With the success of my recent Thonia Fan Sourcebook, The Thonian Rand, I have started looking back at the previous installment in the series, . While I like the sourcebook as written, I learned a lot while writing The Thonian Rand.

I always planned on revisiting CB1. It is only an 8 page booklet, but one of the reasons I wanted to put it out at the time was really to get the ball rolling. It is more important to produce something for the communtiy than just perfecting all the projects on my own. I have 10 books for the series in the works, so it seemed like a good idea to get the production started. Sadly, it took much longer between CB1 and CB2 than I was hoping, but now I hope to release future books much more frequently.

There were two important ideas behind CB1:
1) It was the original home of the people who founded the Duchy of Ten
2) It would be home to all of the Richard Snider additions to Blackmoor from the First Fantasy Campaign.

As it stands the book covers, briefly the history of the setting, descriptions of the most important locations and an NPC section.

What I would like to add is a more game focused rewriting. Who are the PCs and what could they do there?

While talking to RobJN and others about the Thonia Setting in general I realized that playing in Thonia would be very different from playing in Blackmoor. Blackmoor is surrounded by enemies, but at least Blackmoor itself is ruled by benign forces. In Thonia, the rulers are all evil and corrupted. The players would have to find safe quarters. In some ways it would be similar to a game in Ravenloft or the Midnight setting. Not so much the horror aspect, but that the PCs will be fighting an ever present antagonistic realm.

My idea for the Eastern Marshes specifically is that these are cursed lands. When the Nobles of Ten were banished from Thonia and new families moved in, they disturbed ancient magics placed upon the land. This has drawn in Vampires and other monsters.

Now, I don't want to make the Eastern Marshes into a copy of Ravenloft. The Province is not controlled by monsters. Instead, my idea is that the nobles really don't care about these problems. The monsters prey upon the poor, farmers and wanderers. While the nobles of the Eastern Marshes aren't the worst in the Empire, they are mostly too decadent (or in one case, insane) to be bothered. This is where the heroes can come in.

Richard Snider added several rules about Vampires in his supplement to the FFC, so that's why I'm sticking with that theme. I'd also like to pay homage to the Great Vampire Hunt from the original campaign.

Would you like to see a revised and expanded version of CBI-01? What would you like to see in it? :)

-Havard

Considering the distances, this should perhaps be one of the parts of the Empire most closely linked to the port of Erak in Blackmoor, that needs constant supplies (of goods and manpower) from south.
Maybe there are some parts of this province theatre very poor or somehow disadvantaged and people unrolls as colonists to the Northern Marches (Blackmoor)? Or maybe Imperial taxmen are too greedy in their requests, using as an excuse the need to send help to the troops in the Northern Marches, but in reality they keep a lot in their pockets? Maybe there are pirates raiding the ships with provisions sent north?
Still considering the distances, these lands should also have some closer relations with the Duky of the Peaks, trading in diamond, slaves, wine and luxury goods...