Cooperative Worldbuilding - Adventures on the Abandoned Frontier

[+5 Vorpal Bunny]

Inspired by the excellent worldbuilding thread A Promised Necromancy, as well as Wasp's various worldbuilding games on the play-by-post threads (both of which I wholeheartedly recommend), this thread aims to portray a fantasy world where a collection of adventurers, pioneers and explorers set foot on a new continent. Full of treasures, ruins and monsters to spare, this strangely uninhabited continent offers a new life for many. But it also contains dark secrets. What monsters wait to pounce in the wilds? What lies deep within the ruins? And what happened to the people there? Each person has their own ideas - and, perhaps, their own secrets as well...

But enough of that; how do you play this game? We do something similar to A Promised Necromancy, where we write out a quote or short paragraph from the perspective of one of the adventurers there. Then, the next person explores it further, elaborating on it and adding their own details. Because of the nature of this game, these posts will occur in chronological order - although other, separate events can be inferred to be going on as well behind the scenes. Also, while this starts as a single adventuring party going into the wilderness, this can branch off into different parties and plots over time.

Without further ado, let's begin:

'It is 1193 in the Year of Our Savior, who hath led us forth from these savage lands to safety. For long we lived in peace, flourishing until the feared name of Argantha was but a distant memory. But Plague and Famine and War came once again, and soon so many of us fled in desperate search of a new life. After many stormy days, the skies cleared, and the vast, fierce, mountainous land appeared before us again. Verdant, bright and with countless mineral wealth waiting, it could be mistaken for a paradise - but we know better. Here There Are Monsters. But we are no longer the weak people who fled Her embrace so long ago. Braving the choppy seas, we set foot on a clearing and raised banners; we cleaved trees and erected the first homes. But soon the woods pounded; animals growled as a deadly menace filled the air. We were not alone. Without a further word, I bid farewell to my family; mustering a team of brave souls, promising adventurers all, we boldly forayed into the ruins from whence the sounds came.

To Solathar, my God of Light who I offered loyal service to all these years, I pray for your guidance now.'

- Amaluin the Lightbearer, Paladin of Solathar and First Pioneer of the Summerflower Fleet

[brian 333]

The beasts bore hairy feathers instead of fur. Like chickens, they walked on two legs, with necks as long as their tails. Unexpected, their short wings were useless for flight, but bore long, powerful claws.

Who knew that orange feathers would be so hard to see in the tallgrass meadows? Vancet was slain. The beast was too fast, too agile, and the span of its short arm still too broad to evade. Its single-mindedness saved us. It guarded its prey rather than attack us, and with spears we brought it down.

[+5 Vorpal Bunny]

'Vancet the veteran fighter was slain by the feathered beast's hand. We've never seen anything like it - they resemble our birds, but far larger and more brutal. Perhaps they came before them, from this land before time. How fascinating - if they can be learned, communicated to, harnessed, who knows what we can do! Perhaps we can survive this savage land after all. Knowing this, I set out with a treat of meat; standing strong yet kind, I spoke to the pack leader in the ancient Druidic tongue. I promised them that we can expand their reach and find fresh food and mates for him if they let us travel on their backs. Skeptical but brave, he assigned his second to this task - threatening to kill us all if we reneged on our promise. We held true; with our knowledge of the land, we led them over the mountains to an oasis in record time. Since then, we have steadily learned to ride them, and in doing so began to expand across the land.'

- Records of Kulthil the Archdruid, on Taming the First Dinosaurs

[Sapphire Guard]

The birds were no mounts for the incautious or reckless, it was easy to lose limbs to their trailing claws when running at high speed and if they took a fighting stance the best option was usually to dismount. But it could not be denied that they were fleet of foot over harsh terrain, and with their aid we reached the High Council of the Clans in time to take part.

Grand Political decisions were doubtless made here, but our concerns were more mercenary, for the great adventurer guilds were recruiting, and here decided which ancient ruins were to be cleared this year, and which teams went where. We had been independent for a long time, and that had been helpful in many ways, but it was time to hunt big game, and to for that, we needed backing.

[brian 333]

The great flying lizards were beautiful, majestic, and dumb. We did not know their migrations, but we knew they hunted fish and were so thin and spare that they were mostly inedible. The only fat they carried was in the marrow of their bones, but come winter when such sustenence would have been cherished, there were none of the beasts around.

Sadri was convinced she could tame one to ride. And she even managed to catch a few, but they ate a lot of fish and nothing else, so it was difficult to keep them alive. And none would fly with her on its back.
Sadri determined to get eggs and train the young, but the reptiles never laid in our land. She tried to keep a breeding pair over winter, but not long after the migration they died. We ate what we could of them long before bone-cracking weather set in.

[+5 Vorpal Bunny]

'The Druids' Circle went silent. That was the first warning. Then the feathered birds frantically fled south. That was the second. Finally, the frost arrived unseasonably early; for such a lush and warm land, it was not well-equipped to handle such a sharp drop in temperature. Many plants withered and died under brilliant burning sunsets that brought bitter, freezing cold. After a month of silence, the Druids repeated what the great flying lizards hurriedly said; that far to the West, a massive mountain of fire exploded, flooding the lands with burning earth and shrouding the skies with poisoned ash. This, they explained, is what choked the skies and shrouded the sun.

Both feathered birds and we knew we were facing a harsh winter, and so we gathered the Clans to plan. We gathered and hunted what we could, but it was not enough. We suspected there may be food and water underground, for the ruins we explored seemed to not have any visible farms around them. They were clearly built to be lived in and went deep. Perhaps something was still alive down there. And so we decided to forge deeper into them than ever before, looking not only for supplies, but perhaps an answer to our situation.'

[brian 333]

Coastal villages fared well in the Summer Without A Night, but the inland towns did not. The summer snows gave way to winter blizards. The animals which could not flee burrowed and starved, but the glowing night sky gave way to long sunrises and sunsets, and after a midwinter blizard we saw the first stars since the night ash rained from the skies. As the grass grew back among the corpses of thd trees, the ice finally began its retreat, but it would be five years before it melted from the North slopes of the hills.

[+5 Vorpal Bunny]

'After this brutal setback, we slowly expanded inland once again; year by year, the feathered reptiles returned. Yet those of us who survived became hardier for it; we clothed and sheltered our animal companions and they fed us, even through the harshest blizzards. With their might and cunning, we were also able to delve deep into the ruins; there we found vast cavern systems with growing moss and fungi untouched by the apocalyptic winter above. Piping magma vents and bubbling underground springs bore plants that glew in the dark and turned to face their heat. Curious animals, pale and hairless yet resourceful and strong, fed off these strange species. The colder winds from above and the heat below mixed with subterranean lakes to form underground clouds, wind and rain. And the tunnels, we found, go deeper still. While many of us perished, those of us strong enough to brave the ruins found a marvelous world indeed.'

[brian 333]

"The Ma-Oghi live there, in the deep dark. White of skin, like a drowned man, but they have eyes of red that glow with their own light.

"And they hate us.

"We, who come and go, and make our homes where light and dark meet, we are food to them, and devils. We can walk under the sun and not burn. We can breath fresh air and watch the summer leaves turn in the fall without going blind. We are free.

"They are prisoners, forever caged in the deeps where their ancestors once worked marvels. They stack and hoard generations of ancient treasure, and never profit by it, even to defend themselves from those of our kind driven to steal it from them.

"But the Ma-Oghi are as cunning as we, and more often it is the thieves that die, and become piles of bone cracked for their marrow and left at the fringes of Ma-Oghi territory as a warning. And a taunt.

"And of a moonless summer night they come with the scent of brimstone, up from the deep, to catch the unwary, the children who have wandered from their beds, and to recover their stolen treasure.

"Do not go into the deep dark. If you find what belongs to them, touch it not. And if you see red eyes glowing back at you in the darkness, run.

"Run toward the light."

A folktale often repeated around campfires in the lands of the hidden refuges.

[brian 333]

From The Autobiography Of Captain Holette Of Her Highness' Own Schooner Sprite:

The Captains met aboard the flagship of the Commodore. The Indominable had sat the winter off the colony serving as base, storehouse, and emergency refuge, but the barque Saint LeDura and the fast sloop Gurarri ventured North along the coast to explore what at the time we believed to be mostly rocky headlands and islets while the more maneuverable Sprite went South with the Indomitable's pinnace as escort in case there was need to traverse waters too shallow or treacherous for my nimble schooner. We made our reports of our winter explorations and received our orders.

The two-hundred colonists and their gear had been landed. Now it was time for Indominable and Saint LeDura to return home. The colony was left a fleet of eight small craft for fishing and other errands. The pinnace was also left behind, nominaly under my command, along with Gurarri. Our orders were to support and defend the colony and to map the coasts of our new lands.

We set to our work even before the last provisions were loaded onto the Saint LeDura.

The coastline south of the colony quickly becomes swampy with countless small rivers that stain the sea black. The black water, trapped behind wave-driven dunes, hosts nothing that would interest a fisherman.

Sounding to avoid stranding became a pattern because the sand flats extended many miles from the shoreline. These would become rich fisheries to a fleet of flat-bottomed skiffs. Prawn the size of a man's hand occupy vast tracts of sea-grass, and crab so heavy that two feed a sailor are abundant and easily trapped. On a moonless night the movement of fish and of the ship leave trails of green light in the water, which is how we discovered the infant kraken that hunt the shoals. Dr.Eliat was almost eaten by the one we captured, but her wounds did not fester and within days she was back to her nets recording her catch.

And then we sailed into paradise.

Or so we thought at first.

[brian 333]

Armored fish that breathe air hunt the shallows by day. Only the swarms of kraken hunt by night. Both kinds range from half the length of a man to the full length of a man, with the kraken's tentacles being the length of its body. Both are fast swimmers and agile. Both survive out of water for a time and struggle to return to it. And both are highly aggressive out of and in the water.

And both are prey of the giant water dragon which prowls the channels between the sand flats.

The pinnace was lost when the dragon attacked. Lieutenant Kamaadh, Bos'un Fairman, Seaman Garlan, and Seaman Tarluck were eaten.

Only Corporal Margara survived by swimming to a sandbar. The beast tried to follow him, but its legs were paddles, unsuited for use ashore. For ten minutes it chased him along the length of the bar, but human legs were faster than dragon legs.

The beast was about fifty feet long. Its head alone at least six feet and almost four feet wide, with its mouth being most of it. Each of its four limbs were about the size of its head. Paddle-shaped, they were oddly jointed and flexible. Its body width was about six feet, and probably round in cross-section, though flattened while out of the water. The tail tapered to a paddle, and was half the length of the beast.

After it abandoned its chase of the corporal it went to the inshore channel and appeared to rest. With no volunteers to man a landing craft, I brought the vessel into shallnw water, sounding to avoid beaching.

The keel touched sand about fifty feet from the bar. Fearing the increasing unease of the crew at the presence of the beast, only a quarter-mile away though there was a sandbar between us, I ordered the ballista to fire a shot-line to the corporal.

He was reluctant to return to the water. When ordered he tied the line around himself and the crew hauled him aboard. The ship withdrew without incident, apparently without attracting the attention of the beast.

The Doctor has an idea of how the dragon can be slain, but I will not order my crew to take that risk. Besides, pristine beaches lined with palms and clear sweet streams lose their charm when the waters are filled with monsters.

[brian 333]

From a distance the mountain rises, nearly vertical on its sides and flat on its top. As we approached, the land around it became a broken chaos and we saw that the base of what we had been calling 'the tower' sat in a conical mountain from which the tower rose. Karnaat claims the tower is made of basalt, and that its orange color comes from the iron it contains. I trust a dwarf to know these things.

The region is yellow and red, and even the green of the scrub brush is grey where it is not covered in orange dust. As we came closer to the tower, what we had taken for clouds at a distance turned out to be vast flocks of birds and flying lizards. At dawn and dusk we watched them gather in swirling masses and disperse, presumably to hunt in the daylight or nest in the dark. Their colonies filled cracks and crevices on the mountain's sheer walls.

The birds are much like those of home, and they range in size from giant black eagles to tiny wrens. The flying lizards fly much as do birds, but on the ground they walk on four legs, the wings of their fore-limbs folded back to reveal a clawed hand with two fingers and a thumb. The small ones are as small as the palm of my hand, but their wingspan is the length of my forearm. They hunt bugs in the broken rocks of the chaos. Many are toothed and look much like crocodiles, while others have mouths that look like skin-covered beaks. The largest of these creatures are the size of horses in the body and their wings are like the sails of our great ships. What they eat we never discovered; they simply flew over the horizon in the morning and returned in the evening.

At the base of the cone in which the tower sits we could see that the tower is constructed of vast six-sided columns that rise up like a pile of logs standing upright. About halfway up the East side Karnaat claims to see a man-made structure. To me the whole mountain appears man-made, and so I told him. But he has been passing the spyglass around and has convinced most of the men, so it seems a scaling party will be formed.

First I will have a secure and defensible camp from which we can stage the climb. There are crocodiles with tall red sails upon their backs, feathered lizards, and lizard-lions out here as well as a golden cat that we have seen only from a distance. I would hate for our climbers to return laden with treasure only to find our cracked bones waiting for them.

On the distant horizon I see what may be another four towers. Until now we had thought this one unique. I have to wonder what kind of gods created this kind of land, and what kind of people they created it for. And I have to hope they are gone, the people and their gods.

[brian 333]

We had no idea what we were getting into, at first. It seemed to be nothing more than a limestone cave system. There were small lizard-like creatures which had an amazing ability to camoflage themselves in the caves. It took us some time for us to connect them with the pitfalls and deadfalls we kept running into.

When we went deeper in and began to see signs of artificial construction we also began to encounter larger cave-dwellers that used crude weapons and better traps. It became fairly obvious that we were dealing with the outskirts of a civilization that lived in an underground labyrinth.

When we came across the first decorative carvings it was apparent that the lizards hadn't made them. When the witch doctor attacked using a magical rod with similar designs we began to wonder. There is more to this place than we had suspected. Something is hidden at the center of this labyrinth. The question is, do we really want to find it?

[brian 333]

The first town grew and we settled two villages in the next four years. The first ship from the homeland barely replaced our lost friends, but brought much needed tools and textiles. With fewer settlers on the second the elders delayed founding the second village, but the stockade had been built, so five newlywed couples, including Dertruda's widower and their three children, settled there against the advice and consent of the elders. The third ship brought criminals: volunteer colonists were growing scarce.

The criminals proved a difficulty, so they were moved to the second village. The young couples abandoned them after the murder of Gandolan, and they faced their first winter alone. When the snows thawed an envoy from the settlement arrived to request advice on planting. Half the population of the criminal village was gone.

So far as I know, none ever chronicaled the events of that winter, but from that spring forward the settlers were in all ways hardworking, trustworthy, and law abiding. Use of the Criminal label was slow to die out, but it did.

In those first years we were subsisting. Our growth was slow, and primarily came through small groups and families. By the end of the first decade we had another half-dozen villages of twenty to two hundred villagers and a town of two thousand. We were self sufficient in all but metal, but we still lacked a viable and reliable export. And at that, bird-lizard feathers were going out of style. The king who had funded our colony was growing bored.

That's when I suggested the quests. Parties would be sent in all directions to seek metal ore and to seek trade goods. They would need a smith and a sage and the soldiers to protect them.

Unfortunately, those were valuable colonists that we couldn't afford to lose.

Elder Lison suggested that we get help, special help, from the homeland: adventurers. We had nothing to offer them but land, but we have a lot of it. If that land also has iron ore on it, then we can each benefit.

Our young and inexperienced, mostly boys, wanted in on the offer. We couldn't afford to lose our best apprentices. We couldn't stop them either. At a time when money was tight we had just increased the cost of labor.