AD&D2E/Five Leagues - Chapter 2 Cont’d – Upriver to Sites Unknown - Y1, M4, D9 -> D12
Chapter 2 Cont’d – Upriver to Sites Unknown - Y1, M4, D9 -> D12
What did I forget last time?
As is becoming tradition for these, there’s a few things I
forgot to wrap up from the last chapter – namely looting the upstairs of the
warehouse and a few of the incidental rooms on the second level like the kitchens.
In the kitchens we’ll say the party found enough food to
make 2 ration sets (each ration set is worth enough food for 1 person, for 1
week). Those will get shoved in Borden the mule’s saddlebags for now.
Upstairs in the warehouse office was a locked desk and chest
– although given we didn’t focus on those at the time with the rush to try and
stop the auction, we’ll say the city guard took possession of those and
whatever was in them.
Two weeks of rations is nothing to sniff at though – they can
be quite pricey and we’ll certainly need more of them for travel.
Keeping Track of Costs – Days in the City
We’ve also spent a couple of days in the city – 1 day to
generate the contract, meet the locals, follow up on news, etc. and another
where we played out the contract – staking out the warehouse, freeing the
prisoners, reporting to the guard. We’ll need to subtract our lodging and meal
costs for the group – 11 gold pieces spent for keeping them all fed, in lodgings,
and the mule stabled.
What that tells us is that, even with our income from the
contract, we really need to get out into the wilds where (1) living off the
land could be free if we had a suitably trained character and (2) we’ll find
some adventure and hopefully treasure hoards to improve our standard of living.
Five Leagues Campaign Turns vs. My Timescale
“But you only have to pay upkeep once per campaign turn in Five
Leagues!” I hear you cry – since we’re running parts of the game, especially
the economy, using AD&D, we need to keep on top of daily costs and
expenditures.
The way I’m going to work it is this: each in-game week (turning
over on multiples of 7 thanks to our ‘easy maths’ calendar) is when we’ll roll the
various end of campaign turn tables (news travels, etc.). This keeps us in line
with 5L’s abstraction that a campaign turn represents about a week of activity.
That means a new campaign turn might begin on the road, it might begin in town,
it’ll all depend on what we’re doing at the time.
It does mean we’ll be able to potentially take more actions
than Five Leagues intends us to be able to in a turn. This should be
counterbalanced by any time we have to spend money on goods and services, that
money’s spent – same for figuring out rations and how long they’ll last from
the character sheets. We’ll be able to do a bit more than a regular Five
Leagues group, but we’ll also have more overheads and travel will be less
abstracted.
Travelling to Our Next Adventure
With 5 days of our week/campaign turn left, let’s think
about getting out of the city. Nearby there’s the unexplored location we
generated when we first set up the map. It feels like a sensible first option
to go and poke around here – it could be anything from a new dungeon, a raiding
camp, a new settlement, or even nothing at all.
We might also find new unexplored locations as we travel,
which will give us more options. The travelling and location tables are some of
my favourites in Five Leagues – they really make adventuring and going out to
explore the unknown fun. If we ever feel like we’re getting too many of the
same options, we could always expand them out too.
Working out our Travel
Before we buy the rations we’ll need for this journey, we
should figure out our travel rates to get there. Something I’ve not applied to
the campaign so far are AD&D’s overland travel rate modifiers. If I had, we’d
probably have reached Port Vantage much sooner.
Roads (marked on our map by the little red dotted lines) reduce the cost of moving through a hex by half, whilst different kinds of terrain will mostly reduce the party’s movement – some will speed them up however like moving through settled farmland.
Travel Time – On Foot
As a reminder, each of our hexes represents about 6 miles –
the default dividing unit for AD&D overland movement rates.
Tallying up the hexes we’ll need to travel through, our
journey is made up of:
- 2 hexes of settled farmland with a road (movement cost 1/2)
- 2 hexes of heavy forest (movement cost 4)
- A river (+1 to the cost of a hex’s movement, so one heavy forest counts as cost 5)
- Untravelled plains (movement cost 1)
- 1 hex of light forest (movement cost 2)
Our party’s movement rate, by the slowest member (we really
need to get the dwarf a pony!) is 12 miles (2 hexes) per day. We can cover the 2
hexes outside Port Vantage in a mere half-day thanks to the road and being
farmland.
The heavy forest hexes, with the river running between them,
is a different story altogether with each hex costing the equivalent of 24
miles of travel to navigate, plus a 6 mile equivalent for finding a crossing
point on the river: in other words, 4.5 days to get through the 2 hexes of
heavy woods and cross the river.
The open plain in the valley next to the light woods will
take us half a day (movement cost 1, to cover 6 miles), and finally getting
into the light woods will take us a full day.
Total travel time (one-way) for our journey: 6.5 days on
foot, 13 days for a round trip not including any adventuring on-site.
Not very appealing – we’d need to buy enough rations for 3
weeks (to give us some ‘float’) for 5 people – a significant cost for an
unknown reward.
Travel Time – by Boat
There’s another option though. The river that runs through
Port Vantage goes all the way up through the mountains, presumably through a
winding valley, and to the edge of the hex of light woods where our unexplored
location sits.
We’d be going upstream, which would limit the boat to about 12
miles (2 hexes) per day, but it’s a much more direct route.
The hard part is working out the costs for this – the DMG
for AD&D gives the cost of buying/building a rowing boat, but none for
hiring the use of one. We probably don’t want to drop 100 gold pieces, most of
our worldly wealth, on an adventure that might not be profitable, so buying one
outright is out of the question for now.
Let’s think about hiring one. I searched high and low
through the DMG, but no handy table of costs could I find. Turning to Google I
stumbled across this very helpful answer (adnd
2e - How much does passage on a ship or river boat cost? - Role-playing Games
Stack Exchange) which suggests that hiring a fishing boat (able to carry 5
crew) should cost 18 silver pieces (1.8gp) per 12 miles of travel, with a
fishing boat rowing about 12 miles per day. That feels about right since we’re
going upstream into a mountain valley. That cuts our journey time down too – to
a mere 3 days out, 3 days back.
With all the bends in the river as it snakes through the
mountains, we’re looking at about 6 hexes of travel (36 miles) for a mere 5.4
gold pieces outbound – call it 11 gold if we want a round trip and for the
fisherman to wait for us near the location. Not a bad cost, and cheaper than
the rations we’d need for all the overland travel without us having a handy Ranger
or Druid to forage for us.
We won’t be able to take the mule so if we stumble across a
tonne of treasure we might need to plan a return trip overland anyway in future,
or we could cut the fisherman in on a share to have him ship it back downstream
with us. We mustn’t forget to pay to keep the mule in stable whilst we’re away
from the city.
We’ll still need to buy enough rations for the party for a
full week on top of our boat hire costs, but it’s better than buying enough for
3 weeks (probably needing iron rations, which are more expensive).
By boat it is.
Paying for Our Journey
Setting the Scene
At mid-morning the river streets down to the wharfs of
Port Vantage were already packed. Everywhere commerce moved; barrels rolled, porters
and daytalers hauled carts of goods or urged on stubborn mules and donkeys. The
air smelled of a heavy mix of sea-salt, fish, and sweat in the spring sun, and
echoed with a chorus of market traders and seabirds backed by the general
hubbub.
Pushing through the crowds Roland made his way down to a
wharf, where a few fishermen sat by their boats. Some unloaded late catches,
others repaired nets or sails. He approached one of these, a weatherbeaten man
in his fifties or sixties, face masked by great white eyebrows and a bushy
beard.
“Hoy, fisherman, might I have a moment?”
“Ye talkin’ t’ me, sir knight?” The old fisherman eyed Roland
up and down suspiciously, continuing to weave his net with calloused hands.
“Yes, goodman.” He pointed to a boat bobbing in the slow
water. “Is the ‘Umberlee’s Favour’ yours?”
“She is, what ye wantin’ with her?”
“I, and my group, would like passage upriver, through the
mountain valley. And for you to wait for us until we return from exploring the
woods there.”
“If I can see yer gold, I’m good t’ make that trip. On
the condition that ye help row too.”
“We can pay, goodman.” And with that they set down to
haggling the price.
Tallying All the Costs
We’ve got quite a few things to pay for:
- 11 gold pieces – round trip in the Umberlee’s Favour for the whole group
- 22.5 gold pieces – rations for 1.5 weeks (11 days) for 5 people – adding a bit of float here in case the trip goes for longer
- 5.5 gold pieces – stabling for the mule for 11 days
- 0.8 gold pieces – 4 large sacks, in case we find treasure we want to carry away from the site
Total cost: 39.8 gold pieces
Let’s hope we find something from this site, with that kind
of upfront investment.
The Travel Roll
We’ve decided where we want to go and how we’re going to get
there – time to roll for travel.
It’s a D100 in the Five Leagues book – this time we get a
54: ‘See something in the distance’. We need to add an Unexplored Location
to our map somewhere along the route. Let’s say we spot it in the deep pine
woods that run down from the mountains to the sea as we round a bend in the
river.
We could ask the fisherman to stop the boat and explore this
now, but let’s keep our journey going to our original destination first. We can
stop at this location on the way back.
With the roll out of the way, we make it to our destination
unhindered.
Exploring the Woods – Y1, M4, D12
Day 12 of M4 dawns and the party has arrived on the shores
of the small wood nestled in the mountain valley.
Now we get one of the larger D100 tables in Five Leagues to
roll on – the Unexplored Locations table. This one has lots of options – many of
them very fun. We could find anything from plain old wilderness with nothing in
it to natural resources we could sell, to a monster lair or ruin.
We roll and get 73 – ‘Fey Woods’. We can investigate the
woodlands by fighting a Site Battle against foes from the ‘Ice-heart
Court’ table in the book.
This is an interesting one to try and fit into our story.
Five Leagues fey tables are more on the sinister and Nordic end of the fantasy
spectrum, with goblins included as well as living trees or even fey soldiers
from the realm beyond.
Being honest, this one stumped me for a good afternoon as I
tried to come up with an AD&D idea that would fit with Five Leagues tables.
With Five Leagues being a wargame with RPG elements, and AD&D being an RPG with
combat, I suspect we’ll hit more of these crossed purposes as the campaign
develops.
I’m not sure I want this to be a combat encounter straight
away, so we’re going to use the prompt from Five Leagues about what this
location is but use it to drive something else through narrative.
Narrative: The Lonely Wood – The Dryad’s Grove
Janos the fisherman, whose name the party had learned
during the 3-day row upriver through the mountain valley, set the boat ashore under
the shadow of a tall willow as the sun was setting. The tree leaned out over
the water, fronds setting ripples scurrying as they drifted in the slow breeze.
“I shall leave ye here and use this willow as a marker
for where I might find ye again.”
Roland leapt overside, splashing up the sandy shore to the
low bank and peering into the wood before turning back to the boat: “We thank
you, Janos. We shall make camp for the night on the shore and meet you here in
two days.”
As the rest of the party followed, Brun struggling under
the weight of a backpack filled with rations, the fisherman nodded. As they
climbed from the boat, they noticed Janos watch the trees with suspicion,
fingers clenched about his oars.
“I shan’t come t’shore unless I see a signal from ye. If
ye’re here, tie a piece of white cloth up high in the willow. If I sees it, I’ll
come in – if I don’t, I’ll go back downriver with whate’er I’ve caught.”
They agreed to this, but the fisherman’s suspicion of the
woods unnerved them. Throughout their journey had been talkative – of the sea,
crews past, of sons gone to sea on larger boats, of features of the mountains
he had known since boyhood rowing upriver with his father to learn his
boatcraft before going to sea.
Argwyllem spoke before Janos could push off from the
bank. “What about these woods gives you fear?”
“Jus’ stories is all. A man on my father’s old boat crew,
he said he’d once seen an elfish woman walk the bank an’ watch him. I wish ye
luck.”
Before they could ask more questions, the fisherman
shoved at the bank with his oar and set the boat back into the current. He
worked downstream until the boat was a small speck on the sunset-fire water.
They watched him go until Garagrim the dwarf, soaked to
above the waist from his scramble ashore, let out a loud harrumph! and began
pushing into the underbrush, axe in hand.
“Well? Are you lot going to stand there watching that
boat until doomsday, or will you help me get a fire going.”
They followed, but Eleonora placed a hand on the dwarf’s
shoulder. “Do not cut at a living tree with your axe in these woods, Garagrim.
Take only deadfall for the fire – if there is a fey spirit protecting this
place it would be unwise to anger her.”
***
Their fire, made only from deadfall as the wizard had
said, had been small and the spring night almost a little too cold for comfort.
Waking early, stiff and damp from a ground mist that came halfway up the dwarf’s
beard, they cooked a breakfast of fired pork and bread on the embers.
With the slow spring sun dappling through the leaves,
they pushed further into the woods. With thick brush and ferns underfoot it was
slow going, but each time the dwarf made to strike some bothersome foliage away
with his axe he was stopped. The woods had a calm stillness to them that seemed
unnatural, as if they had been preserved in time and saw few mortal visitors.
(Time to see if the party spots something in these strange
woods - making a Wisdom check, Argyllwem rolls a 1 – a very good result in
AD&D where you want to roll under your stat value.)
It took until mid-morning before it felt like they had
started to make any true progress in their exploration of the wood. Each time
one of the party stayed Garagrim’s axe-arm from striking, the woods opened up a
little more, so gradually as not to be noticed. Where there had been thick
brambles or ferns so thick that each step was as hard as in heavy snow, soon a
path seemed to form. It drew them onwards, beckoning the group deeper.
Argwyllem lead the way, seeming to find the growing path
more easily than the others. Raising a hand to halt, he turned back, voice soft
with awe.
“I believe these woods have been judging us and are now
welcoming us.”
“Or taking us into a trap!” the dwarf interjected, pulling
balls of sticky weed from his clothing.
“I do not think so, master Hammercrag.” He paused to
gesture off to the left of the path to where two roe deer watched the group.
Once noticed they pranced away into the undergrowth. “This wood watches us and
our progress, and I think knows that are not here with evil intent.”
(Rolling a Spellcraft check for Eleonora, we get another
nice low roll – she passes.)
Eleonora raised a hand, scribing it through the air. The
others watched, curious of the magic until she spoke with a hushed voice: “There
is old magic in this wood. Wherever this path is leading us, we should assume
it is taking us there with a purpose.”
They continued, following the forming path for perhaps
another mile before the woodland opened out into an enchanted clearing. At its
centre stood an ancient, mighty oak. Its branches shaded two small cherry
blossom trees in full flower flanking a pond fed by a bubbling brook. The brook
began somewhere between the oak’s roots and trickled with a chime that filled
the air with a soft music. The pond was surrounded by flowering bushes and
thick reeds and brush fed by the nourishing water. At the base of other trees
in the clearing small mushrooms poked through thick grasses.
The strangest sight of all was the small floating rock
that hovered before the pond at the end of the path. It was four or five feet
tall and hovering a foot from the loamy ground was at high level for all of
them except the dwarf. Atop the floating rock verdant moss formed a miniature
landscape dotted with small trees – scarlet leaves mingled with miniature
blossom trees.
A feeling of tranquillity came over them all as they
walked further into the glade. The place felt very ancient and rich with wild
magic. It was clearly maintained, frozen in time by whatever power held sway
here. Even the cantankerous dwarf stood in awe, his axe returning to his belt
unconsciously. As the axe slipped into its belt ring, the music of the brook
fell in volume with the last of the wood’s unease banished.
“What a curious place,” breathed Roland, staring all
about him. “I have never seen anything like this.”
The great oak creaked at that moment and from the bark at
its base a figure appeared, stepping from the shade and becoming clearly
visible. When the figure stepped into the light, a collective gasp emerged from
the whole group. They were a woman, of elfin form and height but with a deep
green skin and hair that perfectly matched the mossy bark and rich leaves of
the oak tree. Leaves and flowering plants covered her whole body, apart from
her arms, legs, and face – together they formed a long flowing gown that gave a
soft swishing noise like a tree canopy in a breeze.
Eleonora’s voice broke the stunned silence, soft and full
of wonder, “A dryad!”
The dryad spoke next, in a tone filled with command and
no little curiosity. As she spoke, each tree in the grove rustled, accentuating
the words until what was voice and what was nature could not be told apart.
“Sen yn nae salen Ar Shanta?”
As one the group looked to Eleonora who mouthed the words
back to herself for a moment before making her reply – “Sar alet aul adon, nae
ursplin bren or. Tel'or iquare al ya nesh feer nae quor.”
The others looked baffled as the dryad gave a shallow curtsy
that Eleonora returned a moment later. She turned to them then to explain.
“She is speaking elvish – I know a little of it from my
studies. I have said we came in peace to study these woods and that the wood
made a path for us to this glade.”
The conversation continued for a little while, back and
forth – the rustling of the trees and bubbling of the water followed by the wizard’s
halting elvish. The others sat on the soft grass of the glade, watching in awe.
The deer who had watched them earlier came to the grove partway through the
conversation and drank from the pool, unafraid of the people in their midst at
a word from the dryad.
An hour passed until the grove fell silent and the dryad
retreated to the great oak tree to meld once again with its bark. Eleonora returned
to sit with the group, her wonderment still clear to see.
“The dryad asks for our help. There are mountains to the
north that form one of the walls of this valley. Until recently they were
empty, but with the coming of the barbarians from the north a band of orcs has
migrated there.”
“Orcs, you say? Hah! And she wants us to cut ‘em down t’
size?” It was the dwarf’s turn to look ecstatic now. He, and all his race, held
a deep hatred for orcs who would invade their mountain homes.
“Yes, Garagrim, or something like that anyway. They
threaten her wood which has stood here for millennia, untouched even in the
days of the Pashanti.”
Roland had listened in silence up to now, resting his
chin on his hands. At last, he spoke, “Does the dryad know how many orcs we
might find?”
“She could not say but suspects it may be a whole tribe
that has migrated into the valley.”
“A whole tribe is a mighty task to attempt. Still, we
should, nay, we must, attempt it. This dryad, I sense, is a creature of good
and has dealt with us fairly.” The paladin nodded and clambered to his feet.
As the others scrambled up from the soft grass, the trees
and underbrush at the north edge of the glade parted slowly, creating a new
path for them to follow out of the woods. Their way was set – north, to the newly
infested mountains, to cleanse the threat to this peaceful valley.
Planning out the Adventure
The idea for this adventure formed over a few days of
pondering how to deal with the ‘fey woods’ problem whilst still giving a good
reason to get figures on the virtual table. A tribe of orcs really will be a
difficult prospect for the party but could be a very rewarding one.
We’ll need to approach this one cleverly, as there could be
quite a few – potentially with some more powerful leaders and even spellcasters.
Before we get to that though we need to create that tribe of
orcs, give them a place in the world and backstory, and know how many of them are
there.
Why is the tribe here?
I’ve very crudely annotated the part of the map we’re
finding the orcs in. The party is represented by the small blue arrow, orc
migration paths by the green arrows, and the barbarian invasion marked by the
red arrows, with the extent of their advance at the red line.
The barbarian tribes have come down from the north in the
spring, looking to plunder or perhaps even conquer the lands of the Vantage
Coast. In their way are the Bloodridge Mountains, populated by scattered tribes
and communities of orcs (and other creatures no doubt).
With a large orc population displaced, the different tribes have
taken different migration routes under pressure of the invasion. Some groups
have gone south-east, perhaps including the goblins we fought in the starter
scenario.
Others have gone west and north-west following the mountain
valleys. The tribes that have gone directly southwards are the most fragmented,
likely made up of younger communities and less-proven warriors. Some small
groups have broken off westwards into the pine forest. The tribe of concern to
the dryad has found a mountain pass into her secluded valley. This would give
them protection both from the other groups of orcs and a place to hide and raid
the human lands to the south.
Building the Tribe
An orc tribe is a fearsome prospect, with the largest made
up of thousands of warriors.
That’d be a bit too much for us, so we’ll go with the ‘number
appearing’ from their statblock. The first thing we need to do is roll for how
many are in the tribe – the Monstrous Manual gives this as 3d10 x 10 (for a
minimum of 30, max of 300). We get 19, for 190 orcs. That’s a lot of greenskins
to deal with! We’ll treat that 190 as the total number of combatants in the tribe
and add another 63 (1/3rd of the combatants) on top as
non-combatants, representing the womenfolk and the young of the tribe who have joined
the migration.
This fits with the tribe being a younger or smaller
community, less proven amongst their kind, so they have a smaller support
network or many of their non-combatants were taken by other migrating tribes
through combat.
The Tribe’s Leadership and Organisation
For every 3 orc combatants, there is a leader with 3 assistants
who form the core of their small units. Each of these orc leaders and their
guards have 8 hit points (i.e. the full amount available for a 1 hit die
monster compared to the 5hp I will give a regular orc). These form ‘squads’ of
7 orcs that are the building block of the tribe’s organisation.
As we’ve rolled more than 150 orcs, they also have a
subchief who has their own cadre of guards (3d6) who fight as HD2 monsters with
some beefy stats (AC4, 11HP, +1 damage).
And, with more than 100 orcs, the tribe also has a shaman or
witch doctor with them. We’ll give them a shaman (this orc gets class levels,
up to 5th level! We’ll make them level 2 I think).
Additionally, in the tribe’s lair we will find the chief,
who has 5d6 (5-30) bodyguards who fight as 3HD creatures (AC4, 16hp, THAC017,
+2 damage).
Rolling our D6s, and with the handy help of Excel to make
sure everything adds up we get the following:
Except for when hunting for food (as they are carnivores
preferring game meat and livestock) it’s likely they will group at least 2 or 3
of their squads together under the leadership of the subchief or one of his
bodyguards for important raids. For smaller raids, the largest of the leaders
would command.
The Lair
Now that we know how big the tribe is, and how it’s
organised, we need to know what kind of lair they’ve built for themselves.
Orcs have a 75% chance of building their lair underground
and a 25% above ground. This tallies with them hating sunlight and being
primarily nocturnal per the monster manual. We roll our D100 and get 60 – the lair
is underground, somewhere in the mountains to the north of the dryad’s grove.
Since we have over 200 orcs total, this adds another
complication: a 50% chance that 1d4+1 ogres also live with the tribe. We roll a
58 – no ogres.
We don’t know where the lair is yet of course, but knowing what
it’s like will help us when or if we get there.
Something else we’re going to work out now is what treasure
the orcs have in their lair. Whilst we’ll know this and it’ll be useful to have
for record keeping, the party obviously won’t know until they get there.
We roll once on the C loot table, once on the O loot table,
once on the S table, and 10 times on the Q table, to give us:
|
Loot Table |
Result (GP
equivalent) |
|
C |
3984 cp – 79.68 lbs
(39.84 gp eq.) 3461 sp – 69.22 lbs (346.1
gp eq.) |
|
O |
26 cp – 0.52
lbs (0.26 gp eq.) 19 sp – 0.38
lbs (1.9 gp eq.) |
|
S |
Oil of Impact – 4 uses Potion of Gaseous Form Sweet Water |
|
Q x 10 |
an onyx (100
gp) an opal (1000
gp) an oriental
emerald (5000 gp) a jet (100
gp) an
alexandrite (100 gp) a
rhodochrosite (10 gp) a blue quartz
(10 gp) an aquamarine
(500 gp) an amethyst
(100 gp) a garnet (500
gp) a star rose
quartz (50 gp) a jade (100
gp) an oriental
amethyst (1000 gp) a black opal
(1000 gp) a blue quartz
(10 gp) a sardonyx
(50 gp) a garnet (500
gp) a malachite
(9 gp) a peridot
(500 gp) a peridot
(500 gp) an obsidian
(10 gp) a banded
agate (10 gp) |
We got a very bad roll on the C table, only getting money. I’ve
given the coin weights (50 coins per lb) as it’ll be important when or if we
try and carry any of this away with us. However, there are a LOT of very
valuable gems these orcs have managed to collect – no doubt from robbing
travellers over the years. The potions have likely been taken from travellers
too – or perhaps made by the shaman. Whenever we map out the lair in future, we’ll
need to make a note of where these treasures are kept.
For anybody interested in how I rolled these you can do it
manually using tables in the DMG, but I’ve been making heavy use of: Treasure Generator ― Perchance.
This is a great website if you need to generate treasures quickly.
Tribe Religion
As the tribe has a shaman, they will have some kind of
temple or shrine built as part of their lair. We should see which of the six
main orc deities the tribe venerates above all (using the Forgotten Realms orc
pantheon).
On a d6, we roll a 4 – the tribe venerates Ilneval,
the patron of orc captains and known to his followers as The War Master.
Clearly, he hasn’t smiled on this tribe for some time with their reduced
numbers and forced migration at the hands of the barbarians.
(Image sourced from
the Forgotten Realms wiki page for Ilneval – if anybody knows the original book
source, please do share and I’ll update here).
Perhaps the tribe hopes to use the rivers to raid down
towards Port Vantage to reforge the favour of their god?
The Name of the Tribe:
Now that we’ve got all of that together, what should the
tribe be called? The Monstrous Manual gives some good examples (p.282 in my PDF
copy) – “Vile Rune, Bloody Head, Broken Bone” etc.
We’ll follow along that style and name this tribe… the
Splintered Axe tribe.
With that name, I whipped up a quick banner for them using
Inkarnate:
Giving Personality to the Tribe’s Leadership
This is one of the areas where I wish I could do character
art – sadly it’s just not a skillset I have, and I am absolutely not going to
use generative AI as part of this project.
We’ve got 3 key orcs to flesh out: the chief, the subchief,
and the shaman.
The Chief – Grommash Splintered Axe
Our chief is easy enough to name – let’s have a typical orc
name: Grommash. His surname will be that of the tribe he rules. As the
chief, he spends less time raiding than he would like, being too preoccupied
with seeing his homeless tribe on their long migration and to their new home.
He is a skilled miner as well as a warrior and has been
supervising the digging of their new home into the hard rock. He is religious
but holds no special love for Ilneval – he prefers Gruumsh, the lord of the orcish
pantheon. He has learned that it is better for orcs to cooperate against
greater threats, but his tribe’s small size has never allowed him to forge the
alliances needed to defend their homes against the barbarians.
Orcs live to about 40 according to the monster manual – it’s
safe to assume Grommash is old for his kind, but with the strength to avoid a
takeover by any rivals for now – let’s put him at… 35 years old.
As the leader we’ll make him tall for an orc – 6 feet (180cm
for you metric folks), with his body and face covered in scars, both ritual and
from war.
He’ll wield a greataxe as his weapon and wears Splint Mail
armour (AC4).
The Subchief – Bargak Splintered Axe
Our subchief is easy enough too – he’ll be Grommash’s son.
Let’s name him… Bargak.
Bargak is perhaps impatient, even for an orc, and ambitious
too. He covets his father’s throne and thinks that if he had held the position
sooner they would have been able to defeat the barbarians who drove them from
their home. He is very religious and has been taken in by the words of the
shaman, who extols the virtues and strength of Ilneval. He holds this against
his father too.
As subchief he acts as war leader for raiding parties and
until they were forced to flee from the barbarians was successful in this.
He is 16 years old.
He prefers to dual-wield, using a broadsword and flail, and
wears Splint Mail armour.
The Shaman – Vorgak Darkwhisper
Our shaman is the oddest of the bunch. We’ll name him… Vorgak
Darkwhisper.
Vorgak is a contradiction of ideas: a unifying force in the
tribe, but at odds with his chief over their conflicts of faith; a strong
shaman and venerated, but unable to bring forth his savage god’s favour to
drive the barbarians from their ancestral grounds.
He finds his position in the tribe a frustration – truly,
Vorgak believes he is the one to lead the Splintered Axe to a new age of glory
and conquest. He sees an opportunity to shape the direction of the tribe
through Bargak. If he can manipulate the subchief into opposing his father,
Vorgak hopes he can wield power through him.
He holds 2 levels in the Shaman character class and will
fight as a 2HD+1d4 monster in combat. His powers as a shaman allow him to cast
a limited selection of Priest spells and he can also summon an ancestor spirit
to aid him and his tribe in battle.
In battle he wields his staff, and wears Hide Armour (AC6).
Splintered Axe Tribe Factsheet:
Name: Splintered Axe
Total Number of orcs: 253
Combatants: 190
Non-Combatants: 63
Lair: Underground
Lead by: Grommash Splintered Axe, Chief
Worships: Ilneval, The War Master
Our tribe is complete!
Final Thoughts
That was another long one, but very satisfying to write. We
had a lot more focus on world building and narrative for this post rather than gameplay,
but I think it will add a lot of value for us in the future.
We’ve cracked a few bits of key info for the campaign – the
barbarian line of advance, side effects of the invasion, an ancient location
protected by a dryad, and a new direction for potentially weeks of adventure.
With an opponent as fleshed out as our Splintered Axe tribe
is, we should be able to have a lot of fun coming up with plans to disrupt the
tribe and to try and force them back out of the valley and into migration once
more. Next time we’ll begin following the party’s journey into the mountains
and work out their first encounters against the orcs.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. As always any feedback
is welcome and I hope you’ll come back to read the next stage of our adventure
as the party moves to the mountains and engages with the tribe.
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