Musings on the mage wars

[Havard]

That makes a lot of sense. I'm sure you've played with these kinds of numbers before but a very rough estimate of the number of possible territories can be got by looking at the sq miles of Blackmoor - 4346 in the FFC. If you figure a very rough average of 20-30 miles per territory (DMG gives 30 miles but looks more like 20 in AIF) that's 150-200 wizards total. Even double that figure isn't an outrageous number in a population of tens of thousands. Also, a good portion of those mages could actually be elves.

Keep in mind that the territory in question was probably alot smaller at the time. The whole area of the Dismal Swamp probably wasnt settled untill the Great Svenny & company were banished there and the New Lands south of Blackmoor are even more recent.

Ofcourse, there could be mages living in the wilderness or in settlements that have now been destroyed, the former is likely especially if elves were part of the conflict.

But the total number you are suggesting seems acceptable to me. I would even accept a higher one as long as we assume that most will be very low level ones.

Yeah the idea of frontier outpost or even abandoned and returned to wild is definetly workable for game play purposes, but I'm still seeing it as a hard sell for a more detailed worldbuild. It's seems at least somewhat unlikely that even the way you outline it, the special magical draw of Blackmoor (something we need to work on defining) would go unnoticed for so long. But if you consider that Blackmoor Castle wasn't the only early settlement in the region - Booh, Vestfold, Maus - I'm a lot more comfortable with redating the Mage Wars to the earlier time.

From a world build perspective, I would be tempted to shift the focus to the Empire and have Blackmoor be the outbacks the most extreme adventurers would go to in the early centuries. Alternately the campaign could be built around tribal cultures, such as the Valemen (Picts), Skandaharians, elves etc as much as the limited number of "civilized" humans.

IMO Vestfold should be little more than a village during the Mage Wars. How else would it be able to stay neutral?

I don't have any specific ideas for Maus' history yet, but perhaps it was founded in the 700s along with the first settlements of the Duchy of Ten? Might look into Lankhmar history for more ideas on its foundation.

With the Halflings, I also havent thought up a history. My idea is that they were originally Docrae from the far west. I could imagine Booh predating the Dwarven settlements, but probably not by much.

Archlis is the only other settlement we know is involved.

I can see pro and con for a connection between Wood and Cabal, but either way I like the idea of a lineage from Kargas to Sildonis as Wizard of the Wood.

Actually, let me check what I have been working on privately on this topic:

NC 820: The Mage Wars are now broken into four factions: Blackmoor (Raddan Goss), Duchy of the Peaks (Vadaley) and two others (Erak, Maus) as well as “the Bystanders” (Bramwald, Vestfold, Archlis).

I guess I originally wanted to keep the elves out of the whole thing. I think the idea is that since the elves have been practicing magic for centuries, they will not have been tempted to abuse magic in such a way that Raddan and the others did. Raddan should have known better given his elven ancestry, but was "tainted" by human blood.

I am not quite sure why I decided to go with Erak rather than Bramwald here. Looking back at it, it might make more sense to have Erak be founded later and have Bramwald be an older Thonian settlement. The Thonians must have settled this part of Blackmoor from the east coast however, as the south would have been blocked by the Peshwah at this time.

-Havard