It is Dark Age for the land of Baal Hamazi. The old empire has fallen apart, and now isolated city-states struggle to preserve a small fraction of the Empire’s fallen glory, while holding at bay savages—many of them descended from former slaves of the Empire who have no love for the Hamazin—and who infest most of the wastelands that separate the city-states from each other. Meanwhile, the native kemlings who made up the upper castes of the old Hamazin society have abandoned their homeland in these trying times in record numbers, further weakening and diluting the remnants of their people. Most city-states have had to make compromises with the cultural principles of the past, including accommodations with the descendants of the former lower castes, or allowing large numbers of alien immigrants to settle among them.

All of this you know, as you have been working for at least some months in the area. What you don’t know is… Where are you? What are you doing out here in the wild, surrounded by the remains of a destroyed caravan? What’s the deal with the phases of the moon? It shouldn’t be full unless… you’ve somehow lost two weeks! The last thing you can remember it was the 40th day of Autumn and you were in Glittering Simashki about to embark on a long trading tour east to Bucknerfeld. Now, according to the moon, it’s the 55th day of Autumn give or take a couple of days and you are somehow in the Gorgelands of Baal Hamazi, many miles to the west of Simashki. What happened?

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The game will be played using the Dark Fantasy X rules. Hardcore Mode optional rules and customized races will not be used for this campaign. There are no other house rules in effect. Characters may pick any race or class from the book, and we will create level 1 characters at the first session together and then jump right in! If you don’t know the rules, they’re not that hard and I can walk you through it as we play.

It is expected that the first leg of the game will take place in Baal Hamazi and maybe some of the nearby areas in the desert. Both wilderness survival and travel as well as urban intrigue and chicanery will feature heavily. Before play, you should pick or invent a background for your character that gives him a connection to the general area. Here are a few samples that you can choose from, or consult with me and invent your own!

Local: You were born and raised in the area, either in the urban center of Simashki, or in the rural lands nearby. If this is your background, you are most likely 1) a kemling; a member of the race who once proudly ruled this land, but who now see their old Imperial dreams turned to dust and ash before their eyes. Many of your people have fled for greener pastures, but your family may well have decided to hold their ground. Either that, or you may be one of the many kemlings who are somewhat embarrassed by the obvious trafficking with daemons which was the infamous hallmark of that society.  2) Alternatively, you might be a drylander human; an ethnicity with bronzed skin, brown hair, and striking silver-chrome eyes. Many of them were former slaves of the kemlings, but now have fought for their freedom. Some live in tribes in the wastelands, much as they did when they rebelled against the kemlings and refused to submit to their overlordship, but many also live in the cities, and following the collapse of Baal Hamazi society, they have made a new place for themselves. 3) The skraelings who live here never submitted to the kemlings either, but kept a lower profile. In recent years, they have come to more prominence, although exactly what their secretive shamans and witch doctors want is unclear to most, even their own people. Some of them have left their tribes, seeing opportunity in the new landscape of the area.

Trader: A number of peoples trade with some of the city-states, particularly “Glittering” Simashki at the foot of the gigantic Rudmont Escarpment, which is where you were. Few independents are allowed in by the local government, so most are associated with Guilds or Syndicates operating out of Volek Szemennok in the north, Bucknerfeld in the east or Lomar even further east. If you are a human of a more normal ethnicity, like the Hill Country folk, or a jann, or a cursed, or even maybe some wose or orc muscle, this is most likely why you are in the area. You probably have contacts and friends in town who you’ve worked with through your guild or other organization that you had to join in order to operate here.

Refugee: Your family is originally from Timischburg, but you have lived here for many years. You’re not sure why your family left everything behind that it had in the south, but your parents seem to have a bitter and yet fearful attitude about it, and they are prone to bouts of paranoia, and looking suspiciously over their shoulders at everyone that they don’t already know. You have never been able to convince them to tell you more about it, but a bit of that suspicious attitude may have rubbed off on you as well, and you have imagined any number of dark threats in the south searching for you and your family. Timischer and Tarushan humans are the obvious choices here, but woses, cursed, and more can all come from this area as well. Nephilim live like this no matter where they are most of the time. If you are an even more exotic or unusual race, this may well fit your backstory too.

Seeker: Elemer Korosi. That’s the Tarushan man you have been looking for. Your patron has hired you to find him, and you’ve tracked him to Simashki. You aren’t supposed to contact him, you don’t know what your patron wants him for, he just wants him located and his whereabouts reported back. In a stroke of luck, you found where he was just days before he was to embark on a journey by caravan to the East. Intending to join the caravan and keep track of him, you woke up without a clue as to what happened. He is not among the people with you or the dead bodies in the wreckage of the caravan. Any race or background could be one of these.

In Hiding: You fled to Simashki in disguise because you had a price on your head due to a misunderstanding with a crime boss in Isin. Afraid that you’d been made, even here, you decided to stay on the move and go even further east, away from the agents of your nemesis. Unfortunately, somehow you’ve ended up back west again...

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The themes of this campaign will include horror, mystery, investigation, swashbuckling adventure, and dark fantasy. Imagine a combination of supernatural horror and fantasy, with no doubt a fair bit of dry gallows humor. If The Three Musketeers were combined with The Godfather, the Old West, Dracula, and the horrors of the Chaos powers of the Warhammer World, you’ll have a pretty good idea of the tone and theme of this campaign.