Meleon and Blackmoor

[Rafael]

Hi all,

Well, it's been known for a while that I am tinkering on a new project, tentatively known as "Mordred", or "Meleon", and related to Blackmoor only in so far that I am not really hiding who taught me the craft. - Which, in essence, is, most of you good folks!

Now, the core action in the World of Meleon happens in Asterion, a country inspired in medieval France and Italy, and in Angria, an Arabian or "Crusades era" setting. But, of course, there had to be a homage corner; for the Maiden, for Blackmoor, and for that long journey we shared, together!

That corner of Meleon is called "Gravesend", and has been the setting for my personal home game for a while, now. I recently put out the first longer description of Gravesend and environs (though it's perhaps a little bit meta), and I thought, maybe you guys over here would enjoy reading about it, too. After all, Gravesend, and Meleon, for all intents and purposes were, if not born, then bred here, at the Comeback Inn.

So, a while ago, I posted a small excerpt from the bigger map of Duneyrr, highlighting Gravesend and environs. Surely, I did so as a tease, and so, now, it’s time to get a bit into detail about what this part of the World of Meleon really is supposed to look like:

I’ve often written that Gravesend is my Blackmoor homage; that is true, insofar that I reuse a lot of the concepts I had prepared for the LFC, and for “The Age of Theodore” – and that Gravesend, the town, is ostensibly inspired by the maps of Blackmoor Town that our friend @havard made.

Outside of that, the similarities are withering, mainly, because, this time, I didn’t use a random tentpole character, like I did with Chyat for Angria, Diestro for Tizona, and, small spoiler here, Prince Aldrin for Marriott:

Leir, the current prince regent of Gravesend, is obviously inspired by a certain Shakespearean character, and I sort of ported the whole entourage of minor characters from the play to my fantasy world. Read “Macbeth” by David Hewson, who otherwise is one of my favorite authors, this year, and was terribly, fundamentally disappointed. So, I thought, if it’s now legit to do fantasy versions of Shakespeare, so can I!

Not getting much into detail about that, yet – because, if our game runs its full course, you will meet at least two characters from Gravesend. While their names alone will leave little room to guess, I don’t want to spell everything out in such a way.

Gravesend, or rather, the Cold River Riding, to the great city’s North, is the notorious location of all my home games: Cold River, the town, is best described as a mix between Irilian and Thieves’ World’s city of Sanctuary, and Prince Cunedda, Leir’s younger brother, a mix between the original Sanctuary’s Prince Kadakithis (sp?) and who would have been the LFC’s Prince Theodore.
Currently, the campaign centers around the small dwelling of Albridge, where the characters, tired of the war between dark fey, dwarves, and their fellow men, have settled in the hopes of being forgotten by the rest of the world, in general – and by the Order of the Starling, a cabal of Time Mages whom they repeatedly offended, in particular. – But, alas, since this is a game of swords and sorcery, they now have to deal with an undead, dream-eating countess, a cursed magic sword, and a rampaging band of pig-headed orcs.
Gravesend and the kingdom of Duneyrr are mostly defined by two basic conflicts – apart from the third one, implied through Leir, that is still in the setting’s future: One is the cold war against the Dwarves in the South. But in difference to Asterion, Duneyrr lives not border by border with some vassal state like Almace; in the case of the people of Gravesend, they have to deal with the Great Emperor of the Dwarves, in person.

To the North of Duneyrr, there’s Larad, the land of the dark fey – which again, may sound familiar compared to the storylines we ourselves follow in Erle, but again, is so not because of a lack of originality: It’s simply that Asterion is to the utmost South of the contested territories, and Duneyrr is to the utmost North. The fey of Larad are also completely different to the fey of the Erlenwood: First, Elves, and there I have to remain nebulous for the time being, play a way larger role in Larad than they do in Asterion, and second, the fey of Larad are unequivocally evil, while the fey of the Erlenwood are more cartoonish in their demeanor, as you have seen so far.

As to the actual, unequivocal references to Blackmoor I use in my home game so far, here a few that I can currently remember. Hope they’ll make you chuckle at least a tiny bit:

1. “Sven Svenson”, in Duneyrr, is a name used like “Jon Doe”, mostly for people who hail from Barr. My parties have met a couple of Sven Svensons, of vastly different appearance and behavior, but since we started with our games in the region, back in… 2013?... There has always been a “Sven Svenson” with the group, one way, or another.

2. The people of Gravesend usually pray to the “Dragonfather”. (“Drachenvater”, in German.) This is more a reference to the classic “Breath of Fire” video game series you know I like a lot, but let’s say that no one lamented the coincidence with another famous element from the FFC. (Though there are no known Dragons in Gravesend, except perhaps for Landrider’s Moor, which is a different tale, or a different time. )

3. The Dwarven Emperor commands eight robotic/android warriors, pretty similar to Ixiom, a character from Mystara that I introduced rather late in the LFC.

4. The Tower of Time supposedly exists in Larad, and Kingsheart, the capital of a future Blackmoor in one of the articles I wrote for the Comeback Inn back in the day, is supposedly the old capital of Duneyrr. Also, the Gin of Salik made a cameo as the ruler of a small city-state already, but I didn’t like that overall concept, and will likely not develop the idea any further, but rather remove the city-state itself from Duneyrr’s map.

5. …Between Cold River and Morven Riding, there’s a place called “The Maiden’s Vale”. Great statues of long forgotten heroes flank a highway supposedly built by the kings of ages past. One of the statues, notably, depicts a large bear, holding a rat… Or a raccoon… In its stone paws…

[Yaztromo]

Best of luck for your new adventure!

[Rafael]

I am not really gone, though - it's more like, for our intents and purposes, Blackmoor now has a cousin.

If this project ever sees publication (and there's certainly a tendency), then it's to be as open and as accessible to people as possible. - Like, the reason I even dab into the grand topic that is RPG publishing is really that I was growing tired of all my favorite stuff in the field sooner or later entering copyright hell, BM being one of the prime example. Stories, for all intents and purposes, should belong to people, not to coroporations.

[Rafael]

From the same thread, a few more additions to the earlier text:

In two weeks would be the Company of the Maiden's 11th anniversary! Huzzah!

I wrote an elaborate update over the course of the day, but then accidentally deleted it, so I'm taking a moment to write about something else, until I'm in the mood to write the other piece AGAIN. -_-

So, I thought, since I've mentioned a couple of times, already, I'll tell you a bit about my home game, or, rather, the whole [font color="ff0000"]Red Knight[/font] continuity, which, as you already know, I often refer to as my own "ersatz" Blackmoor. Which is sort of half-true, only: Because, while the setting is genuinely influenced by our old game, and I borrow many names and general conventions, the actual gameplay is probably more comparable to games like the Warhammer FRP, or the old Dragon Warriors RPG. (Which happens to have been developed by the same core group of people, which, again, in turn probably tells a lot about my actual taste in games.)

Gravesend and Duneyrr share some core similarities to our old setting, though - or, rather, to the place Blackmoor would, eventually, have become. (And, effectively, had long become, in my home game, when the LFC ended.) The main theme of both post-140 NC Blackmoor, in the LFC, and for most of Gravesend, in Meleon, is that of ABANDONMENT: It's a place that is on the decline, for many years, and that only people go to that either are interested in history, or in hunting the relics of the past. For the LFC, and for my post-2010 Blackmoor games (because that's when things began IRL), this was a necessary measure, because only that way we were able to get to have the Reunited Kingdom, and then, obviously, the different stories that were supposed to, AND I SWEAR, BY HEXTOR, THAT THIS WILL BE MY LAST TRUMP JOKE, make Blackmoor great again during the later "Age of Theodore".

Now, Gravesend, or, rather, the general idea to have a dark, Arthurian fantasy setting in the same world as Angria (which, as you know was the craddle for Meleon) sprang simply from the idea that I didn't particularly want to quit on scenarios that toyed with that sense of abandonment, within a context of European culture; I dreamed about a place where all big battles had already been fought, a place that has outlived its use to history. No big empire was going to rise from *my* setting, any more, as the political and cultural focus of my world had switched elsewhere. Gravesend, (then simply known as "Cold River"), would be a place, not of expansion, or of particular despair, but of an intensifying alienness and silence, just as real-world ruined sites are. - This again, is not necessarily a testimony to my immortal sense of rustic poetry; late 2e MERP, which was perhaps the biggest influence on my actual gaming, during my teens, transports that feeling, in particular, especially the farther North you take your party. And so, I had many sources from which to borrow.

That all said, this is not a writer's setting, but a DM's, and, so, I got to keep the story interesting: So, to create a dynamic plot that my players could draw upon, I used, no kidding, Shakespeare's King Lear as a base for the kingdom of Duneyrr's internal struggle. - I won't tell you how exactly I adapted the plot, because that would probably disclose too much about stuff I still want to use in our game, here, but let's say that, at least at this point, the resemblance to the Shakespearean tale is still more than a little bit noticeable. I also, in English, always use with a model - so I can copy language, plain and simple. Good dialogue, of whatever sort, is not something I can do naturally, in another language. - Right now, and somewhat consequently, Gravesend/Cold River feels a bit like (MERP's) Angmar of the 4th Tolkienian Age meeting Bernard Cornwell's Alfredian England, as seen in "The Last Kingdom".

The current game I'm running is pretty basic, partly because I still run games in Angria, from time to time. Cold River, the great lost city to the North, is obviously fulfilling the same dramatic function that Blackmoor Town does in "The Age of Theodore" - but while Blackmoor Town, as I describe it in post-LFC continuity, is usually a town left to non-humans and monsters, Cold River is a "Salem's Lot"-esque ghost town full of horrors. Like, in Blackmoor, you might get eaten. In Cold River, you lose your mind. - Again, there's the general theme of abandonment that Duneyrr and Gravesend are supposed to transport: It's not "the edge of the wild", where we are. The world just ends once you cross Maiden's Vale, and enter Cold River Riding.

At the moment, the game concentrates on a generally unmapped area, on the Northeastern Wosas Range, and South of famed Castle Starling: The "Starlings" are one of the two great magic orders of the kingdom, the other being the "Herons". The Starlings are what popular fantasy usually refers to as "blue mages", and the "Herons", who, so far, have played a way more prominent than the Starlings, are what is usually referred to as "artificers".

The party, meanwhile, is mainly focused on exploring a place called "Sword Hill", a location perhaps best comparable to the Bonegarden, from the Hawkmoon setting. They operate from a small township, Rochester Dwelling", and, while presently still preoccupied with a local orc problem, the next big turning point for the party (you are "The Band of the Scions", they are "The Brickheads") will be to decide whether they want to take part in the impending conflict between the two magical orders.

Outside of that particular game, I'm building the setting, as you know it, around three general flagship characters - outside of the Angrian ones, that is. Lately, one of them has become the main focus of my exploits, whenever I sit down and work on joint timelines, and such: Reda Heron, a farmer-become-artificer, who is basically Ken Follett's Tom Builder with apprentice magic skills. Previous flagship characters I had used, Rowell, his descendant Rowan (whom you will likely never meet), or the previous Meleon characters, were all some sort of memetic badasses, somewhat superhuman by their very definition. - With this newest approach, I'm trying something else... Though I'm not above sabotaging myself: Reda travels with a companion, the "Red Knight" I name this continuity after: His name, and that's about everything I can tell you about him right now, is Leir. And he is not yet a mad king.


DUN DUN DUN. More later.