The Silver Sun — Synopsis and Thoughts May 10, 2007
Posted by chorenn in World-Building.add a comment
As I noted before, elements of this campaign were drawn from The Silver Sun, a fantasy novel by Nancy Springer, and thus, I feel it is important to write and comment about the book.
The Silver Sun is the second novel in a series of five books called The Books of Isle, which are about the rulers of the kingdom of Isle. Isle itself is an island continent; at the time of The Silver Sun, its cities and regions are ruled by different lords under a single king, King Iscovar. Individual lords rule their domains as they see fit (most of them oppressing their people and waging wars with neighbors in attempts to gain more land), and King Iscovar kept firm control over the lords. He cared mostly that his power over the land never weakened, and cared not which lord ruled what area or waged war when, as long as they all bowed to him. His family line was also well known for cruelty, and for worshipping the Sacred Son, a god of tyranny who demanded human sacrifice and suffering. His elite soldiers were known as Kingsmen, and they were quick to appear when they detected any dissent (or rumor of dissent), squashing it violently.
Before Iscovar’s reign, there had been two kingdoms on Isle — the country of Welas had never fallen to the kings of Isle. However, when Iscovar ascended to the throne, he had attacked Welas successfully, and when Welas sued for peace, he demanded that the king of Welas’ daughter wed him, for he knew that their future heir would be the heir to both Isle and Welas, cementing Welas as part of the kingdom of Isle. Since the alternative was wholesale slaughter of her people, she agreed.
The two main characters of the book are Hal and Alan. They first started traveling together when Hal came upon Alan in the forest being beaten by the local lord’s soldiers; Hal rescued him and Alan, having been robbed of all that he owned, had no other choice but to depend on Hal for a time. Alan was the son of the lord of the city of Laueroc, a benevolent ruler, but, when his father had been taken by King Iscovar’s forces and the lordship replaced by a puppet lord, Alan had been forced to flee.
After some adventure, during which the two grew close, Alan becomes irritated that Hal repeatedly got Alan into mortal danger but Alan never knew why. Hal finally realizes this and explains everything to Alan: He is Hervoyel, the son of Iscovar and heir to throne of Isle. He completely disagrees with his father’s methods of ruling and legacy, and refused to swear fealty to him, and thus has fled. His aim now is to gather allies and strengthen himself, for his father is sick and dying, and he knows that many of the lords will try to take the throne by force. His father knows that it’s only a matter of time before the lords realize that the crown prince is gone and the king has no control over his heir , and thus King Iscovar is searching for him.
Hal also tells Alan that he had been tortured by his father (in the hopes that he would break and swear fealty), and when that didn’t work, his father had him watch someone be tortured slowly to death — that person was Alan’s father. Alan realizes that the prince, who he had always imagined was a monster like his father, is actually his great friend, and rather than blaming Hal, tells him that he wishes they were brothers. They then perform a ritual of blood-brotherhood.
Much of the rest of the book describes their trials as they travel the land to gain allies, and then Hal’s return to the capital to claim the throne, then defeat the armies of the lords who have come to seize power. Along the way, they encounter many prophecies about their task — two men, one in silver and black (Hal) and the other in gold and green (Alan) championing the peasants and bringing peace to the land. Hal eventually ascends the throne as King Hal (discarding his given name) and asks Alan to ascend also, so they would rule side-by-side. Each man, on their own, had discovered that in truth, they were half-brothers — Hal’s mother had an affair with Alan’s father, and Iscovar had actually been impotent — so Alan’s claim to the throne was as valid (Hal wasn’t actually a blood heir, after all, and as a folk hero, Alan is just as popular as Hal), and the prophecies surrounding Hal stated that he would have no heirs, so Alan would be establishing the royal line. Thus, they become the Sun Kings, Hal in silver and Alan in gold, ushering in a new age of peace to Isle.
The thing that appealed to me about the plot of this book was the whole destiny thing, as well as the prince working from outside the castle to seal his throne. There was a lot in the book that couldn’t be done well in a D&D campaign, so I chose what I wanted very carefully.
1. The land in my campaign is, like Isle, an island continent, with no communication with any countries beyond its shore. The people of Chorenn don’t even know if there are other people in the world (more on this later).
2. Like Iscovar, the king of the land, Harold, had to deal with one rogue nation on the continent, Valuria, and, after waging war on it, demanded the hand of the princess of Valuria to ensure that his son would succeed to both thrones.
3. King Harold has only one heir. It didn’t make sense to me that Iscovar would allow his heir so much freedom of thought for so long, so Harold had two sons. He groomed the first son, Thomas, to be like himself, but, confident that Thomas would make an excellent heir, paid little attention to his second son, Johnathan. Thus, Johnathan was raised by his mother and taught benevolence and an appreciation for culture and civilization. Thomas died in a freak accident, and when Johnathan saw what his father did to the person he felt was at fault for it, he fled the castle to regroup and find his own allies.
4. Johnathan is one of the player characters. I worked with Nathan (who I mentioned in a previous post) to create this character, who must keep his identity secret, for fear of being turned in or turned into a political pawn, until he finds people he can trust.
5. I copied a few of the lords that appeared in the book, including the lord whose daughter Hal eventually marries. It’s a bit unfortunate, but Nathan has chosen that girl to court, before I had a chance to introduce his character to other likely candidates.
6. King Harold also has a legion of Kingsmen, but they are more spies and assassins. The Obsidian Guard are secret spies and have their own secret language, and they live among everyone else, incognito. They report all dissent to the king, as well as other plots and interesting news, and people know that if they speak even a little badly of the king, they are likely to disappear on the morn.
7. One thing that I didn’t mention in the synopsis that I used was the religious system. The world that Isle is on was created by a single being, called Aene (“The One”), who is not worshipped, and actually, is not even known, except by Hal who had a mystical revelation. The individual gods that people worship are only facets of Aene. My world has the same system, though the being has no name. In addition, there are a myriad of gods — big pantheon gods, city gods, regional gods, ancestral gods, familial gods, god of that rock over there, etc. I wanted the players to have a feel for what it was like, way back when, before Christianity, when every person had his own spiritual outlook.
Those are the big things to mention. I’ll edit this if I can think of other relevant pieces from The Silver Sun.
Introduction and purpose May 2, 2007
Posted by chorenn in Personal Comments.add a comment
A little over a year ago, I began a Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 campaign, with five players that worked at the same company I do. Previous campaigns that I had either played in or GMed myself were pretty stock — a party of people running around, slaying monsters, rescuing damsels, discovering artifacts, and raking in phat loot — so I wanted to create a more coherent world, one where things happen that aren’t necessarily relevant to the player characters, where things might completely fall apart and the player characters are helpless, but especially one where they might actually come out of nowhere and save the day. I especially wanted the players to feel that they were actualy playing people rather than characters: people who might be adventuring right now, but have families and friends, histories, and personal goals that might conflict with what the party wants.
That was the main goal. It’s a year later now, and the world and the game has grown to be more than I had ever dreamed of when I first started. I am creating this journal to record as much of this campaign as I can — not only the world that I created, but the things that the players have done, ideas I have for future game sessions, and underlying plotlines that the players may never uncover.
The goal of this journal is not only to share this with anyone interested, but also to hopefully encourage interested people to post feedback, ideas, and suggestions for the things that I am doing. I find that bouncing ideas off my friend Bob (who wasn’t able to commit to playing in this campaign) often results in him suggesting bigger, better things, and I thought that maybe more exposure and feedback could help even more.
I heartily thank anyone and everyone who takes the time to read any of this journal, and I hope that you enjoy it enough to return.
Motivation May 3, 2007
Posted by chorenn in Personal Comments.add a comment
The world and thrust for this campaign was born from many different sources. The first and foremost was my own disappointment with the emphasis on hack’n’slash in most D&D campaigns. D&D is honestly a strategic game; most of the rules are intended to adjudicate exactly what a character can and can’t do in a situation. Role-play, while present, is very secondary. While I do love strategy and combat, I felt that most campaigns only touched on roleplay and plot and character development.
Another thing that I wanted to bring to the game was the feeling that there actually was a world out there, one that went about its business no matter what the player characters were doing. While the story should center on the player characters, I wanted the players to see that other things happen in the world that they do not influence and, in many cases, they could not even hope to influence, and yet still affect them in various ways. As a corollary to this, I also wanted the characters to have their own goals, based on their backgrounds and personalities, and for the players to want to work with the group to accomplish both the personal goals and group goals (or, fight against the group if necessary). I didn’t want characters that emerged from a vacuum to form the perfect adventuring group.
I also wanted to explore other game mechanics that I have not previously had a chance to use. For example, at some point in this campaign, there will be warfare on the scale of armies. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to use D&D warfare rules, bring in a new system, such as Warhammer, or let the battle be decided off-camera, possibly influenced by the activities of the player characters.
The last thing I wanted to do was base the campaign on one of my favorite books, The Silver Sun, by Nancy Springer. There are a number of scenes and plot devices in that book that are very fun, though I couldn’t use them verbatim because my husband, Robert (who is one of the players), has read the book and would recognize it (or at least, I thought so, though very recently, he mentioned the book and noted that he doesn’t remember the first thing from it).
One lesser consideration was that I wanted specifically to challenge the roleplay skills of one of my players, Nathan. He is a D&D enthusiast, and is the type of person who loves roleplay and will create a less-than-optimal character in favor of creating a character that exemplifies the person’s history, skills, and personality. Unfortunately, the games he’s been in have been light roleplay, and, with my husband creating optimized battle-machine characters, Nathan’s been very overshadowed.
These have been the motivations behind the creation of the world and campaign. I’ll discuss how I addressed them in an upcoming post.