Conquistador - Turning it into a D&D Setting - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Conquistador - Turning it into a D&D Setting

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
tom_kalbfus
May 31, 2008 11:34:41 Conquistador by S.M. Stirling is an Alternate History Novel by S.M. Stirling. In Oakland, California, 1946, an Ex-soldier John Rolfe, newly back from the Pacific, has made a fabulous discovery: a portal to an alternate America where Europeans have never set foot - and the only other humans in sight are a band of curious Indians. Able to return at will to the modern world, Rolfe summons the only people with whom he is willing to share his discovery; his war buddues, And he tells them to bring their families.

So far so good, but here's where we change the setting:
Electronic technology, and gunpowder is inoperative, forcing a resort to medeaval technology, and magic and monsters exist along side the native Indians encountered. Some of the Indians can use magic. Across the oceans the Europeans have their feudal states descended from the Alexandrian Empire, where Alexander lived to a ripe old age of 70.

When Alexander did not die in 323 BCE., the history of the world and its peoples turned down an entirely new track.

After recovering from his illness, Alexander spent several years consolidating his vast conquests, and pressing forward with his policy of Graeco-Iranian synthesis and Greek colonization. In 320 B.C.E., the Greek cities of Sicily and southern Italy, pressed by the Carthaginians and Italics, appealed to Alexander, and a new round of conquests began....

Alexander the Great died in August of 280 B.C.E., in the summer capital of Ecbatanta, in the Zagros mountains. He was succeeded by his son Alexander II (by the Bactrian-Persian princess Roxanne), and his dynasty remained in power for a further century and a half. By that time, the empire ruled from Babylon (renamed, of course, Alexandria) stretched from Iberia to the Ganges delta. After roughly A.D. 0, it began to decline and eventually fissured into a maze of quarrelsome city-state and regional kingdoms; by about A.D. 300 the last pretence of political unity was gone. Its ghost continued to haunt men's minds for many generations, and "Alexandros" became alternate title for Zeus, and the term for "ruler" as well.

Twenty-two hundred years after his death, the heritage of the Conqueror still marked the world. Since the Alexandrian empire had been much larger than Rome's, its legacy was more widespread; half the 600 million or so human beings on Earth in the early twenty-first century spoke languages derived from Greek, in much the same was as French, Spanish and so forth are derived from Latin. The post-Alexandrian linguistic/cultural zone encompassed the whole Mediterranean basin, the Balkans as far north as the Carpathians, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Near East including Anatolia and the Caucasus, parts of the southern Ukrainr, most of the settled [art of Central Asia (plus Iran-Afghanistan), and northern India all the way from Pakistan to Bengal.

Technologically, the post-Greek zone was the most advanced part of the World prior to the opening of the Gate in 1946; the level is roughly late-medieval, and has shown little change for many centuries. Paper and printing are known, but gunpowder is not.

...

Now add to this magic, and monsters as well as a D&D Pantheon and you have for yourself a viable D&D setting.

These are the bare bones, the details have yet to be filled in, that's what I'd like to do here on this forum. Any suggestions?
#2
kouk
Jun 01, 2008 3:45:52 Seems plenty enough for a campaign. Just make a starting town/region and some living NPCs.
#3
tom_kalbfus
Jun 03, 2008 11:49:00 The Commonwealth of New Virginia is principally on the West Coast in what in our world would be called California. I'm using the convention of listing modern state and nation names to identify the location of various domains and kingdoms in this world as geographically this setting is identical to Earth.

The World War II veteran, John Rolfe accidentially opened a gate to this new World while fiddling with his radio set, a huge rectangular gate opened up in his basement and stayed on for as long as he powered his radio set. With some experimentation, he found that this effect only worked in that location and no where else. Apparently there was something specific to the geomagnetism and geography around his basement and his radioset activated a gate that was already there.

John Rolfe is actually John Rolfe VI, a descendent of the original John Rolfe of Virginia who married Pocahontas, he takes pride in that lineage, and has tried to establish a similar colony through the gate in his basement, he was recruited a number of friends and war buddies from his service in the Pacific and they have established 30 families, whose names and domains are as follows:

Rolfe
Domain: Napa, Lake County
Motto: "Carpe Diem et Omnia Mundi."
Sigil: Red lion rampant on black background

Fitzmorton (twice)
Alan Fitzmorton - Domain: south Oakland to San Leandro
Rob Fitzmorton - Domain: Sonoma Valley

O'Brien
Domain: Marin County
Motto: "O'Brien Go Braugh!"
Sigil: winged harp

Colletta
Domain: Santa Clara Valley
Motto: "Silence."
Sigil: winged sword

Hughes
Domain: Healdsburg area

Pearlmutter
Domain: San Francisco peninsula to Palo Alto - "New Brooklyn"
Motto: "The Best You Can."

Throckham
Domain: Petaluma

Filmer
Domain: Concord, Contra Costa

Tuke
Domain: Livermore-Amador, Contra Costa

Cooke
Domain: Orange County

Peyton
Domain: Lower Santa Ynez valley

Hammon
Domain: Pleasanton, Contra Costa

Hottywood
Domain: southern Santa Clara valley

Ludwins
Domain: western Santa Maria valley

Carons
Domain: Central Santa Clara (between Collettas, Rob Fitzmortons)

Von Traupitz
Domain: Suisun Valley

Chumley
Domain: western Yolo county
Motto: "Who dares, wins!"

Versfeld
Domain: Santa Monica, east along Santa Monica foothills
Motto: "Look before you trek!"

Bauer
Domain: Carmel, Carmel valley
Motto: "Death Holds No Repose."

Stanislaus
Domain: southarn Oxnard valley
Motto: "We Fight for Our Friends."

Morrison
Domain: Lower Salinas
Motto: "Down Styphon!"

Sanders
Domain: Upper Salinas

Sulgrave
Domain: Russian River valley
Motto: "Fortune Is Bald Behind."

Ball
Domain: Orange County

Fairfield
Domain: San Leandro (south of Alan Fitzmortons)
Motto: "By This Right."

Fest
Domain: Ventura; northern Oxnard
Motto: "Winter Isn't Coming."

Barklay
Domain: inland Santa Ynez valley, around Solvang
Motto: "How Shall One Fight a Hundred?"

Wyans
Domain: inland Santa Maria valley, around Sisquoc
Motto: "Westward the Course of Empire."

Batyushkov
Domain: Santa Cruz, Pajaro Valley
Motto: "Za Nas!"

Some Collaterals:
Di Montevarichi - collaterals of the Rob Fitzmorton line; relatives of his wife. Tuscan nobility

Population of the Commonwealth of New Virginia
75,000 Americans from Firstside (Earth)
75,000 Immigrants from Firstside (Earth) Germans, Italians, Russians, Afrikaners (from South Africa), Dutch from Indonesia, European colonists fron French North Africa, Kenya, and Rhodesia, and a scattering of various criminals on th run from the law.

Also among this mix are a number of involuntaries, various people who have stumbled upon John Rolfe's secret and who were thrown through the gate.

As of 2009, the Population distribution is about:

Rolfeston (Berkely) - 28,000
New Brooklyn (San Francisco) - 18,000
San Diego - 19,000
Napa - 5,000
Various small towns - 15,000
Farm and mine settlements - 50,000
Hawaii - 10,000
Australia - 5,000
Various outposts - 3,000

Also there are various Native Americans, known to the locals as "Indians" numbering about 40,000 in the New Virgina territory. The Aztec Empire in Mexico has reached the bronze age, but buys steel tools and weapons from the New Virginians. The New Virginians themselves reserve for themselves, plate mail armor produced on the Firstside in factories and imported through the gate. The New Virginians have a well equipped army and reserves outfitted in platemail, swords, shields, and crossbows, typically better equipped that the local Indians. Some of the Indians by contrast have better spell casters. The New Virginians are just learning magic and have discovered the Gods. The Indians have worshipped the D&D gods ever since the Vikings brought them over in 1000 ACE. The Greeks had abandoned their old gods in favor of the D&D gods when their clerics demonstrated the use of spells granted by their dieties, and over the centuries, the worship of these new gods spread throughout the globe through intermittant contacts. The New Virginians have a practical relationship with these gods, they pray to them for spells, yet they continue to adhere to their Firstside religion (Mostly Christianity with some scattering of Judaism). The colony is kept secret from firstsiders, who go on with their lives completely oblivious of what's happening in John Rolfe's basement, and John Rolfe does his best to keep the whole operation a secret, and meanwhile mines the locations of known deposites of gold and other valuable minerals than have already been extracted and exploited on the Firstside.

The New Virginians operate a Victorian era mechanical steam technology due to the nonfuctionality of electronics. For example, they have steam locomotives that run on crude oil than has been drilled and pumped out of long beach. firearms and guns don't work so they rely on swords and arrows instead.
#4
tom_kalbfus
Jun 04, 2008 9:40:24 That's well and good for the humans, now lets talk about some other races. In North America there is the Great Eastern Forest, a large part of it is bounded by the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Saint Lawrence River, and the Atlantic Ocean, this whole region is an elf domain. The elves are rather chaotic beings, their region is largely tribal consisting of hunter/gatherer clans. Elves and Indians typically intermingle along the banks of the Mississippi and in the Great Lakes region and the Saint Lawrence River.

During the past 60 years, some contact was made with the Europeans and the Asians, the post Alexandrian region spans three continents, Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa. The New Virginians made use of small ocean-spanning sailboats, the typical one had two triangular sails and a crew of four, the Europeans copied this design and were soon making contact with the Eastern shore of North America. The Asian kingdoms found the Pacific Ocean a much more formidable crossing. To the dismay of the New Virginian founders, the Comstock gold deposits were occupied by a Kingdom of Dwarves, dubbed "Rocky Mountain Dwarves" by the New Virginians. To the North, where agriculture is hardly feasible are tribes of orcs that are often in conflict with the Indians to the South and the New Virginian Settlers. To the South the Aztec Empire occupies a solid chunk of Mexico and Central America, they often make human sacrifices and there's a D&D god that readily receives them. South of the Aztec Empire in the region known as Panama, a vast wall is maintained spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, south of that wall is a "Lost World" of sorts inhabited by dinosaurs and primitive humans. The Aztecs spend considerable resources maintaining that wall to keep the dinosaurs out however they were seriously hampered when they were hit by the plagues that came with the humans from the Firstside, the wall has been in considerable disrepair since the early 1950s and has been all but abandoned since that time.

The areas corresponding to Washington and Oregon are the homes of giants and dragons, dragons particullarly like the volcanic peaks of Mount Saint Helens and Mount Rainier. An Ancient Red Dragon was apparently awakened by the volcanic explosion of Mount Saint Helens, and another Red Dragon resided on Mount Rainier for some time.

I would like to make this a group project if at all possible, the basic idea is to use the real geographical features of Earth as the locale for a bunch of fantastic creatures. So far I've populated North America with humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, giants, and dragons. The imported Earth humans have had to work around the limitations of their technology in this setting by harnessing steam engines, guns don't work, so they import mass produced armor and weapons from their home dimension. The currency is standard D&D currency, although the New Virginians call their gold coins "Dollars", silver coins are called "Dimes", and copper coins are dubbed "Pennies" A New virginian dollar or '$' is made of $1,000 American dollars worth of gold, the Dime is likewise $100 American dollars worth of Silver and the Penny is 10 American dollars worth of copper. A smaller copper coin called the Mill is made up of 1 American dollar's worth of copper and is much lighter on the pocket. currencies are expressed in the following format: $1,234.567, that is the equivalent of one million, two hundred thirty-four thousand, five hundred sixty-seven American dollars or One thousand, two hundred thirty-four dollars and five hundred and sixty-seven mills in New Virginian currency.

New Virginian homes typically range from $100 to $1,000 in New Virginian dollars, the typical income of a New Virginian is from $30 to $100 a year, a migrant farm worker or cowboy might earn less than $30 or 30 gp per year in D&D terms, that would be considered struggling. Homes are typically bought with mortgages, a typical morgage payment is about $1 a month for a small home with two or three bedrooms. New Virginian houses are typically outfitted with plumbing and draw their water from a well using either a hand water pump or from a gravity fed water tower whose water comes from a well that is pumped by a windmill. Self-winding watches are a hot item imported from the first side, mechanical box film cameras are used for making pictures. And there is a small export trade with the Aztecs in mechanical calculating machines, that is Babbage Numerical Intergrators, these are hand cranked mechanical computers, the Aztec high priests prize these mechanical contraptions in making their astronomical calculations. The Sun, Planets, and Moon by the way are named by New Virginians after Greek Gods: Helios (Sun), Hermes (Mercury), Aphrodite (Venus), Gaea (Earth), Selene (Moon), Ares (Mars), Zeus (Jupiter), Kronos (Saturn), Uranos (Uranus), Poseidon (Neptune), and Pluton (Pluto). Finding Poseidon and Pluton is exceedingly hard, there are a few reflectors and refractor optical telescopes that can spot such objects. Ares and Aphrodite appears somewhat different from Mars and Venus upon closer inspection, both have been observed to contain oxygen in their atmospheres. Mars' atmosphere is visibly thicker, and surface water is visible as well as vegitation and canals are apparently real.
#5
tom_kalbfus
Jun 05, 2008 12:59:07 NPCs
John Rolfe VI Founder of the Commonwealth of New Virginia
Class: Fighter
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Age: about 80 years old.

Charles Rolfe John Rolfe's Son
Class: Fighter
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Age: about 50 years old

Adrienne Rolfe John Rolfe's Grand Daughter
Class: Fighter
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Age: About 21 years old

Piet Botha Adrienne's Henchman
Class: Fighter
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Age: About 40
Notes: Piet is a White South African immigrant who didn't like recent developments reguarding black majority rule, so he fled his country, immigrated to the USA, and then was recruited by John Rolfe to join his colony of New Viginia.

Schalk van der Merwe Adrienne's second Henchman also a friend of Piet's.
Class: Fighter
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Age: About 40
Notes: Like Piet, Schalk is also an immigrant from South Africa, he immigrated for similar reasons to Piet.

Tom Christiansen Adrienne's boyfriend He was
Class: Ranger
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Age: 32
Notes: Tom was abducted by Adrienne and her two henchmen after investigating trafficking in endangered animals, Ivory, and other illegal commodities imported from New Virginia, in the course of his investigation, he and his partner learned about John Rolf's secret colony, and so to keep it a secret, he and his partner were abducted and sent through the gate so they couldn't tell US Authorities. A US Army veteran, served in Afghanistan and Iraq, he was working for the Department of Fish and Game tracking down suspected poachers, when he was kidnapped.

Roy Tully Friend and Associate of Tom Christianson
Class: Ranger
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Age: 30 something
Notes: Also works for the US Fish and Game Department, also abducted to New Virginia

Lord Seven Flower Aztec High Priest and Chief
Class: Cleric
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Age: 28
Notes: Trades with conspirators exporting animal products to the US.

Karl von Traupitz Ex-Nazi SS officer, leader of the von Traupitz family
Class: Fighter
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Age: 80
Note: seeks the overthrow of John Rolfe, is a conspirator in the smuggling of illegal animal products to raise funds, and is a member of the Imperial Faction.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 tom_kalbfus May 31, 2008 11:34:41	Conquistador by S.M. Stirling is an Alternate History Novel by S.M. Stirling. In Oakland, California, 1946, an Ex-soldier John Rolfe, newly back from the Pacific, has made a fabulous discovery: a portal to an alternate America where Europeans have never set foot - and the only other humans in sight are a band of curious Indians. Able to return at will to the modern world, Rolfe summons the only people with whom he is willing to share his discovery; his war buddues, And he tells them to bring their families. So far so good, but here's where we change the setting: Electronic technology, and gunpowder is inoperative, forcing a resort to medeaval technology, and magic and monsters exist along side the native Indians encountered. Some of the Indians can use magic. Across the oceans the Europeans have their feudal states descended from the Alexandrian Empire, where Alexander lived to a ripe old age of 70. When Alexander did not die in 323 BCE., the history of the world and its peoples turned down an entirely new track. After recovering from his illness, Alexander spent several years consolidating his vast conquests, and pressing forward with his policy of Graeco-Iranian synthesis and Greek colonization. In 320 B.C.E., the Greek cities of Sicily and southern Italy, pressed by the Carthaginians and Italics, appealed to Alexander, and a new round of conquests began.... Alexander the Great died in August of 280 B.C.E., in the summer capital of Ecbatanta, in the Zagros mountains. He was succeeded by his son Alexander II (by the Bactrian-Persian princess Roxanne), and his dynasty remained in power for a further century and a half. By that time, the empire ruled from Babylon (renamed, of course, Alexandria) stretched from Iberia to the Ganges delta. After roughly A.D. 0, it began to decline and eventually fissured into a maze of quarrelsome city-state and regional kingdoms; by about A.D. 300 the last pretence of political unity was gone. Its ghost continued to haunt men's minds for many generations, and "Alexandros" became alternate title for Zeus, and the term for "ruler" as well. Twenty-two hundred years after his death, the heritage of the Conqueror still marked the world. Since the Alexandrian empire had been much larger than Rome's, its legacy was more widespread; half the 600 million or so human beings on Earth in the early twenty-first century spoke languages derived from Greek, in much the same was as French, Spanish and so forth are derived from Latin. The post-Alexandrian linguistic/cultural zone encompassed the whole Mediterranean basin, the Balkans as far north as the Carpathians, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Near East including Anatolia and the Caucasus, parts of the southern Ukrainr, most of the settled [art of Central Asia (plus Iran-Afghanistan), and northern India all the way from Pakistan to Bengal. Technologically, the post-Greek zone was the most advanced part of the World prior to the opening of the Gate in 1946; the level is roughly late-medieval, and has shown little change for many centuries. Paper and printing are known, but gunpowder is not. ... Now add to this magic, and monsters as well as a D&D Pantheon and you have for yourself a viable D&D setting. These are the bare bones, the details have yet to be filled in, that's what I'd like to do here on this forum. Any suggestions?
#2 kouk Jun 01, 2008 3:45:52	Seems plenty enough for a campaign. Just make a starting town/region and some living NPCs.
#3 tom_kalbfus Jun 03, 2008 11:49:00	The Commonwealth of New Virginia is principally on the West Coast in what in our world would be called California. I'm using the convention of listing modern state and nation names to identify the location of various domains and kingdoms in this world as geographically this setting is identical to Earth. The World War II veteran, John Rolfe accidentially opened a gate to this new World while fiddling with his radio set, a huge rectangular gate opened up in his basement and stayed on for as long as he powered his radio set. With some experimentation, he found that this effect only worked in that location and no where else. Apparently there was something specific to the geomagnetism and geography around his basement and his radioset activated a gate that was already there. John Rolfe is actually John Rolfe VI, a descendent of the original John Rolfe of Virginia who married Pocahontas, he takes pride in that lineage, and has tried to establish a similar colony through the gate in his basement, he was recruited a number of friends and war buddies from his service in the Pacific and they have established 30 families, whose names and domains are as follows: Rolfe Domain: Napa, Lake County Motto: "Carpe Diem et Omnia Mundi." Sigil: Red lion rampant on black background Fitzmorton (twice) Alan Fitzmorton - Domain: south Oakland to San Leandro Rob Fitzmorton - Domain: Sonoma Valley O'Brien Domain: Marin County Motto: "O'Brien Go Braugh!" Sigil: winged harp Colletta Domain: Santa Clara Valley Motto: "Silence." Sigil: winged sword Hughes Domain: Healdsburg area Pearlmutter Domain: San Francisco peninsula to Palo Alto - "New Brooklyn" Motto: "The Best You Can." Throckham Domain: Petaluma Filmer Domain: Concord, Contra Costa Tuke Domain: Livermore-Amador, Contra Costa Cooke Domain: Orange County Peyton Domain: Lower Santa Ynez valley Hammon Domain: Pleasanton, Contra Costa Hottywood Domain: southern Santa Clara valley Ludwins Domain: western Santa Maria valley Carons Domain: Central Santa Clara (between Collettas, Rob Fitzmortons) Von Traupitz Domain: Suisun Valley Chumley Domain: western Yolo county Motto: "Who dares, wins!" Versfeld Domain: Santa Monica, east along Santa Monica foothills Motto: "Look before you trek!" Bauer Domain: Carmel, Carmel valley Motto: "Death Holds No Repose." Stanislaus Domain: southarn Oxnard valley Motto: "We Fight for Our Friends." Morrison Domain: Lower Salinas Motto: "Down Styphon!" Sanders Domain: Upper Salinas Sulgrave Domain: Russian River valley Motto: "Fortune Is Bald Behind." Ball Domain: Orange County Fairfield Domain: San Leandro (south of Alan Fitzmortons) Motto: "By This Right." Fest Domain: Ventura; northern Oxnard Motto: "Winter Isn't Coming." Barklay Domain: inland Santa Ynez valley, around Solvang Motto: "How Shall One Fight a Hundred?" Wyans Domain: inland Santa Maria valley, around Sisquoc Motto: "Westward the Course of Empire." Batyushkov Domain: Santa Cruz, Pajaro Valley Motto: "Za Nas!" Some Collaterals: Di Montevarichi - collaterals of the Rob Fitzmorton line; relatives of his wife. Tuscan nobility Population of the Commonwealth of New Virginia 75,000 Americans from Firstside (Earth) 75,000 Immigrants from Firstside (Earth) Germans, Italians, Russians, Afrikaners (from South Africa), Dutch from Indonesia, European colonists fron French North Africa, Kenya, and Rhodesia, and a scattering of various criminals on th run from the law. Also among this mix are a number of involuntaries, various people who have stumbled upon John Rolfe's secret and who were thrown through the gate. As of 2009, the Population distribution is about: Rolfeston (Berkely) - 28,000 New Brooklyn (San Francisco) - 18,000 San Diego - 19,000 Napa - 5,000 Various small towns - 15,000 Farm and mine settlements - 50,000 Hawaii - 10,000 Australia - 5,000 Various outposts - 3,000 Also there are various Native Americans, known to the locals as "Indians" numbering about 40,000 in the New Virgina territory. The Aztec Empire in Mexico has reached the bronze age, but buys steel tools and weapons from the New Virginians. The New Virginians themselves reserve for themselves, plate mail armor produced on the Firstside in factories and imported through the gate. The New Virginians have a well equipped army and reserves outfitted in platemail, swords, shields, and crossbows, typically better equipped that the local Indians. Some of the Indians by contrast have better spell casters. The New Virginians are just learning magic and have discovered the Gods. The Indians have worshipped the D&D gods ever since the Vikings brought them over in 1000 ACE. The Greeks had abandoned their old gods in favor of the D&D gods when their clerics demonstrated the use of spells granted by their dieties, and over the centuries, the worship of these new gods spread throughout the globe through intermittant contacts. The New Virginians have a practical relationship with these gods, they pray to them for spells, yet they continue to adhere to their Firstside religion (Mostly Christianity with some scattering of Judaism). The colony is kept secret from firstsiders, who go on with their lives completely oblivious of what's happening in John Rolfe's basement, and John Rolfe does his best to keep the whole operation a secret, and meanwhile mines the locations of known deposites of gold and other valuable minerals than have already been extracted and exploited on the Firstside. The New Virginians operate a Victorian era mechanical steam technology due to the nonfuctionality of electronics. For example, they have steam locomotives that run on crude oil than has been drilled and pumped out of long beach. firearms and guns don't work so they rely on swords and arrows instead.
#4 tom_kalbfus Jun 04, 2008 9:40:24	That's well and good for the humans, now lets talk about some other races. In North America there is the Great Eastern Forest, a large part of it is bounded by the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Saint Lawrence River, and the Atlantic Ocean, this whole region is an elf domain. The elves are rather chaotic beings, their region is largely tribal consisting of hunter/gatherer clans. Elves and Indians typically intermingle along the banks of the Mississippi and in the Great Lakes region and the Saint Lawrence River. During the past 60 years, some contact was made with the Europeans and the Asians, the post Alexandrian region spans three continents, Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa. The New Virginians made use of small ocean-spanning sailboats, the typical one had two triangular sails and a crew of four, the Europeans copied this design and were soon making contact with the Eastern shore of North America. The Asian kingdoms found the Pacific Ocean a much more formidable crossing. To the dismay of the New Virginian founders, the Comstock gold deposits were occupied by a Kingdom of Dwarves, dubbed "Rocky Mountain Dwarves" by the New Virginians. To the North, where agriculture is hardly feasible are tribes of orcs that are often in conflict with the Indians to the South and the New Virginian Settlers. To the South the Aztec Empire occupies a solid chunk of Mexico and Central America, they often make human sacrifices and there's a D&D god that readily receives them. South of the Aztec Empire in the region known as Panama, a vast wall is maintained spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, south of that wall is a "Lost World" of sorts inhabited by dinosaurs and primitive humans. The Aztecs spend considerable resources maintaining that wall to keep the dinosaurs out however they were seriously hampered when they were hit by the plagues that came with the humans from the Firstside, the wall has been in considerable disrepair since the early 1950s and has been all but abandoned since that time. The areas corresponding to Washington and Oregon are the homes of giants and dragons, dragons particullarly like the volcanic peaks of Mount Saint Helens and Mount Rainier. An Ancient Red Dragon was apparently awakened by the volcanic explosion of Mount Saint Helens, and another Red Dragon resided on Mount Rainier for some time. I would like to make this a group project if at all possible, the basic idea is to use the real geographical features of Earth as the locale for a bunch of fantastic creatures. So far I've populated North America with humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, giants, and dragons. The imported Earth humans have had to work around the limitations of their technology in this setting by harnessing steam engines, guns don't work, so they import mass produced armor and weapons from their home dimension. The currency is standard D&D currency, although the New Virginians call their gold coins "Dollars", silver coins are called "Dimes", and copper coins are dubbed "Pennies" A New virginian dollar or '$' is made of $1,000 American dollars worth of gold, the Dime is likewise $100 American dollars worth of Silver and the Penny is 10 American dollars worth of copper. A smaller copper coin called the Mill is made up of 1 American dollar's worth of copper and is much lighter on the pocket. currencies are expressed in the following format: $1,234.567, that is the equivalent of one million, two hundred thirty-four thousand, five hundred sixty-seven American dollars or One thousand, two hundred thirty-four dollars and five hundred and sixty-seven mills in New Virginian currency. New Virginian homes typically range from $100 to $1,000 in New Virginian dollars, the typical income of a New Virginian is from $30 to $100 a year, a migrant farm worker or cowboy might earn less than $30 or 30 gp per year in D&D terms, that would be considered struggling. Homes are typically bought with mortgages, a typical morgage payment is about $1 a month for a small home with two or three bedrooms. New Virginian houses are typically outfitted with plumbing and draw their water from a well using either a hand water pump or from a gravity fed water tower whose water comes from a well that is pumped by a windmill. Self-winding watches are a hot item imported from the first side, mechanical box film cameras are used for making pictures. And there is a small export trade with the Aztecs in mechanical calculating machines, that is Babbage Numerical Intergrators, these are hand cranked mechanical computers, the Aztec high priests prize these mechanical contraptions in making their astronomical calculations. The Sun, Planets, and Moon by the way are named by New Virginians after Greek Gods: Helios (Sun), Hermes (Mercury), Aphrodite (Venus), Gaea (Earth), Selene (Moon), Ares (Mars), Zeus (Jupiter), Kronos (Saturn), Uranos (Uranus), Poseidon (Neptune), and Pluton (Pluto). Finding Poseidon and Pluton is exceedingly hard, there are a few reflectors and refractor optical telescopes that can spot such objects. Ares and Aphrodite appears somewhat different from Mars and Venus upon closer inspection, both have been observed to contain oxygen in their atmospheres. Mars' atmosphere is visibly thicker, and surface water is visible as well as vegitation and canals are apparently real.
#5 tom_kalbfus Jun 05, 2008 12:59:07	NPCs John Rolfe VI Founder of the Commonwealth of New Virginia Class: Fighter Race: Human Gender: Male Age: about 80 years old. Charles Rolfe John Rolfe's Son Class: Fighter Race: Human Gender: Male Age: about 50 years old Adrienne Rolfe John Rolfe's Grand Daughter Class: Fighter Race: Human Gender: Female Age: About 21 years old Piet Botha Adrienne's Henchman Class: Fighter Race: Human Gender: Male Age: About 40 Notes: Piet is a White South African immigrant who didn't like recent developments reguarding black majority rule, so he fled his country, immigrated to the USA, and then was recruited by John Rolfe to join his colony of New Viginia. Schalk van der Merwe Adrienne's second Henchman also a friend of Piet's. Class: Fighter Race: Human Gender: Male Age: About 40 Notes: Like Piet, Schalk is also an immigrant from South Africa, he immigrated for similar reasons to Piet. Tom Christiansen Adrienne's boyfriend He was Class: Ranger Race: Human Gender: Male Age: 32 Notes: Tom was abducted by Adrienne and her two henchmen after investigating trafficking in endangered animals, Ivory, and other illegal commodities imported from New Virginia, in the course of his investigation, he and his partner learned about John Rolf's secret colony, and so to keep it a secret, he and his partner were abducted and sent through the gate so they couldn't tell US Authorities. A US Army veteran, served in Afghanistan and Iraq, he was working for the Department of Fish and Game tracking down suspected poachers, when he was kidnapped. Roy Tully Friend and Associate of Tom Christianson Class: Ranger Race: Human Gender: Male Age: 30 something Notes: Also works for the US Fish and Game Department, also abducted to New Virginia Lord Seven Flower Aztec High Priest and Chief Class: Cleric Race: Human Gender: Male Age: 28 Notes: Trades with conspirators exporting animal products to the US. Karl von Traupitz Ex-Nazi SS officer, leader of the von Traupitz family Class: Fighter Race: Human Gender: Male Age: 80 Note: seeks the overthrow of John Rolfe, is a conspirator in the smuggling of illegal animal products to raise funds, and is a member of the Imperial Faction.