The Road to Rhym

A few days ago I posted about how I came to publish Rhym through FOE.  But I didn't go into the journey.  And believe me, it was indeed quite a learning experience!  After getting a look at the massive info dump JP Chapleau asked me to reduce things down to just the bits absolutely needed.  I'm the sort who thinks about church architecture, priestly vestments, tectonic plates, trade routes, erosion patterns, and numerous other details when designing a world.  And in this case, I'd written a lot of that stuff down.

But do you need all that to run a game in Rhym?  Not so much.  You need to know the big stuff, the important stuff, the neat stuff.  So I boiled it down to that.  Then we started adding things back in.  JP suggested things, or made tweaks here and there, and even supplied some content.  But the bulk of the beast is made up of meat from the original document, now well seasoned and laid out with an eye to making it useful for a Dungeon Master.  The net result is something you can go and buy.  And hopefully enjoy.

Rhym:  Under the Rings

I wish I could claim the fabulous cover as my own work, but it isn't!  JP commisioned it from a wonderful artist named Irene Compos  You can see more of her work at DeviantArt.com.

Fiction: No Chance Meeting - Part II

Fiction by J. D. Conrad - 2015

Continued from Part I

Nerus kept an appropriately humble expression on his chubby round face as he walked to the aristocrat's table.   He carefully set the hot mug down in front of the rich fool.  Putting a smile on his face and servile tone in his voice he said, “There you go good sir.  Tarani devil's tea.  Best thing for a body on damp evening like this.  It'll warm you right up!”  The wealthy pigeon didn't even say thank you as Nerus swept the coin into his meaty hand.  When he looked down he saw the coin was not silver, it was a Cathari Platinum Imperial!  This idiot must be filthy rich.  This was turning out to be a good day.  First the metal coated moron.  His horse and equipment would bring a fist full of gold.  Now this peacock.  If his jewelry and this coin were any indication of his wealth he might be worth keeping alive for ransom.  As he stepped back behind the bar and swung the gate closed with another loud thwap he glanced at the knight.  Not even a twitch.  He was surely asleep, maybe even dead. Nerus had used more of the potion in his drink than usual.  He looked far too vigorous and well armed to have him waking up at an inconvenient moment.

#

Aleeto raised his eyebrows as he held the mug to his nose and sniffed.  Sure enough, this dump was serving one of the most expensive beverages you could find in the Northlands.  And doing it Southern style.  The red cocoa bean powder had been mixed with hot water and so many hot spices that the smell alone made his eyes water.  None the less he took a delicate drink, making a slurping sound as he sucked in some of the scalding liquid.  He almost coughed it back out as the rich bitter taste of the cocoa was blasted aside by too much hot pepper.  Yes, this would indeed warm a person up.  But this concoction would also hide whatever potion or poison the barman had put into the drink.  So it was a good thing that Aleeto had taken a vial of anti-toxin just in case.

Not that it was likely that whatever the barman had used on him would have worked anyway.  For over two decades he had been on a regimen of poisons and antidotes designed to make him nearly invulnerable to such things.  But after reading the guild's secret reports on this place he'd wanted to be extra careful.  Well, careful wasn't going to happen.  He'd have to take more chances than he'd intended if wanted to pull the armored do gooder's chestnuts out of the fire.

So he winced each time he took a sip of the fiery beverage and made sounds of appreciation.  Even one of the Old Families probably wouldn't be very familiar with Devil's Tea, but they would know it is something that the rich and powerful in the Empire drink.  So it would have to be sinfully tasty, right?  They'd never show any sign it wasn't just the most wonderful thing.  At least the overblown dunderhead he was pretending to be wouldn't.

Glancing over at the knight he could see the armored chest of the slumped figure moving slightly as he breathed.  So whatever was in the drink must be some sort of sleeping potion.  Well, that was good.  Probably.  Aleeto winced again, he really wasn't that hard was he?  The knights weren't a bad lot.  Trying to protect pilgrims on their way to the Most Holy Temple.  The order fought bandits and creatures along the entire length of a road that nearly bisected the continent of Rhym.  He would feel bad if one was poisoned by scum like this.  Wouldn't he?

He'd finished nearly half the drink and decided that was enough.  His mouth was on fire.  Making sure that the barman was trying to watch him without being seen doing so, Aleeto rubbed his face and blinked.  He sat the mug on the table, keeping hold of it in such a way that his arm rested on the surface.  Then he slowly slumped back as though passing out.

#

Nerus idly rubbed a cloth across the scuffed bar top and tried to surreptitiously keep an eye on the pigeon as he drank the tea.  Soon the aristocrat was nodding off, his head lolling back so far it was surprising that the fop didn't slump out of the chair onto the floor.  He glanced back and forth between his sleeping “guests,” then he went to the end of the bar and opened the gate.  “Thwap!” Not a twitch out of either of them.  He stuck his head into the back and called out, “Alright you louts, get out here and see to these fat pigeons.”  He stood to the side as his cousin Antoneo and a half-orc he'd hired for this sort of work named Groll came out into the taproom.  Groll was half a head taller than Nerus, and weighed just as much, nearly all of it muscle.  The two looked back and forth at the sleepers, then headed for Aleeto.  He looked lighter since he wasn't wearing armor.  Noticing where his henchmen were heading Nerus said, “Go ahead, slit both their throats.”  Groll pulled a wicked looking knife from his belt and smiled.

Read the conclusion

Image: The Bridge of Heaven

When I saw this image it made me think of how things must look from the surface of Rhym.  The Washington DC view would be about right for how the Bridge of Heaven would look from Doria.

This image is linked from AsapScience on facebook.com.

Fiction: No Chance Meeting - Part I

Fiction by J. D. Conrad - 2015

At least the rain had stopped. After three soggy days in the saddle Aleeto kept thinking things like “I'm too old for this!” and “I should be back at the guild hall next to a warm fire reading reports, not out here riding through this sodden mess.”  He could have let a junior member of the guild take care of this task, but he hadn't visited Three Corners and seen his cousin Delmar for almost two years. Now here he was with saddle sores and soaked clothes.

So when he saw the rather seedy looking Inn ahead, he heaved a sigh of relief. He was almost glad to ride through the gate into the muddy courtyard and stiffly drop from his horse. He turned and looked at the creature with a gimlet eye. He much preferred traveling by boat. But for this mission it had to by horse. Neither he nor this four legged torturer were very happy about that.

He was distracted from the sour regard of his mount by the squelching sound of someone walking through the thick mud. A large gangly young fellow with the slack face of an imbecile was working his way toward him from the stable. Once within arm's reach he mumbled, “See to yer horse m'lord?” Aleeto gave him a broad smile and loudly proclaimed, “Certainly my good man.” His accent marked him as member of one of the Republic's “Old Families.” His hand fished out a pale gold Tarani coin, and dropped it into the gaping moron's hand. “Take good care of him and there will be another of those for you in the morning.” Then he turned to regard the Inn.

He grimaced as his back popped from the motion. So he placed his hands on his hips and arched his back, making a long groan of mixed pain and pleasure as he stretched. His raised eyes fell on the afternoon sky. As is common after a hard rain the sunset was turning out to be especially beautiful. Full of yellows and oranges, yet somehow the light almost appeared to have a green tint to it. And there arching over the clouds was the so called Bridge of Heaven, its bands of silver shaded a faint yellow in the glorious firmament.

As an educated man Aleeto of course knew the bridge was really a set of rings that circled around the whole world. Why just last month he'd read a monograph by a diviner who had used a new spell to closely inspect the rings, and found that the theory they were some form of cloud was not at all correct. In fact they were made up of countless jagged chunks of rock and ice, so it was not any sort of bridge. More like ever so many tiny moons.

Dropping his eyes from the lovely sky to the door of the Inn, he noted the green paint was peeling. Scanning the entire courtyard he noticed a general need for repairs. Peeling paint not only on the door, but on the Inn and stable walls. A pair of missing boards in the compound's fence. And there a pair of rusted chains where a sign had once hung. He gave the chains a lopsided grin; there were things in this place that were more deserving of being hung than any sign.

He sighed again as he squelched through the gelatinous mud toward to the door. He paused, hand on the latch to try and scrape some of the mud from his shoes, but after a moment just gave up and pushed into the building. The first thing he noticed, even in the dim lantern light, was that he was not the first person to track mud inside. From the looks of it, he was not even in the first dozen.

He raised his eyes from the mud encrusted rushes on the floor and saw a slovenly rotund man giving him a wide grin from behind the bar. As Aleeto pushed the door closed behind himself the man opened his jowly jaws and greeted him, “Welcome to the Woodcutter's Rest good sir. How fare you?”

Aleeto pulled his body into the cocky posture so many of the upper crust of the Republic used, then strutted forward as if preparing to preen a set of tail feathers. “I am doing atrociously my good fellow! Have you ever seen such rain this time of year? And me forced to be out in it. I've not a dry patch from crown to toe.” To demonstrate, he swung off his fur trimmed cloak, scattering droplets across the filthy floor, draped it over his arm and used his bejeweled free had to give his tiny goatee a squeeze. It actually made a trickle of water fall from his chin to the slightly rounded midsection below. He looked down with a dismayed expression at the expensive fabric of his tunic, stuck to him with water and spattered here and there with the ubiquitous mud.

The barman gave a gravelly chuckle and said, “I see what you mean sir. Well, you sit right down and I'll have a proper treat for you faster than a Churchman's blessing.”

“Now that sounds quite lovely my good fellow.” Aleeto turned, sweeping the whole room with his gaze and saw there was another guest. A sturdy looking young fellow still wearing armor, sword and dagger. The coif of his mail was pushed back revealing shaggy brown hair and a slightly scruffy beard. He was slumped over, obviously asleep, with his face only inches from the clay mug between his hands. Even so, the sun and horizon symbol used by the Knights of the Long Road was clearly visible on his surcoat.

Aleeto was so annoyed that he mentally grumbled to himself, “A Paladin, well away from his usual haunts and now in need of a rescue. There goes my careful plan.”

Showing no reaction outwardly he strutted over to one of the other tables and seated himself in a grand manner. He tossed his cloak over an empty chair, leaned back and put his muddy boots in the seat of another. “Well then barman, bring me your best.” He leaned to the side to fish out a dull silver colored coin with a square hole in its center and dropped it by the candle stick in the middle of the rickety table.

While he appeared simply a wet and weary traveler, Aleeto was busy thinking. Under half closed eyelids he was noting the location of every door, window and piece of furniture in the room. The only sign of inner turmoil was that his left thumb was nervously stroking the bronze ring on that same hand's index finger.

Keeping his promise the fat barman was very busy concocting some beverage. Hot liquid from a tiny kettle was poured into a heavy clay mug and then quickly stirred. Using thick callused fingers he placed the mug on a small pewter tray. The partition at the end of the bar made a loud thwap as he swung it open and the man began to ponderously make his way toward Aleeto.

To be continued...

Welcome to Rhym!

My journey to create Rhym started about two years ago.  It began when I got my hands on the new 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules.  They intrigued me.  I was one of those folks who wouldn't touch 4th Edition D&D.  But I could understand why a lot of folks might not like the complexity of the D20 system versions of the game like 3.5 and Pathfinder.

Of course the first thing I did was make a bunch of characters.  All of them needed backgrounds of course.  And I had been running all my D&D games in the Forgotten Realms since it's first release back in AD&D days.  But I ran into a problem.  I'd have to convert a huge amount of stuff to work with the 5e rules if I used Mr. Greenwood's realm, because the publishers in their wisdom had not released a traditional style settings book for 5e.

Given all this, and decades of world building experience for many game systems, I made up my first D&D game world since the 1980s.  In between I'd created settings for Hero Systems, GURPS, In the Labyrinth, Traveller, and many others.  So it wasn't like it was the first time I'd done this.  But I did go a bit overboard.

After a few weeks of furious typing and drawing I had around 89,000 words and dozens of maps and diagrams filling around 160 pages.  I tried to put them in some semblance of order thinking I'd be sharing with those folks who found themselves playing in any 5e game I happened to be running.  And so things sat for a good while.

Then I went to Conglomeration in 2016.  I was interested in perhaps doing some writing for the game industry, so I attended a panel where JP Chapleau happened to say that what publishers wanted was work that was finished.  On impulse, I spoke to him as we were leaving.  "Hey, know any publishers who might be interested in a completed D&D 5e setting."  His answer was, "Yes.  Me."  And thus began our partnership in bringing what I hope is a fun, detailed and slightly twisted campaign setting to the gaming community.