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…
