. The trees and the water from snow melt and rain in the near 90 degree weather had a fresh smell that for a couple days overcame the oily smell of the neighborhood. And then the words "frogs" and "bog" popped into my head and now Frog Bog is on my mind.

At least since the late 80s, I suppose, I have been always doing Monsters! Monsters! writing. This has gone from animal-headed humanoids as beat up monsters, to the inclusion, these more recent days, of talking animals. Of course, coming from a Tunnels & Trolls and Runequest perspective of the Old School Gamer (an OG of the OSG, hee hee), having some ready notes for the Player-Character that someone just had to play has lead to some long notebooks filled with Monsterkin (Monster-Kin) cultures and liked environments.

When it comes to amphibious species, I've been making scribbles in my "Surf and Turf" file for years now anyway. But most of the Kin involved have been either the undersea sorts or the avian and crustaceans along the cliffs and beaches along seas and shores of really big lakes. Believe it or not, I never had my head around frog-heads beyond one shot monsters here and there. So inspired by their beautiful voices singing away the winter residue, I came up with "Boggers."

A month later, once again at work, I came across two hatchling birds that survived their nest tumbling into a parking lot. This prompted me to use my floppy hat as an improvised replacement. They then had to survive on a mixture of coffee creamer and crushed crackers through a pipette every fifteen to twenty minutes as I continued my job, until I could buy some puppy chow and dissolve it into water to make a proper gruel for them. They fell asleep at sundown. A couple of hours after sunrise and many feedings the next day I was able to get them to avian sanctuary. So now the human-like "The Grackles" worked their way into this world.
So I had a bog and needed very, very big trees. Plus a climate suited for the survival of frogs and little birds that pulled at my heart-strings and instinctive life saving skills. Hot and steamy-- I sweated forever with those grackles, but keeping them alive was worth every second-- this new place where Frog Bog was to be. Down south near the Gulf is where I can think of.

So this last weekend during my soccer games, I got tired of typing and did this map. Don't let the trees fool you. They're bigger than redwoods and the map scale is roughly eighteen by thirty miles. There also being a sea gives me some room for some saltwater baddies like Clawdads and Kuda. Heck throw in some polluting humans and hungry Hissers (crocodile-heads) to keep things balanced in a savage sort of way. So my delicate Monsterkin have a little space to begin their sagas. Just need to finish up my Wizards campaign first...

More time to get a few more notes for Frog Bog.

Times At the Table: More Arshoon T&T

 In part four, Zeluria, Max Kitch, and Jazen encountered not only the Lying Fish but the Truthful Goat. During this session, I was paying homage to all the times while playing D&D the GM would throw in "important" encounters with clues as to the Player-Characters' upcoming adventure. Given the open ended nature of real RPG sessions, outside of giving away the scoops of the campaign, I couched everything in cryptic uttering by the fish and then later the goat would give a more direct interpretation that was still vague. It was like slathering a VHS pachage with peanut butter and calling it a mystery box. I had to introduce Itchy the retired Goblin for the players to finally catch on that the water coming down from the stream where the tower is to the village of Sturach was tainted with a substance that even the fish in it were waiting to be netted to be lifted to the tributary where Lying Fish made his home. One of the Players thought to maybe drain their water skins-- I about had a heart attack.

This last session, the trio of Wizards and their Warrior escort made it to the tower itself. There was no one to greet the caravan at the gates of the compound, indeed they were open and the guard booth empty. They found the grounds around the structure in disarray. The horses and donkeys from the stables were all roaming around and foraging from stacks of hay and local foliage. While work tools were placed where they would at the end of the day, many had fallen over, as happens due to wind, and not been replaced.  

The banged on the double doors to the Tower's ground floor many times, before Ziv "Radnik" Radovsky the Wizard that is the quartermaster opened the door. Of course his demeanor was abnormal and he seemed distracted. When Max asked him, where should they put the supplies that they had brought, the NPC replied, with obvious fear in his voice, "They must go into THE CELLAR!" And with that he fled up the stairs going into the higher reaches of the Starry Tower.

Our intrepid heroes looked at one another and shrugged. They then shed their peasant clothing to get back into their wizard attire--these things are important when you're a spellcaster. Kitch stayed upstairs with  the guards, while Brock (NPC), Zel and Jazon checked out the mentioned cellar. And they found a whole lot of nothing but they did find a SUB-Cellar. Opening the trapdoor to it, they knocked over a glass vial But I didn't the two Players think much of it. Instead I focused their attention on the marvelous library of books, parchments, and other things that was in there.

Zel would find a treatise explaining the form of the universe itself. Jazon would learn a spell. Meanwhile Brock would be running upstairs yelling about how the two mages were unconscious downstairs. Kitch quickly got there to see what the heck was happening.

 After waking up both of the wizards that went downstairs, apparently having been gassed by a sleeping potion, Kitch listened to their tales. They group would have concluded that Zel and Jazon were merely dreaming, until the shadrakar (handsome furry), performed the spell that he learned in his "dream". Casting a Detect Magic, the Boyar saw, some epic GM flourish, that the subcellar was a junction of many mystical portals.

It was getting late in the day. The group back to the upstairs entrance level and decided to start resting for the night. Wun and Tree were left downstairs to keep an eye on the subcellar. Everybody in the "lobby" was just getting comfortable, Brock was making awkward passes at Zel just as the yells started coming from the cellars...