The Search for the Loneliest Abbey

 We skip forward a few episodes now, since I couldn't be arsed keeping up to date.

The team have been given a task by the wizard BAN, the father of Princess Priscilla, who they rescued from the goblin-knight Arzxzkil in a previous episode.

The task is straightforward, on the face of it. They are to take a silk cloth, on which is painted a complex mandala, to the Loneliest Abbey, up in amongst the highest mountains.  Once there, they are to spread the cloth, and place in the centre of the mandala a silver model of a door, through which Ban can pass. Essentially, the team has to do all the hard work of getting there, so that Ban can just step through.

They've travelled through the forest by one of the Forest Roads, then struck off the path towards the mountains, and now have started climbing the mountains. After a time of climbing, they came upon an ancient road carved into the mountain, which they followed up through pines and firs and eventually up above the tree-line into the snow and fog. The road way was, at one time, a major work of engineering, with worked stone kerbs and regular carved marker posts in the form of stylised human(oid) figures

An eery occurrence: while encamped, they began seeing  a mysterious apparition, or possibly more than one, hanging in the air a short distance from where they were camped. It (or they) did not respond to any conversation, and didn't appear to be doing anything other than watch them. It (or they) appeared for just a few minutes at a time, and then faded away again, and they only ever saw it at night.

At the end of their third day of climbing the mountain road, they spied the glow of lamps or fires up ahead, though the mists reduced visibility such that they could make out no detail.

They started to hear occasional small falls of gravel from above them, running down the mountainside on to the road. They could see or hear nothing else in the gathering dark and fog.

Another disturbing occurrence:  they came upon a group of stone statues clustered against the mountain-ward side of the road, all remarkably detailed, and all naked.

Not long afterwards, they found another statue, this time of a deer, lying in the middle of the road, its skinny little legs and antlers broken off.

By the time it was fully night, they arrived at the source of the lights.

They first set up what they hoped might be a defensible camp, and then set about investigating their surroundings.

The figures on the steps they found, once again, to be of stone. But this time they were fully clothed and equipped with sturdy, and most importantly thick and warm cloaks, which Our Heroes immediately requisitioned. They fossicked through the rest of the unfortunates' belongings, but found nothing worth nicking, and nothing to indicate who they were or where they were going. Most importantly, they didn't find any convenient maps with "This Way To Ye Loneliest Abbeye" written on them. Oh well.

Cajetan cast his Wyvern Watch spell over their camp site, which proved to be a literal life-saver, since when the inevitable attack by the BASILISK occurred, and it failed its save, it gave them a few rounds in which to kill it before it could respond. 

The Basilisk

 The only casualty was, alas, Cajetan himself, who incautiously met the gaze of the beast and was immediately petrified.

They bundled the immobile (and now very heavy) form of Cajetan on to the travois they'd been using to haul firewood, and dragged him on up the steps.

As she passed under the arch, Ali appeared to fade away into the fog. Unfazed (relatively unfazed, anyway) Tirana followed after her, as did Olaf and Oliver (both being semi-inert NPCs at this time).

They all burst out into dazzling daylight, looking across a snowy defile towards an ancient and ruinous mountain fortress. Cajetan immediately sat up, showering tiny flakes of stone everywhere.

 

The Importance of Hospitality

 

Following the goblin-dude's directions, Our Heroes made their way to Castle Arsxzkil, which turned out to be not so much a castle, in the classic sense, as a tall, skinny, structurally wonky tower with a cluster of buildings and shacks built up against its base. It was surrounded by a fairly disgusting moat, choked with weed and scum and filth. There was no curtain wall as such, just the backsides of the various outbuildings, but there was a drawbridge, currently raised up.

They halloo'd from the outer bank of the moat, and a little window popped open above the drawbridge. A voice called out, demanding their business at Castle Arzxzkil.

They stated that they had come seeking the hospitality of the lord of the castle, and the voice said "Alright, alright, hold on a minute", and shortly thereafter the drawbridge began to squeak and creak and rattle its way down, revealing an open gateway and a curious elongated creature like a human-sized earthworm with arms and legs working away at a crank-wheel.

Wormy Brian the Factotum

"Come on then" it said, and headed off into the jumble of outbuildings, leaving the team to follow along as they might.

It led them through a labyrinth of passages, alleys, through and under stone-built shacks, into a largish barn-like space, at the end of which sat a fairly huge toad-like humanoid, dressed in rather fine armour. "Supplicants for your hospitality,  O Lord Arsxzkil" said the worm-guy.

"Bah!" exclaimed Arsxzkil, "more parasites come to take advantage of my enforced generosity! Is there no end to them? Come on then. I suppose you'll want me to feed you too!" 

 "Yes please," said Olaf, "and also, will you show us about your very fine tower?"

"Why do you want to see around my tower? What business is that of yours?" demanded Arsxzkil.

"Merely as a matter of hospitality" said Olaf.

Arsxzkil's face swelled visibly. "Bah! All right then! follow me, and keep up!" and he turned about abruptly and headed off, his great armoured feet splatting and clattering against the flagstones.

---

A quick summary of later events:

---

• Arsxzkil grudgingly took everybody up the tower, where they met Princess Priscilla. 
• Ali committed  a social faux pas by insulting their host and was taken away willy-nilly by Arsxzkil, stripped, hung up in a cell, and given a preliminary thrashing with a besom of thorns
•  Everyone was conducted by Brian to their sleeping chambers. He locked them in.
• Ti tried to break out, but found the door too sturdy for her. So she climbed up and hacked her way through the thatch. It turned out that destroying her host's property comprised an offence against the laws of hospitality, so when Arsxzkil found her she too was stripped, hung up and thrashed.
• Cajetan got up before dawn and somehow got Brian to let him out and take him to where the chickens were kept. He cut poor Brian in half with his axe (both halves scuttled away) and then cast a Silence spell on the rooster so that Arsxzkil couldn't hear it crow.
• He went and collected Olaf, and the two of them searched for and found their unfortunate comrades.
• While they were trying to break into the cell, the cock crowed (silently), releasing Arsxzkil from his obligations, and bellowing with rage, he rushed down in his brocade dressing-gown, sword in hand, to kill everyone not already manacled to a wall.
• A fight ensued, during which Ti and Ali managed to break free of their bonds (now no longer being rendered helpless), and Arsxzkil was eventually killed.
• Princess Priscilla was rescued from her imprisonment, and after sweeping aside masses of bon-bon wrappers and cake crumbs, retrieved her Go-Bag from under the bed.
• The looting of Castle Arsxzkil commenced. 

Fairytale Chic

Much has happened since last I girded my loins to write about the campaign.

The team delivered a piglet from a witch to a knight in his hilltop castle — the knight became furious with them, assuming them to be in league with the witch, and the piglet was his young son transformed.

He threw them into prison, but eventually calmed down and admitted that they might have been innocent pawns in the whole affair. His lady, however, did not forgive, and it was very obvious that if she could have had them flayed alive, she would do so without a second thought. 

Our Heroes offered to clear out an infestation of Creepers from the subterranean tunnels below the castle, to make amends for their inadvertent insult. 

That mission did not go at all well. In fact, it was something of a fiasco.

They stayed for a few days longer, but there were hints that they had imposed on his lordship's hospitality for long enough, and the lady's poisonous glares and hissing obloquy were becoming socially awkward. 

While out and about, one of them (I forget which) was slapped in the face by a large wind-blown leaf, on which was written a message: the wizard BAN, presently located at Four Corners in the Great Forest, was seeking a group of brave adventurers for a perilous and profitable mission. 

Seeking information from the chamberlain, they learned that Four Corners is the intersection of the two Forest Roads, and the site of the annual Goblin Fair. The team decided to give it a go, rather than wait around for her ladyship to have them all horribly assassinated.

They set off the next day, with the moderately good wishes of all (except, of course, the Lady, who still wished them all to die in some sort of horrible, protracted and painful manner), and following the chamberlain's directions soon enough found themselves on the east-bound Forest Road. They were told that by simply following the road, they would reach Four Corners in just three or four days easy walking.

 The following day, in a clearing, they found a great stone head with the road forking around it, left and right.

As they approached, the head spoke:

"Choose your path — go to the left, and pass in peace and safety. Go to the right and find both peril and profit. Choose your path, and abide by it." 

After not very much discussion, they elected the Path of Peril, since (a) they were, after all, adventurers, and (b) PROFIT!

They made their way past the stone head, which uttered not another word, and as the trees closed in again around the road they looked back and saw nothing but a rock jutting out of the grass beside the trail, which looked, if you squinted and imagined hard, very vaguely head-shaped.

They went on.

The trees became closer and less appealing, and the forest seemed darker and more unfriendly. The trail became boggy and dank.

A midnight encounter with a ghostly rider pounding down the road, and a shambling mass of rags coming from the opposite direction, both ruined the rest of the night and left Olaf with some sort of horrible fungal respiratory infection. 

 The next day, late in the afternoon, they came upon a small goblin-like creature that was poking and jiggling with a long stick at the corpse of a hanged man, dangling from a gibbet by the side of the trail.

It was clearly startled by their approach, but not unduly hostile or fearful after the initial surprise, and they asked it what it was doing.

It was a bit difficult to make out its reply, as it lisped and drooled a great deal, but eventually it made its purpose known: it had the right, once the corpse had fallen, to take its teeth for his own purposes, and it was just checking to see how much longer he would be likely to have to wait.

Cajetan kindly took upon himself the initiative to cut the corpse down so that the creature wouldn't have to wait any longer, and it immediately descended on the cadaver and, by some means not immediately clear, transferred its teeth into his own mouth.

His speech immediately became much clearer, and in gratitude, he alerted Our Heroes of the existence of a Goblin Knight, ARSXZKIL, whose castle was just a little further down the road. Arsxzkil labours under a geas, by which he must grant hospitality to any traveller who asks it of him until the next cock-crow. The geas works in both directions however: any guest who offends against the laws of hospitality immediately becomes helpless against him, whereupon he whisks them off to a cell where he strips them bare and thrashes them about the naked breech until eventually they expire, whereupon he eats them. Also, he has prisoner in his tower a Beauteous Princess, PRISCILLA by name, of whom he is utterly besotted. 

The team decided that this sounded like the potential profit the stone head had mentioned, and decided to go immediately to murder Arsxzkil, loot his castle, and rescue the princess.

And so, off they went. 

The Archipelago: Episode the Second

 

Volcanic activity on the island began to increase dramatically, with earth tremors almost continual, and a plume of smoke issuing from the throat of the volcano. The pace of repairs became somewhat frantic, and when the volcano actually started to belch fire and lava, it was decided that it would be wisest to get the hell outta there and finish up, as far as possible, at sea.

At first all seemed well. The weather was clement enough and the seas calm. But a couple of days out, with the smoke plume still visible on the horizon, it was discovered that the ship was taking on water alarmingly fast. Apparently the repairs were not as effective as the should have been.

All hands to the pumps!

Ioannes and his mate spent all their time down in the hold, trying to come at the leak, but to no avail.

Olaf (Andrew), being a suspicious type, took to sleeping his sleep of exhaustion next to the jolly-boat, and was thus alerted when Ioannes and the rest of the crew attempted to get it launched in the middle of the night for a furtive getaway.

Olaf's paranoia having spoiled their attempt to flee, and the rest of Our Heroes being unwilling to be left on a sinking ship, a fight ensued in which Tirana (Annette) went down with a crossbow bolt through her gizzards, and a couple of the others also wounded more or less seriously.

Ioannes declared that he had no wish to kill them, but that he would if they left him no other choice. "Look on the bright side," he said, "I'm giving you the whole ship and all that she contains".

Rather than be murdered, the team grudgingly let the crew go in the jolly-boat. Being of a vengeful disposition, Cajetan (Carl) threw a lit lantern after them, but it turned out to be an unreasonably sturdy lantern and it just bounced off the gunwale into the sea instead of smashing and filling the dinghy with the Burning Flames of Retribution. Hey-ho. 

Barrels and other supplies were in plentiful supply, so under the instruction of the only actual seaman left, Olaf, the Good Guys set to work making a raft in the three days or so remaining before the ship foundered completely. Fortunately the weather remained fine and clear, and the fully-stocked raft was launched without incident, the ship just sinking away beneath it. Aliyah (Clare) immediately set to fishing, even though they had rations for several weeks stowed on board.

About a week of semi-directed drifting ensued, generally trending north-east. Apart from occasional rain showers, the weather remained fairly kindly, until a small storm blew up in the night — Tirana, on watch, observed with her elfy eyes the white of surf on rocks, and heard with her elfy ears the sound of surf on rocks, and made the wise decision to wake Olaf, who exerted all his powers of seamanship and managed to guide the raft, in the light of a bright full moon, to beach in a small cove with only an acceptable minimum of battering.

The raft was secured on the beach at the full of the tide, and was thus able to be unloaded safely. Ti used her amazing survival skills to find the best possible camping spot, and considering the massive mosquitoes that swarmed throughout the night and plagued them incessantly, the less perfect spots would have been dire indeed. Good thing they had her finely-honed skills to rely on.

The dawn revealed their surroundings: a sandy beach in a small cove between two rocky headlands, with steep hills and cliffs all round. Forest covered the slopes of the hills right down to the beach.

The dawn also revealed in interesting sight: a tiny man riding a huge dragon-fly down the beach towards them. 

He paused his steed to look them over, before observing "You are all very wet."

They agreed that they were, indeed, very wet. They asked who he was, and he said "I am a Twk-Man."

He went on to say "You must be very heroic and brave, to trespass in the territory of Dunderbas. I myself am flying on just as soon as I may. Do you have honey?"

Alas, they did not have honey, so the Twk-man flew off and disappeared up through the trees.

Investigation revealed a fairly well-used and maintained path winding up through the trees, over the hills. Olaf noted that the branches overhanging the path had all been neatly trimmed back, up as high as 15 or 18 feet.

The reason was soon revealed, when coming around a rocky outcrop, they came face to face with a huge man, easily twelve feet tall, almost naked except for a leather loincloth, and carrying a massive club. Both he and they were utterly astonished, but Our Heroes recovered first and asked if he was Dunderbas, and if he would like some food. His face immediately brightened, and he said "You have children? Delicious, succulent, tender children?"

Whereupon they attacked and murdered him, though not before a massive blow of his massive club had sent Cajetan cartwheeling off through the trees, to land broken and insensible in a heap.

Searching Dunderbas' huge corpse revealed nothing interesting, except that he went commando beneath his leather loincloth, and they continued up the path until it emerged from the trees, dragging the insensible form of Cajetan on a hastily-made travois. Looking out across grassy hills, they observed a partially ruinous tower, roofed with a conical thatch and with a small stream of smoke issuing from it. 

 Somebody, I forget who, crept nearer to reconnoitre, and observed a wicker cage outside the tower, in which sat three dirty and disconsolate children.

The conscious members of the team questioned the kids: Was there anybody inside? Just Harvey, was the reply. Who is Harvey? He's Dunderbas' servant.

Olaf decided that Harvey must die, so he set himself in ambush beside the door, while Ti and Ali set about noisily cutting through the withes to free the children, Ali having failed to pick the rather old and crude padlock holding it closed.

The sound of a dragging chain came from inside, the door opened, and a very aged, bent, balding old man stepped out, dragging a long, light chain attached to a fetter on one ankle.

Olaf smashed his skull in without a second thought.

They took the kids inside and thoroughly explored what there was to explore of the tower, and set about feeding the infants, who expressed a very strong desire to have none of the stew, thank you very much.

The children remain very nervous, and are convinced that Dunderbas is coming back. Dunderbas always comes back. 

The Archipelago: Episode the First

The party are passengers/supercargo on a small trading vessel, working their passage towards Comana City, land of opportunity. The ship's cargo at present consists mostly of bolts of silk and other textiles, and ingots of copper and bronze currently being used as ballast.

A black squall and storm lasting several days has blown out all the sails, broken away the mainmast and foremast, and eventually driven the ship before it before driving it across a reef to beach in a sheltered cove on a small uncharted island.

The island, once the storm passes and the sun reappears, proves to be volcanic. The volcano is active: there is smoke issuing from its caldera, and tremors of varying intensity occur several times a day.

The cove in which the ship is beached is fairly sheltered, with a coral sand beach and bushy trees coming down almost to the water's edge. Further inland is taller standing forest and bamboo, and vegetation extends right up almost to the mouth of the volcano.

The island is inhabited: drums are heard from time to time, though how far away is impossible to say with any certainty. The natives have not allowed themselves to be seen.

The ship is too damaged to be safely seaworthy, needing masts and yards, a new rudder, and a great gash in the timbers below from scraping across the reef will need to be mended before they can get under way again.

Sea water gushing in through the rent in the ship's bottom has spoiled much of the silk. How much of the cargo can be saved is a question for later.

The captain and mate disappeared during the squall, overboard presumably. The most senior crew member remaining is the carpenter, IOANNES.

One of the crew, CABASILAS, says that she saw a great black tentacle reach out of the sea and pluck them off the deck, but she is a notorious drunkard and her stories are generally taken with a grain of salt.

Since the landing, four members of the crew have died or disappeared. One was so badly injured during the storm that he died shortly after landing. Two went into the jungle, hunting for fresh meat, and were never seen again. Their trail disappears a little inside the tree-line. And one, spear-fishing in the cove, stumbled into a nest of falorials and died before she could be rescued.

The island is clearly not without its perils.

Apart from the carpenter and the party, there are only eight other crewmen remaining:

♂ ALKRITAS
STR 13, DEX 14, CON 16, INT 12, WIS 11, CHA 10;
Male ; Sailor, 5 HP; 6′2″, 181#, 25 years old
Ultra-civilized, Friendly

♀ BALSAMON
STR 13, DEX 11, CON 14, INT 9, WIS 8, CHA 14;
Female ; Sailor, 5 HP; 5′2″, 106#, 32 years old
Pessimistic, Grudge-holding

♀ CABASILAS
STR 16, DEX 13, CON 12, INT 16, WIS 10, CHA 11;
Female ; Sailor, 5 HP; 5′7″, 107#, 37 years old
Drunkard, Fabulist

♂ DIOGENES
STR 14, DEX 13, CON 12, INT 15, WIS 16, CHA 17;
Male ; Sailor, 5 HP; 5′9″, 180#, 20 years old
Capricious, Careless

♂ EROTICUS
STR 11, DEX 12, CON 14, INT 7, WIS 8, CHA 15;
Male ; Sailor, 5 HP; 6′3″, 168#, 23 years old
Pessimistic, Naive

♂ FERRO
STR 15, DEX 11, CON 13, INT 8, WIS 17, CHA 11;
Male ; Sailor, 5 HP; 6′1″, 172#, 16 years old
Suspicious, Sober

♀ GORGO
STR 12, DEX 12, CON 11, INT 15, WIS 15, CHA 9;
Female ; Sailor, 5 HP; 5′11″, 138#, 30 years old
Friendly, Sober

♀ HEGEL
STR 15, DEX 14, CON 13, INT 12, WIS 14, CHA 12;
Female ; Sailor, 5 HP; 6′4″, 125#, 19 years old
Curious, Sober

They are all reasonably skilled seafarers, but none of them have more than rudimentary navigational abilities. They do not know where they are. IOANNES has a little more navigation skill than they do, and he can probably make something of the captain's charts, given time and good guesswork.

Being basically useless for any of the skilled tasks of ship repair, the party are given the task of fetching timber.

The reef has been explored in the ship's jolly-boat, and a gap wide enough for the ship to pass through has been found and buoyed with old barrels. Once the ship is seaworthy again, they can get out to sea.

Kidnapped!

The crew have been stranded for a full week, with repairs having proceeded reasonably smoothly and now are almost complete, when the carpenter IOANNES disappears in the night. He suffers from night terrors, so when he called out in fright nobody much took any notice.

There is little sign of any struggle, but a GOOD perception roll reveals a small tufted blowgun dart lodged in the carpenter's sea-chest, and another ground into the sand near his bedding.

A successful tracking attempt reveals small humanoid footprints, only five or six inches long, like those of children. There would appear to have been perhaps six or eight individuals, and the trail leading off into the bush indicates that several of them were carrying a reasonably heavy load.

The trail leads through the jungle and up into the foothills of the volcano, to an ancient overgrown structure built into the hillside. There is a small clearing in front. Many of the surrounding trees are swathed in cobwebs, some of which are as thick and strong as fishing line.

The kidnappers are there, crouched in a semicircle in front of the entrance. They are tiny naked dark-skinned humanoids, only about 3' tall, but squat. They are swaying and chanting. When the party arrived, they scattered into the forest and disappeared.

IOANNES has been taken inside by the creature that lairs there. He has been bound in a silk cocoon, but has not yet been hoisted up into the web larder that comprises all of the first chamber. It is thoroughly choked with webs, in which are hanging the remains of many corpses of animals and humans. Almost all of the humans or of the same race as the kidnappers, but not all. They have all been drained of their innards.

The creature is a huge maggot-like centipede thing, 25' long, which can rear up to about 15' high and still move on its last few sets of legs. It can shoot webs from spinnerets along its belly, and it has a paralytic bite. An ovipositor at its rear can inject eggs into a victim; they will take about a week to hatch, whereupon the babies will suck all the remaining juices from their host. The babies partake of the nature of both the maggotipede and their host, and none are exactly identical.

If the party enter in force, the creature will retreat initially, in order to assess the situation. It can move through the webs unimpeded, but they will create a significant impediment to movement for anything else.

If set alight, the webs will burn sluggishly, and give off a choking, foul-smelling smoke. They are not particularly flammable.

Resolution:

The team, with the aid of the remaining crew, managed to kill the maggotipede and rescue Ioannes.

Three more of the crew died: one (Diogenes) was bitten and poisoned by a spider-like web dweller, one of the offspring of the maggotipede. There are hundreds of these little bastards scurrying about in the webs that choke the dungeon's rooms and passages.

Two more were eaten whole by the maggotipede in the final battle. 

Ioannes, when examined out in the daylight, proved to have a suspicious abdominal wound, which was assumed to have been created by the creature's ovipositor. Which it was. A frankly stupendous piece of surgery by [Qarl's character], assisted by [Andrew's character] rid him of the egg-sac and saved his life.

Note: I will, hopefully, eventually learn the actual names of the PCs. 

---

Potential Interesting Things

The whole complex was not examined, but the party did note a couple of things on their way in and out:

 1) A crystal ball on a sculpted pearlescent metal stand, the whole standing on a low (8") dais in the middle of a moderate-sized chamber. One of the sailors, Alkritas, was entranced by it, but they snapped him out of it.

 2) A group of three obviously magical pictures or portals or something, in the room in which they fought the Boss Monster. 

Standing next to them, it was noted that the air was perceptibly colder. 

 

 

The team have decided, at this time, not to mess about with any of the potential loot, owing to the presence of the viciously poisonous little web-critters, of which there are hundreds, and also the natives of the island, whose god they had just killed.

The current plan is to get the ship seaworthy just as soon as possible,  and to get afloat.

Religion in the City and Empire of Comana (and thereabouts)

 Religion in Comana is both monotheistic and exclusive, worshipping a publicly nameless god, referred to by a variety of nomme de culte, such as the One God, the Many in One, the Supreme, the Divine Greatest, the Greatest and Best, and many more.

Though perceived as a singular being, the god is worshipped in many aspects, depending on the needs of its many worshippers. Prayers may be addressed to the god's universal being, or to one of its aspect — as a god of storms for example, or a god of the sea, or the god of the harvest. Also, a hierarchy of celestial creatures are deemed to be deputized by The One to attend to minor matters on its behalf. Small local shrines to, say, a river or pond, will be dedicated to the Great God, but it is fully understood by the local congregation that there is some divine intermediary handling the small stuff, and passing on any major issues to the All-in-One upstairs.

The Emperor is supreme in both the secular and religious realms, and the Cult of the One is the only official religion of the Empire.

Orthodoxy is strictly maintained, and the official church maintains an inquisitorial arm responsible for making sure that the populace toe the official line. Punishments for persistent heterodoxy can be both severe and gruesome, though initial infractions will normally be dealt with with an escalating scale of fines, through a range of corporal punishments, ultimately resulting in death by a variety of inventive and nasty methods.

Other gods are not actually denied, nor is their worship within the empire actually forbidden, but there are substantial and onerous legal burdens placed on those who wish to worship their foreign gods openly. Most immigrant or indigenous people will eventually convert their religion simply because of the heavy legal and financial obligations placed on them by remaining with their own gods.

The church is rigidly hierarchical, and even the lowest ordained priest has absolute authority over the laity in spiritual matters, and great authority even in secular affairs. Technically, even the greatest secular lords cannot punish even the most minor priest for any infraction. However, the intermiscibility of the secular and religious aristocracy means that if a priest offends a lord, that lord almost certainly has family in the church that can make that priest's life an absolute misery. And even if family connections aren't brought into play, a complaint to the church authorities against a priest by a secular lord will, if nothing else, spark a tedious and inconvenient, and potentially dangerous, church investigation. And of course it can work the other way too: a priest who makes an unfavourable report to the inquisition can cause real trouble for a lord. There is, therefore, an uneasy detente.

The Comanate Empire - Political Geography

 

Here we have the political situation as regards the Comanate Empire and its immediate vicinity.

The bright pink is the area that is directly controlled by Comana, the light pink areas are tributary to it.

Comana's greatest rival is the kingdom of Attarisyas, shown in green. The light green areas are tributary to Attarisyas.

To the north, the blue islands of Shutarna, Shinukhtu, and Shaushka pose no particular threat to either of their larger neighbours, though they are each powerful enough to maintain their independence.

To the east, the mottled island chain of Urukhtu is an unstable mish-mash of tribes, both human and not, in a more or less constant state of conflict and constantly shifting alliances. It has, in the past, been the object of military expeditions from both Attarisyas and Comana, but with little to show for them. 

The dark brown areas are politically unimportant, being for the most part tiny tribal territories and petty kingdoms. 

To north and south of the map above are

    ....the lands of the ice and snow
    From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow
    The hammer of the gods
    Will drive our ships to new lands
    To fight the horde, sing and cry
    Valhalla, I am coming 

Ahem. Quick Led Zeppelin discursion there.

Anyway, both north and south (off the map as shown) are the homes of fierce, warlike barbarians, sea-raiders who fight among themselves and prey on the sea-lanes and coastlines of the civilised lands. They also frequently appear as mercenaries in the armies of all the major powers in the area. They are more of a nuisance than a threat to the empire and its neighbours, mainly because of their disunity.... however, if they could ever combine under a suitably charismatic leader, they could become a real problem. 

The Archipelago — First Glimmerings

 

The Great Archipelago, dominated by the Comanate Empire, lies pretty much directly opposite our customary stomping grounds.

Each of those hexes is about 1,000 miles wide.

This is a very old map I drew of the Archipelago many, many years ago. It is sadly faded and foxed, but it still serves to show the main islands of the various island chains.  There are also thousands of tiny uncharted islands, not shown at this scale.

 

 

 

 

The city of Comana lies directly in the tropical zone; the climate is similar to that of the Greek islands in the Aegean. Here are a few "flavour" images — the cultural vibe is basically pre-Ottoman Byzantine.