Pilcrow

Ivars the Troll came stomping out of the woods one day. Up he strode to the gates of Bell-town, and he banged upon the gates with a massive fist. Open the gates to me, he cried. Now a troll is not to be trifled with, but the people of Bell-town felt secure behind their walls and gates, and so they asked, Who are you, ruffian, to demand entrance so? The troll answered, I am Ivars, and I will be a Wizard of Cetak! At that there was much laughter, for all knew that, fearsome though they may be, trolls were uncouth barbarians without the wit for wizardry. So the guards said, Be off! We'll not have your foolishness here. Were you a Wizard, you could enter at will without force. Ivars replied, Indeed! If you wil not open the gates for me, why, I will make a gate for myself. Fearing an assault, the guards readied their weapons. But Ivars stepped back, and with a hum and a thrum and a wave of his hands, he bade the stones of the wall to move aside for him. And the stones shivered and shifted, they slid and they stacked, and soon there was a new archway through the wall. Ivars strode through the archway into Bell-town, and said, I'll not have others use my arch, and with another wave, the stones moved back to seal the wall. 


Now the burghers of Bell-town still did not want an uncouth troll claiming the status of Wizard, so they sent to the Conclave. The sorcerers of the Conclave came to Bell-town and challenged Ivars, saying, We know the fey have the secret of stone-speech. Your trick is not enough to claim to be a Wizard. Ivars laughed at the sorcerers and said, Set forth your challenge! I am Ivars, and I will be a Wizard of Cetak! The sorcerers said, Though you be strong of body, all know that trolls are weak of will. We shall compel you to return to the woods, and you will not resist. And they stretched forth their staves, and scribed the symbols in the air, and declared, Begone! But Ivars laughed again, and said, Troll I am, but Wizard I will be, and you will bow to my will. And with a hum and a thrum and a wave of his hands, he wiped the symbols from the air, and with unseen hands hoisted the sorcerers into the air by their staves till they cried out for mercy. Then Ivars let them fall with a bump to the ground, and the sorcerers bowed before him and departed on the wind back to the Conclave.



Still were the burghers of Bell-town reluctant to call a troll Wizard. So they said, if this troll claims to be a Wizard, we'll let a Wizard deal with him. And they sent for the Wizard Kyson. The burghers cried, We'll not have this troll here sullying our town! See him off! And Kyson said, I will see to this troll. Kyson stode to the square where Ivars waited, and looked the troll square in the eye. Ivars returned the gaze without flinching. And Kyson extended his hand and said, Welcome, brother Wizard. For Wizard knows Wizard. And Ivars grinned and cried, I am Ivars, and I am a Wizard of Cetak! And the burghers bowed their heads in acquiescence. And that is how Ivars the Troll became a Wizard of Cetak.

This is a story the people of Bell-town tell of the Lace Queen:


A young elf maiden had business to attend in the dark alleys of Near-Square. She came to a shifty-eyed merchant and said, I have need of ten ounces of morphenas, for my uncle is ill. The merchant replied, morphenas comes out of the Sunderground and is hard to get, it will cost you a hundredweight in gold per ounce. The elf maiden said, I have not gold in such amounts, but can offer you a fine pearl instead, and she drew forth from a small purse a shining pearl larger than any the merchant had ever seen. The merchant's eyes widened, and he stretched forth a hand to take the pearl, but in his greedy haste he trod upon the tail of a cat from the alley, which had been twining itself about the elf maiden's legs. The elf maiden drew back her hand at that and said, you should take more care for the cats. But the merchant spat and said, cats are worthless, skulking about and taking what they will but giving nothing in return, and he kicked the cat from his path. The elf maiden's eyes darkened and she declared, I shall not bargain with a man who mistreats cats, and she strode off.


Now the merchant was angry, and he called to him two ruffians and told them, I'll not lose out on a sale on account of some verminous cat! We'll go after that maiden and take her pearl, and more besides. So the trio pursued the elf maiden down through the dark alleys and cornered her, and the merchant said, you should have taken the deal, now I'll have your pearl and whatever else I may like. But the maiden said coldly, I told you I shall not bargain with one who mistreats cats, but I shall certainly deal with you! And the trio suddenly heard a chorus of snarling miaows, and found themselves surrounded by a circle of cats with narrowed eyes and bared teeth. As the merchant turned to swat at the cats, they pounced upon him. The ruffians too found themselves swarmed as they tried to help the merchant, attacked fiercely until they were forced to flee, with clothes and skin in tatters from claws, one with eyes scratched out, the other with ears bitten off. 


An hour later, having convinced some other merchants to check out their story, the two ruffians timidly led a small crowd back to the alley where they had cornered the elf maiden. And there they found an unusually large number of cats lounging about contentedly, but no sign of the merchant who had kicked the cat and pursued the maiden, nor was he ever seen again. But later that afternoon yet another merchant told the tale of how he had been visited by an elf maiden who traded a pearl of great price for ten ounces of morphenas, and how the maiden had been accompanied by a cat that seemed friendly and content yet made the merchant nervous the whole time.



It is said that that elf maiden was the Lace Queen. And to this day, no one in Near-Square will dare to harm a cat.

I've been doing a little more thinking and note-taking about my Cetak/Chiaroscuro setting for Dungeon World. One thing I was thinking about was what to call creatures of the Shadowfell—I don't want to call them "shadows" as a category, or "shades". I was thinking of using "shadowen" (which comes from Terry Brooks' Heritage of Shannara series), I'm also thinking "shaden". Maybe "shadekin"? Any thoughts? Anyhow, that's an aside to my main idea here.

I'd been thinking specifically about orcs. I had the idea that they should be shadowen (I'll just keep using that for now), and started to flesh them out a bit. Or rather, not flesh them out: I thought it'd be cool if on the prime world their heads have the appearance of bare skulls (possibly with a pair of small horns), while in the Shadowfell they're grey-skinned and look more like the Lord of the Rings film orcs from Moria. I also wrote without thinking about it that there are no orcs in the Feywild; as shadowen, this makes sense, of course, and it also fits in with the way that orcs are generally (but not always) distinct from the goblin races in D&D. But today I was thinking some more about their appearance: if they were fleshed out in the Shadowfell but skull-headed in the prime world, how would they appear in the Feywild? I had an image of them as hooded robes containing nothing but shadows, like Tolkien's Ringwraiths, and suddenly got excited about it. Maybe it wasn't just that orcs weren't native to the Feywild, maybe they actually had no substance there and appeared just as shadows—possibly still dangerous and capable of causing harm, possibly not.

The immediate follow-up thought was that, if orcs were just shadows in the Feywild, then perhaps elves were shining spirits in the Shadowfell, likewise insubstantial and possibly ineffectual. It's rather Tolkienesque, but hey, the symmetry is neat. However, it does lead to a potential problem: if player characters can be elves, what happens when they go to a dungeon in the Shadowfell? As I'm leaning toward having the spirit-forms being ineffectual as well as insubstantial, that wouldn't work so well for players. A corollary thought was, hey, why aren't there half-orc options for any of the player characters? Half-orcs are part of classic AD&D, if not old-school red-box basic D&D. (Looks like half-orcs were introduced with AD&D 1st edition.)

So, I have two ideas on handling this concept with player characters. My first idea is that elf characters would have a magic elfstone that anchored them to the Feywild, building off the tether-stone idea and passkey-stone idea I've discussed before. By implication, there would also be orcstones, though perhaps the orcs could be searching for such a thing so that they can assault the Feywild. My second idea, building off my question why there aren't half-orcs, is that there are no elf player characters after all; I would simply substitute "half-elf" for "elf" in any of the class options. Hmm, I thought at least one class had a half-elf option already, but in the current draft none do, so perhaps it was taken out. Half-elves, by virtue of their human side, would maintain their appearance, substance, and effectiveness in the Shadowfell; if I added half-orcs as an option, they would do the same in the Feywild. Now that I've written down these two ideas, I'm inclined to keep both of them: no elves (heh) for player characters, just half-elves, and adding half-orc moves for some classes; and elves and orcs may keep their substance in their opposing plane through an appropriate tether-stone, but perhaps those are extremely rare.

Oh and while I'm thinking of it, I'll just toss this bit out there too: fuck the drow. No demon-spider-worshipping elves in my setting. Really, the proper counterpart to the elves are the goblins; they are, after all, all fey.

As a corollary to the planar overlap of Chiaroscuro, some beings have a singular planar nature while others are diverse. Those with a single nature always have the same appearance and abilities no matter where they are, while the diverse—which I'm thinking of calling "changelings" as a category—vary (consistently for each kind) in appearance and possibly abilities depending on which plane they're in.

For example, elves are originally from the Feywild. An elf is an elf, whether in the Feywild, the prime world, or the Shadowfell. Dark ones (dark creepers and dark stalkers, originally from the Fiend Folio, and creatures I've always found intriguing) are from the Shadowfell, and are always recognizable as such. I had the idea that beings from the Feywild and the Shadowfell have a telltale sign marking their nature when on other planes, like Feywild natives always have a kind of glimmering about them while Shadowfell natives have animated shadows, or something like that.

Changelings, however, may not even be recognizably the same being on different planes. For example, a medusa from the Shadowfell might be a basilisk in the Feywild, and a hydra in the prime world. As I've considered replacing halflings with ratmen, I might instead say that halflings appear as such in the prime world, but as ratmen in the Shadowfell, and as something else (satyrs?) in the Feywild. (Tony suggested that changelings might not simply look different in different planes, but might actually be different life-stages: the basilisk of the Feywild is the larval form, the hydra of the prime world is the pupa, and the medusa is the adult, perhaps.)

This is more for color than anything, I think, but it could have some effect if for example the players are told to expect a medusa in a certain dungeon, only to discover they're facing a basilisk instead. And of course if I make halflings be also changelings, then players who choose to have halfling characters would find themselves changing in different dungeons, though in that case I would say their abilities remain the same. 

Obviously I'd have to have tags for fey, shadow (or maybe "shadowen", borrowing the term from one of the Shannara series), and changeling. I'd also want those descriptors to have some meaning when creating dungeons.

(Putting "Chiaroscuro" in the title for this post, as it's an overall setting concept, not just a Setak/Seattle concept. I'll probably have to start using those tags on the posts.)

After a couple people mistook "Setak" for "steak", I'm now thinking about changing the spelling to "Cetak". I like that it looks related to "cetacean", so I can claim the name is related to the ancient word for whales and thus the city is named for the orcas that populate the Sound.

I haven't really spent much more time developing ideas on the city, just walking around with a few further vague thoughts and mostly with the desire to do more with it.

I'm thinking that the area around the Needle may be known as the Halls of the Ancients. Definitely want dungeons there, probably something ready by Go Play NW. The Needle may be the home of the wizard Adkiss, or maybe has unknown inhabitants and functions as a dungeon. I'm not sure yet.

What's prevented the local populace from plundering these dungeons already? Aside from the fact that they're not the player characters, and therefore aren't the heroes—is that enough? Seems like there should be some plausible in-setting explanation—and it has to account both for the fact of the locals not plundering but also whatever dangerous creatures dwell there not sacking the surrounding settlements. That's kind of true for any dungeon, of course, but here with the dungeons and settlements entwined, it's more of an issue.

I think I want rat-men in the setting, whether more like Talislanta's ferrans or more like D&D's wererats, I'm not sure. If more on the wererat side, I don't think I'd have them capable of passing on "lycanthropy", as they do in standard D&D. I'm also thinking about replacing the standard halflings with the rat-men.

I'm very likely going to mix in some Talislanta monsters and some of the beasts from Shadowrun's Paranormal Animals of North America, as well as both typical and unusual D&D monsters. I know I've got a few favorites I'm looking forward to tossing in.

And still not ready with that Dungeon World class, I didn't spend any time on it yet today, after all. Maybe after I post this…

It's not Seattle, it's "Setak". It's highly likely for that reason that I'll work the Egyptian god Sutekh in somehow, in some fashion.

The population is diverse—elves, dwarves, halflings, and humans. And not just that, but goblins and such as well.

Bell-town: Obviously the residents carry bells around with them. Maybe to keep ghosts away. I think it's probably considered the safest enclave, at least among humans.

The Queen's Hill: Most of the elves live here. The Lace Queen naturally looks just like Stevie Nicks, except elvish.

Cap-Ill: Probably has an undead problem, underground, hence the name. The Cathedral may still be in use, holy orders up there trying to keep the Ill contained beneath the ground, but of course you can access the Catacombs from the Cathedral. Mad Rona is known to wander about on Cap-Ill.

Near-Square: Ta Yu dominates the Id, and his influence extends into Near-Square, certainly, although that's pretty lawless. Near-Square and the Under-Square are where you'll find Setak's goblinoid population, and easy entrances to the Sunderground. Watch out for dark creepers and dark stalkers.

Gorgetown: Probably where the dwarves tend to live, maybe gnomes as well. 

The University: Hmm, perhaps a Sutekh connection works there? Also, that's the stronghold of the Conclave, who of course are all wizards and sorcerers and loremasters.

Throwing down some ideas percolating in my mind about using a post-apocalyptic version of Seattle as the setting for running Dungeon World adventures.  Just jotting down whatever I can before midnight, and just whatever comes off the top of my head, not consulting a map or information about Seattle.

Enclaves
Bell-town
The Queen's Hill
The Id
Near-Square
Cap-Ill
The University
Gorgetown

Wizards
Ta Yu
The Lace Queen
Ivars the Troll
The Conclave
Mad Rona
Adkiss

Towers and Dungeons
The Needle
The Cathedral
Amazon Hill / Pakmed Castle / Beaconsfortress
The Works
Chittering Dam
Sunderground / Under-Square
Pike Market

Distant Realms
Coma
Orcs' Island
Bane Bridge