Read through this...make sure that no one finds anything to be particularly odiferous and give a yay or nay
The call has gone out and the Raiders are gathering. An Uthgardt tribe in the west has penetrated to deeply into the Wyrm's lands. The Blood moot has begun and soon...three days hence...we shall all ride to battle together under the Blood Moon. First to arrive are wandering bands...the horsemen of the Blood Moon. They bring the rangers, barbarians and druids. They are composed mostly of the uncivilized races. There are even Uthgardt among them, they all know that the Uthgardt tribe in the west has pushed the Wyrm to far this time. The Blood Moon will rise and these savages will be cleansed from the Wyrm's birthright. Next to arrive will be the goodly raced Raiders. These will be the city dwelling fighters, scouts, rogues and knowledge seeking spell casters. The holy men among us will trickle in slowly...all coming from there various monasteries, temples and dojos as will the wandering minstrels and sorcerers. But all will come, none shall ignore the call of the Blood Moon.
The Blood Moon is an organization that uses a series of initiations and indoctrination ceremonies to train its future members, all of which are orphaned or ex-slave children. The Blood Moon raises them in its own apprentice style education system and enforces strict codes of conduct, Spartan material access and exceptionally high achievement standards. Group punishment is used insure utter loyalty to each other and team work. All Raiders are branded with a tattoo on the chest of the Blood Moon upon achieving entrance into the Blood Moon at maturity.
Within the Blood Moon it is understood that the Wyrm will take to the sky during battle, though it rarely intervenes, in fact is has been a generation in human terms since it last descended upon the field of battle. The Blood Moon also always rises above us during battle or its aftermath.
The Blood Moon has extensive access to the northern regions were its larger bands roam and has secret lodges within the city-states of the Frozen North. It is from these city based lodges that is agents jocky for power and influence amongst the city dweller's. These lodges are very useful equipment and resupply depots, with extensive facilities, for Blooded Ones on great missions for the elders. It has one central structure. An ancient massive castle, half crumbling off the edge of a cliff, built upon the ruins of one of Netheril's fallen cities. Beneath the castle lies a vast complex of tunnels and fissures some of which contain the ruins of the ancient Netherilian structures...crumbled and smashed from the Great Fall. The Hall's of the Wyrm are ancient and filled with Ghosts both friendly and violent. Some rooms are inhospitable due to their supernatural inhabitants while in others the vaporous occupants go about their odd daily ethereal routines. Despite being haunted the Raiders do send all of their apprentices to Blood Moon Castle during important times of the year to undergo training and indoctrination. Many elderly Raiders also reside in the ancient hall's rooms. It is here that conflicts among the many different Blood Moon factions, clans and bands ask their elders to hear disputes and attempt to resolve conflict through the holding of duels and contests of physical and mental and debate prowess. The Elders will also often send out a call for Blooded heroes to step forward and accept dangerous quests that will bring the Blood Moon honor, glory and power.
1/26/2005
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
Sorry for the duplicate, just posting my comment about the tattoo:
It should be something that "appears" on the skin of an initiate, when it has been accepted into the Blood Moon. No one knows exactly why or how the mark appears, but it is understood that it happens IF and WHEN the initiate has been "accepted", which may or may not happen at some point thru out his or her life time. This is another good point, too. It doesn't always happen at the same age of the initiate, too.
Posting my comment about the thought that we might need to change the name of the dragon to avoid confusion with the name of the population of the Wyrm Raiders. Any ideas? I have a suggestion to get us started:
1) Wyrmin
Chip said:
I'm still thinking about this dragon's colors, too. I got a lot of feedback from Brad, but nothing we could really use (Hot Pink, Neon Green Dread-Locks, etc.). I'm thinking he should be dark-charcoal with blood red under-belly.
Daniel said:
I like the double use of the word...its like the members of the Blood Moon are also the body of the dragon...and the Dragon is the Blood Moon's populace...also...saying things like "defending the birthright of the Wyrm." The could be defending the dragons lands or defending the Blood Moon's people's lands...Its neat...I say we stick with the double meanings.
i have put together a map of the Frozen North that i got out of some older version D&D books that i downloaded off of the Wizards of the Coast's website...if anyone wants a copy just let me know.
Daniel: Why don't you create a Maps post of something like that, and start posting all those Maps to the blog? You can use the Hello account I posted the settings for.
What we could do is use the same post for all the map images, and then put a hyperlink on and under each one that points to separate description posts of each area. I could probably write it so that each hyperlink opens in a new window, so you could look at the map and read the write up description post (and associated comments) together side-by-side or however you arranged your browser windows.
Does that make sense?
Chris has Said:
I had an epiphany last night about the Good/Evil character issue. I realize there will still be technical issues if we are lawful good/lawful evil in the same group. I would suggest a form of Neutral would be best that way we don't run into too many technical issues with characters. But I don't want to limit Guild membership due to alignment....I'd like to be able to bring in anyone and have them be assimilated into the Guild......
However, I thought that the Wyrm Raiders could be the extension of the Wyrm to maintain BALANCE throughout the universe. There is a constant battle between good and evil and one cannot exist without the other - there must be a balance. It cannot be achieved randomly; there must be an overarching, omniscient, force that maintains balance everywhere. The Dragon is everywhere, his spines come up thru the forest and his wings move to create the winds and push rain where it is needed most; his fire brings down both good and evil to maintain the balance and nourish the ground and the Dragon himself. He devours and consumes where there is an overabundance and gives where there is a need.
These things are accomplished thru the quests given to the Wyrm Raiders; the communication is thru various mediums - ghostly apparitions, the cry of a needy child, the promise of gold, the desire for fame, etc, etc.
I am still brainstorming as you can see.
I think that that is pretty much along the lines of what dad has been pushing for. And I think that it can work very well...I have also noticed that i have an old digitized supplement called "Cult of the Dragon" this may lend insight into this issue...I'll try to find time to dig into it this weekend.
I'm gonna cut and paste one of my posts on dragons from the Mod Builders thread to here...it applies...some of you have read it...i'm doing this of record keeping purposes though. This was a response to one of Pop's posts about how maybe there can be only one Dragon.
I like the whole grafting of the Highlander plot on to the dragons thing. But I suggest we not intefere to much with the current games rules on the nature of dragons. There are quite of few dragons and about 10 different types. They can live to be gargantuan in size and super ancient in age. Many of them are very powerful magically and can take human form. Since they are magical, if and when they mate with the lower races such as man, elf or orc they can produce hybrid offspring. If a dragon is chromatic (colored) then it is likely that it is evil. If on, the other hand, it appears metallic then it is most likely good in alignment. Black, green, white, red and blue...are the evil ones. Brass, copper, bronze, gold and silver are the good ones. And unless I am mistaken the Silver dragons are considered to be the most powerful. That is the basics of D&D dragons...this game is based largely on D&D. Each of the different types have specific climates and geographic circumstances that they each prefer and each type is said to have generalized personality types...one type may be know as tricksters while another may like to take human form and join up with armies and fight in the great wars of the mortals. Most importantly though is that all dragons are covetous and horde treasure though each type has its treasure preferences. They like to sleep on their hordes and the really old dragons will have gems and coins encrusted on their bellies from laying for months on end on their treasure...just staring at it. They are so very covetous that they are loath to leave their hordes to gather food for fear it will be robbed while they are out.
i prefer to stick to the rules so that down the road we do not encounter any serious inconsistiencies that we won't be able to surmount.
I know....we don't know anything...its the mystery....but now i know. The dragon is amoung us! He is in mortal form! yeah yeah that is why he likes us...he is a strategy and war buff...he just wants to command armies and lead head long charges into the enemy lines...this is the reason...I knew I would figure it out! He must have spent ages putting this together...the patience.
cteague3 said...
Well, I was hoping we could come up with a subquest where you could go into a battle with the Wyrm Raiders. Yes, a massive slaughter. I'm thinking Braveheart battlefield. That should provide a little Uberfest to some of those Uberfighters. Hehe...
But yeah, I'm all about the storyline, myself. I like the themes, the plots, the settings, the conversations, etc.
2/2/2005 01:16:06 PM
Daniel Teague said...
Well, maybe my choice of words was bad...I like the slash and burn fests too...i mean really...who doesn't? But I'm talking about it needing to be apart of the story...An Utgarht horde or Orcish Horde is marching on the castle to try and destroy the Wyrm forever and so we have to summon all of the Blooded Ones from all across the land and sally forth to defeat the horde in a pitched battle...man that sounds cool. Yeah that would be great...no, what i'm talking about is those who kill everything and everyone in sight...merchants, npcs everything regardless of alignment, class, race or whatever...they just slay indiscriminatley. That is unacceptable.
Chip said:
Yeah, I like. But, I think the Wyrm needs to be antagonistic, not protagonistic. They have a neighbor that has a resource that attracts them, so they plan to invade and take over the neighboring land. The Wyrm attacks, simply because it is their way, their destiny. All lands that exist, do so for their eventual consumption.
IMHO, nobody in their right mind would "encroach" on the Wyrm, simply because of their reputation of conquering lands. Nobody wants to provoke them, not in the least.
Well...It is very important to understand that the Forgotten realms already has several thousand years of history. Each time a new edition of the D&D was released they advanced forward in time....sometimes this was thousands of years...sometimes less. With each advance they would end up writing a bunch a of history and telling a story of why this new edition's moment in history was important. One edition...I can't remember which one was marked by the sudden lack of the availablitly of 11 and 12 level spells (I may have my numbers wrong here). They explained this by having an extreamly powerful wizard develop a high level spell that allowed him to become the "god of magic" for several minutes. When he cast the spell he did not have the will power and intellect that the real god of magic had and lost control of the magical wheeve of reality. This is why the magic spells that made the cities of Netheril float ceased to funcion and let them fall to the earth...thus destroying the nation of Netheril. This transition is also marked by the god of magic's death and rebirth...when the wizard cast the spell the god was killed...and had to reincarnate itself...in the time it took for the god to do that and seize back control of the magical wheeve the cities fell and basically all magical devices ceased to work on the planet...it was like a societal melt down.
My point in all this is that i think that the Forgotten Realms or Fearun in particular is considered High Fantasy...not historical fantasy. I am up for playing a module that is based on history but I think we should keep them seperate.
Interrestingly enough; Conan the Barbarian was set in a geologic time period that predates our own...the world was very reminescient of Earth and exspecially Europe, Africa and the Meditrainian area. In a world like that Camelot could exist, Atlantis could and there could vikings and barabarians from Hiberia...there could be Mongols, Chinese showguns and Samuri...greek hoplites.
Ok I stop for now.
The extent of the lands of the Wyrm including Blood Moon Keep and all of the associated evil areas should be called:
The Wyrmark
Its perfect, simple, not too cheesy and it sounds possible...not to contribed.
Charlie said:
I suggest it should have two m's. But I'm not sure.
How can we find out how to construct that correctly?
----------------------
Chip said:
What about:
Wyrmrhine
Or, we could change it to something like River of Blood or just Blood
River:
Bloodrhine
Just throwing stuff out.
I also looked up the Finnish word for mountain. It is "vuori". Could we do something with that? The Finnish word for location is "paikka". And blood is "veri".
Paikkaveri
Vuorirhine
Verivuori
Wyrmvuori
Etc....
Well, the problem with that is that....ok, the Rhinelan was the Rhinelan becasue the River Rhine ran through it...so...Wyrmrhine really doesns't mean anything...and it just isn't as smappy as Wyrmark. It also sounds kinda weird...what does it mean in greek or latin...Rhine...nose isn't it?...Of course Rhineland is German...so who knows what Rhine means...as far as i know its just a river...Dad?
I don't know about the m's. Wyrmmark...I think i prefer the single m...just an aesthetics thing with me I guess.
I think I agree with Dad, though. I believe Wyrmmark works better. :-)
I was kind of thinking about Rhine for river, because of the snaking. You know, for the tie-in to the dragon. Wyrmrhine. Dragon that snakes like a river. Get it, eh?
But, Wyrmmark sounds good to me.
Post a Comment