All Things Hulean

I was lurking around on the Vaults of Pandius, and found these excellent articles:  the hulean Gaz, this beautiful map, and this excellent article by James M. on the immortals of Great Hule.  I liked how James incorporated the great 8 deities and involved the chaos arrow (very Elirickian/Stormbringery!).  This is very different from what I had been thinking but seems to somehow fit better with the BECMI type immortals path that I've always found a little bit difficult to grasp.

It really got me thinking about clerics in D&D and BX (pre-Mentzer), vs. BECMI, vs. AD&D cosmology.  I found a quote (sorry I forgot the source) about how Frank really didn't like reducing religion and the gods into a shopping list for clerics.  This makes immortals in Frank's version of D&D into something like angels/devils instead of gods. So clerics don't exactly worship the exact immortal, but instead see the immortal as an example of how to live under a particular philosophy (law and order, neutrality, or chaos?)?

Something about immortals just doesn't sit right with me, I'm partial to the BX version where gods and churches are implied, just not fleshed out.  Hmm, there is a lot to think through, I'm going to have to mull this over some more...

 







 

Hule

Assuming the characters defeat the challenges of the great pass, what is next for the party inside the 32 pages of X5 Temple of Death?

It is the chaotic nation of Hule.  While David Cook does an awesome job of setting the stage for an entire country in about 1.5 pages, he definitely (intentionally) left room for expansion.  The next three parts of the adventure detail:

1.  An example town Magden, with several programmed encounters that can give the PC's clues toward the ToD or several that can end them up in chains.

2.  Dark Wood - good detail on the vast woods that surround the temple.

3.  The temple of death itself.

There were a couple of things that seemed lacking.  Cook doesn't flesh out the dark diety, dieties, or philosophy that the Master worships/embodies.  Maybe this was to allow the DM room for customization?  Also, the country of Hule seemed too benign for a land ruled by demon worshipers.  I'm not sure why this is.

So here are the first things I would try to spice up:


1.  Setting a slightly darker atmosphere for Hule:  Monstrous demihumans mix with the people, sometimes they raid the villages killing and capturing people to torture or use as slaves.  Other people just disappear in the night, maybe it is the work of the Diviners, some of whom can see into your mind and find out if you are "holy".  This holiness should be a religion of subservience and total sacrifice to the dark forces.  I like the idea of the hermits and prophets of chaos giving guidance and passing judgments.  Instead of an impartial judge, you have an impartial madman, who will make a completely random judgment which seems perfect for the concept of a chaotic society.  Processions are held once per week while the locals run through the village, in a chaotic state of celebration, drunken debauchery, looking for miracles, which pretty much never happen. 

2.  More about these demons and "The Master".  I'm guessing Cook was hesitant to delve too deeply into demon worship, so he remained very tight-lipped on exactly what the master was involved in.  Obviously, one goal is world domination.  Oppression of the common folk under the chaos religion.  Enslave monsters, using curses, and use them to further the goals of the church.  I think it would be fun to keep The Master's religion completely obscure.  Perhaps he is a half-outer-planar, half-human harbinger of a greater chaos deity.  Maybe it is something like the King in Yellow or Nylarthohotep - not something like a typical evil D&D deity - instead, something less personal and human.  I like the idea that The Master has maybe summoned many extra-planar creatures to Hule, they live in secret throughout the land furthering the goals of chaos, tricking humans into worshiping them, and trying to enact the rituals that will bring forth the greater chaos into the Known World.  Also, just because the PC's kill the master, doesn't mean everything immediately will collapse.  I think the remaining holymen will band together to further their common goals of keeping the true power in Hule.  The war will be ended, since the Master was coordinating much of it, but the dark forces will regroup and may spring forth again in the future.  The PC's could probably route it out of Hule, and claim the land as their kingdom, but it would be a terribly long and boring endeavor, so they are more likely to run off to their next adventure.

Next up - I'm going to work on more of the villages and cities in Hule and what they are like.  I'll see what is in Pandius.com first and see if I can leverage some of that.

Men on the Moon

Happy 4th of July!  For all my fellow America readers, go be patriotic and read this!  I'm off to a BBQ at my sisters today so I intend to be brief.

I've decided to set my next FR game around activities in Hillsfar and I've got ideas to morph it into a X3 Curse of Xanathon type thing - with the detective work and the humanocentric thing.  I'm not sure if this will become my next PBEM or if I will end up playing it person.

In the meantime, I'm going to concentrate on X5 temple of death.  My players were really hating on X4 Master of the Desert Nomads when we played it back in the winter.  One of them is a soldier in real life and he is sick of the desert.  So, I think I'm going to push them through that adventure and give them all a bunch of experience that might level some of them up.  Then I'm going to start them off at the beginning of the X5 adventure.  I'm thinking of detailing out certain parts of the adventure. 

The first of these in my head is the moon bridge.  The idea of a bridge to the moon is wickedly awesome, and I've got ideas to treat it a bit like a D&D / Stargate crossover.  I'm planning to flesh out the Kingdom of the Moon, with anitgravity technology, and biotechnology, and magic all mushed together but that the civilization now treats this technology like religion and don't understand all the psuedophysics that makes it all work.  Also, there have to be Barsoomian white apes on the moon that have multiplied to the point of nearly destroying all civilization.

More on the Kingdom of the Moon to come...

X4 - Alternate Intro

Upon returning from the extra-dimensional adventures with Stephen Amber, you found yourselves in the midst of Glantri. The laws of this magocracy were almost hostile toward the dwarfs and fighters of your group and so you traveled south into Darokin to escape imprisonment or death. Darokin was a land of wealth and splendor where the vast amounts of treasure your party acquired during your adventures allowed you to literally live as kings!

You lived it up in the social circles and intrigues of Darokin city for weeks until you tired of the backstabbing and strict rules of etiquette that the elite have created for themselves. Finding a noble in financial troubles you were able to invest nearly all of your wealth in a great villa and surrounding vineyards along the southern edge of a great plateau that lies to the west of Darokin west of the Great Swamp.

Traveling there with hired experts in horticulture and winemaking you spent the next year living in splendor, feasting on lamb and steer and making wine. Bards came from all around to live in your villa, hear your stories, and sing you tales from abroad. Traveling princes, wizards, and wandering knights all made your stone villa a favorite respite from the harsh wilderness. Life is good and you began to forget the tiny song of adventure that once resounded in your head.

It was then when disaster struck! A massive army of humanoids, mostly orc and goblins but supported by cruel men, ogres, trolls, and worse stormed your villa in the night. You fought back with magic and swords but you were out of practice and unprepared for such an onslaught. Their numbers were immense and finally you were forced to flee east toward Elstarath with only your fastest horses and your most precious weapons and magical items and books.

On your way you began to alert the small villages and keeps that you found along the way, but most of them had already been evacuated. It seems that the army was much larger than you had even begun to imagine. The main army of Darokin had already marched west into the desert following the humanoid army that had retreated to find reinforcements.

Weeks went by and your party joined in with a rag-tag group of reserves who was planning to meet the main army that was now deep in the desert of fire fighting the humanoid force. You find yourselves entering a small village that was only recently taken back by the Darokin army, still among the smoking ruins of the village were the signs of nomad enemies - humans, orcs, and other unknown creatures. The leaders of your rag-tag group halted at this place and awaited the field commanders orders. He is held up in the largest house of the village and spends all day assigning orders and processing information. It seems that the reserve effort is pretty unorganized and mostly you have spent the last three days camped near the edge of town with no orders or information about what you should do to help. The fires of vengeance still burn in your chests, life on the road has hardened you once more, and you would love to be able to do something effective against this unknown army...

My buddies will be back in town this weekend of Sept 10-11 and we might be able to organize up and throw down another tabletop gaming session! I'm still trying to catch up from a week on vacation so this was the best introduction I could come up with for X4. I tried to come up with a more plausible (still very rail-roady) reason for the players to be involved in this adventure that made sense from coming out of the Castle Amber X2 adventure module. I think this will serve the purpose of emptying them of nearly all of their coin and give them a reason to care about facing down this strange army and give them the idea that stealth and not strong-arm tactics will be required (since they already faced this army and were all nearly killed). I'm not trying to make this a really open ended campaign right now, I'm basically railroading my players through a group of old-school adventures one by one and having fun just playing in them. My plan is to run them through a beefed up version of X1 next followed by something maybe placed in Alphatia or the hollow world or maybe both... I may have to make something up for the next two adventures because I'm expecting the players to make it up to ~10+ level by the time we finish the X1 adventure.

Fighting back the Gamer ADD

I was talking to my players this week and they really asked me to fight back the Gamer ADD. They had a real blast playing in Mystara and running through Castle Amber and they would like to keep these characters for a while yet. One of the players is lamenting that he has never had a PC make it to over 10th level and would like to try making it there with his wizard character in this game.

I told them that I have a group of adventures that I've been buying up that should get them up to at least 10th level and maybe beyond.

I'm thinking to run them through a heavily modified Master of the Desert Nomads (which could have a massive detour to the moon if the players play things right), followed by the Temple of Death adventure. That alone should get them up to about 8-10th level.

Then I'd like to use one of these three products that I got off Ebay:

Isle of Dread (maybe I could beef it up a bit for high level PC's, add some kind of twist?)

Empire of Dawn boxed set (I'd like to take my PC's to Alphatia and have some cool mid-air battles among the ramparts of flying castles).

Hollow World Boxed set ( I got this whole boxed set for free, the guy threw it in with another product that I purchased, I think it is pretty neat, and the altered game physics with the magic and stuff could throw off my players in a fun way).

Does anybody that reads this blog have any other ideas for really good 8-12th level adventures?

After some greater than 10th level play, I want to reboot our campaign and have the guys start brand new PC's at low levels. I'd like to run in forgotten realms. However, I would also really like to run Rolemaster - my series on running Forgotten Realms and Rolemaster together probably all ready showed what I'm thinking about. However, my players are really loving the stripped down aspect of Basic DnD and I'm not sure if they are ready for anything close to Rolemaster. They are asking me to "quit it" with the changing game systems each week stuff. It is hard, most of the time I feel like this guy...

The Elves of Alfheim

Lately I've been spending a few bucks on Ebay. I've been picking up the Mystaran Gaz series, slowly acquiring quite a few of them.



My favorite so far is the Elves of Alfheim. I love the cover shown above, I love the whole bit about the trees of life, the elven philosophy, the magic that grew a forest and created magically spawning monsters, the druidic style spell list for elves that take the treekeeper path, elvish swords, and pretty much everything about the book. It even has some nice adventure ideas for groups ranging from levels 1 up to the companion and masters level PC.

The Werewolves of Sylaire

I threw down on the tabletop once more - X2 Castle Amber. The PC's have left the Castle, and have collected two of the objects needed to find Steven's extradimensional tomb in the twisted desert of Yondo. This latest adventure jumped off track of finding more objects, since the PC's decided to track down the lair of the magic using Werewolf lord and try to gain access to his spellbook. I dropped a couple of hints that they were going off the reservation, but they really wanted to, somewhat motivated by the fact that we were missing one of our gamers so they didn't want to finish the adventure without him.

Instead they tracked down and fought 13 werewolves! The amazing thing was that they killed almost 6 of the werewolves without taking any damage. They ended up on a rocky cliff and were able to use web spells to take the advantage away from the wolves and hedge them into a certain area. Lightning bolts, hold person, and light spells slammed into the ranks of werewolves. In the end the PC's killed all the werewolves except for the leader who ran off to live to fight another day.

They found a spell book that was 1/2 intact and then they met with the enchantress who helped them get back to Averoigne...

Next up for my PC's... finding the last two artifacts and landing at the shore of the malachite lake. Hopefully I can get the gaming group together one last time before my buddy moves to Georgia. Otherwise this story may never get told (unless we use skype).

Castle Amber_Alternate Ending_Part 2

So you made it through Castle Amber, found all the artifacts in Averoigne needed to find the Tomb of Stephen, fought your way through the horrid deserts of Yondo. You are at the door of Stephens tomb starting at the black shield of sable, a phenix Or!

You open the door and head inside, only to find 12 sarcophogi which open up releasing 9 Mummies. Roll 9 savings throws vs. paralysis.... *insert the mad evil laughter of a DM as he watches his players one by one failing their saving throws*

Then I will have the mummies stride up and attack the party - gaining automatic initiative!

The party will face down 9 horrific foes, and then I have 4 rooms flanking the central hall that will begin to open up every 3 rounds releasing a small group of Magen guardians for Stephen's tomb! If this doesn't end in a TPK, the PC's will have proven their muster, and can enter Stephen's tomb and release him. He will use wishes to bring back any dead PC's and then whip them all back to Mystara and the adventure ends.... for now.

Castle Amber - Alternate Ending - Part 1

I've spent a little time working out that alternate ending to X2. I really didn't like the ending that Moldvay put in there. It felt really rushed. It is a string of 7-8 rooms in a row with powerful creatures to kill, open door see Blue dragon (kill it), open next door find some sharks (kill them), etc... with little excitement, exploration, or thinking for the PC's.

So I'm going to add on a little more CAS flavored action to the adventure. Instead of plopping the PC's directly in front of the tomb of Stephen, I'm plopping them upon the shores of the green malachite salt lake from the "Abominations of Yondo" Story. They will be standing in a desert of ash colored sand with a swollen red sun hanging in the sky. Looking directly ahead across the massive lake they will see a lone building of white stone on the far shore of the lake, with a back drop of hemispherical astroid mountains.

They will have the choice of adventuring to the right side of the map (where they will encounter the inhabitants of the Crumbling Gardens of the Amputee's. I made this up in the spirit of ClarkAshton! Or they can explore to the left side of the map where there is a large forest of Evil Cacti. Either way the PC's choose the trip will be about 20 miles. I would start the PC's at about midday so that they will have to camp near either the Garden or the Forest of Cacti depending on the direction they choose.

The Amputees live in a beautiful garden of flowers and vegetables that stands on the crumbling ruins of a once beautiful palace! They "feed" the plants their own blood, and body parts to enhance their growth. These plants have also adapted to live on the green lake water. Many of the plants should be of the carnivorous variety, the DM should invent all sorts of interesting plants to attack the players with if they explore this area. This ancient palace was once full of treasure so feel free to drop the PC's a couple of interesting items or create a dungeon below the ruin if you think that would be fun.

On the other hand, the Forests of Evil Cacti is full of horrifying Ochre Jelly's, shades, and spectral riders! Come up with any number of horrifying images for the PC's, pop the top off your mind and go for it!!!! If the PC's attempt swimming or flying over the lake there are many evil Cthulthu-like squid creatures there so they better fly high over the lake!!! That would be the most direct method of getting there if they can just fly over the lake but it is several miles across so they better have a long duration spell power...

When the PC's finally reach the Tomb of Stephen, there will be a group of albino mutated beast men [treat as orcs]. I would say there should be 20-50 of them depending on the strength of the party. They are equipped with a combination of crude weapons (but maybe a few have firearms plucked from the dead fingers of victims pulled from more modern worlds) and will attack as a mob. If the PC's kill 50% of them, they will disperse and flee into the desert toward the mountains.

If the PC's defeat the albino beast men, they can move to Part 2 of the Alternate Ending (inside the tomb).


***This is a work of fan fiction for my own Dungeons and Dragons campaign. All use of Clark Ashton Smith's creations are to add flavor to this module which is being posted up here for free with no intent to publish any description or material from any of Smith's work beyond casual references made to "the abominations of Yondo", the "evil cacti", "the green lake", and "the inquisitors of Ong".****

pss... I would strongly suggest reading CAS Abominations of Yondo before running this alternate ending to X2.

Castle Amber... continued.

Around Christmas 2010 and the first of this year I ran a group of friends through the first 1/2 of Castle Amber. We had a great time and it took them two play session and ~12 hours of playing time to get through the keep and into Averoigne. My buddy called me earlier this week, told me he was back from Europe, and would like to throw down more of the adventure. I told him I was free Saturday morning and early afternoon, and would love to continue the adventure.

Well this morning at 6:08am, three drunk friends of mine pounded on my front door. Apparently, they had gone out for a few after dinner drinks last night, which turned into MANY after dinner drinks. They had partied the night away, and decided it would be better to stay up all night, forego sleep, and show up on my door as early as they thought they could get away with it without me just kicking them out.

I grabbed some coffee, the Basic and Expert rulebooks, my dice (enough for 4 players), the Castle Amber adventure module, my improvised BX DM screen, and we started roleplaying at 6:30am this morning.

It is now 5 hours later... and I am remarking about how much Castle Amber is a MEGA MODULE! Don't be fooled, this is not an adventure module, it is a tiny campaign. When we had last left off, the players had just entered Averoigne from Castle Amber. We reviewed the salient points and then we started. First off they found an Inn, met some locales, talked it up and found out that Ximes was ~180 miles south of where they were. They started the ~9 day journey to Ximes, ran into various encounters, and met an adventuring Bard on the road, and finally entered Ximes. The Bard had related to them that he once had learned a Song about a Castle Amber that had disappeared one night long ago after many of the inhabitants had been accused of witchcraft and conversing with the devil! The Bard told them that he thought that maybe Castle Amber had disappeared over 1000 years ago (the bard was exaggerating *insert evil GM chuckle*.)

They decided to start reading a Holy Bible that they had found in Castle Amber, they intially couldn't read it and the mage of the party had collected it thinking that it might be a powerful spellbook. Once transported into Averoigne I ruled that the magic had allowed them to communicate in French as if it were Thayatian common from Mystara. The clerics of the party scoured the book closely and determined important point - there was one supremely powerful god above all others, and he had ruled that magic use was outlawed. They kept all their spellpower undercover from that point on.

They went to the Church in Ximes, and found Azedarc preaching a long sermon in a Catholic church. They put together the pieces and determined that there must be something fishy going on. One of the elves used an invisibility spell to sneak into the back of the church until he ran into Azedarc's assassin. The assassin figured out what was going on and decided to deal with the PC's. The PC's met him at a tavern and there they traded him a scroll with three powerful spells for a potion of time travel. Little did they know that the time travel potion was actually poison mixed with a time travel potion.

They had massive quantities of gold, so they bought a massive wagon and a large wooden boat and traveled north to try and find Sylaire. They found the ruins of Sylaire by levitating amazingly high (I've got to check if I'm playing B/X spell durations correctly) and then finding the ruins from their arial vantage. They passed through the magical gate, and I ruled that they fell asleep.

They awoke to two of their company bound in ropes, and most of their weapons in the hands of a massive group of Neanderthals!!! This was a lot of fun, they had to think quickly on their feet (which isn't easy when you have had zero sleep, but I had never said I wasn't an evil DM!) and figure out how to get their people back. They fought the primitive men for several rounds when the sky began to darken. The Neanderthals saw the sky change and decided to run away.

Sephora of Sylaire stepped forward and apologized for the actions of the primitives. She explained that she was cursed (I was adding things here and there if you haven't guessed, mainly because I hadn't had time to read the module through and was just improvising on my feet). Anyway, I told the group that she was stuck in time at a point where lycanthropic chaos threatened to overwhelm these primitive men inflicting them all with the disease and changing the course of history forever. She needed their help in defeating a time traveling werewolf magic user and then she would give them the sword of Sylaire and return back to the dimension of Averoigne. I had also ruled earlier that in Averoigne clerics turning ability and spells were as a cleric of 3 levels lower due to distance from their deity whereas in Sylaire I allowed the clerics full use of their abilities since the plane was not ruled by our GOD. I explained that Sephora was powerful but she didn't want to risk herself in combat against the wolves since she was the last guardian of these primitive people (blah, blah, blah, lol).

Well, the guys agreed to face down this werewolf magic user. So I look down into the module and find very little description of how to handle the encounter. There is no map, no stats on how many other werewolves he might have created, or any information about his lair. I improvised a map of the area, showed approximately where the werewolf might be. The players ran afoul of several traps in the forest, and a small army of club weilding skeletons (I saw that the were wolf guy had the animate dead spell, and I figured that given enough time he would have raised a small army of undead to guard his lair). Finally, I figured that using wolf spies, he would have gained information about the PC's coming toward him. He took 5 of his most trusted werewolves, 15 normal wolves, and himself as a war party to head out and face the PC's exactly at dusk.

The PC's heard the wolves coming before they saw them - there were 7 PC's in the party total. 5 of the PC's made a circle with the mage in the center and waited. The thief and one of the elves went invisible and ran out into the forest to scout.

The wolves ran through the area occupied by the scouts, and then began running circles around the circle of PC's. The PC's cast everything they could think of for protection and then got ready to fight. The wolves attacked, web spells were cast, hold person, light spells on the eyes of werewolves, the magic using werewolf tried polymorphing the party mage unsuccessfully. Things got dicey for a couple of rounds, but the PC's were eventually able to win, killing off almost all of the wolves, all of the werewolves, and slaying the werewolf magic user with a single lightning bolt (he failed his saving throw)!

The party's fighter lost an arm (I'm using the table of death and dismemberment, which I have on my improvised B/X DM's screen), but everyone lived through the encounter. The PC's gained the sword of Sylaire, but they are planning to go back into the forest to find the lair of the werewolves, rout them all out, and try and find the spellbook of the magic using werewolf! There is absolutely no information about the lair in the Castle Amber module, but I'm thinking since the PC's are planning to wait 3d6 weeks for the fighter (Thorn) to heal up such that he is ready for battle (as well as he can with one arm) - I think one of the werewolves will have become the leader of the group, infected a mass of other primitives, such that now they will have a small contingent of werewolf neanderthals guarding the lair. I think the lair will be a structure made of timber built off the entrance of a natural cave. There will be plenty of traps, and wooden structures built to funnel the PC's down choke points and force them to do battle with the lycanthropes on their terms. A huge encounter from roughly 1 sentence of the module. This adventure can really turn into a campaign. I'm also thinking about what other protections and guards would a 10th level wizard have provided to keep his spellbook from harm (even from the other werewolves) while he headed out to go fight the PC's party.

I've been really generous with EXP for this game, so I gave them all 1500exp each (which brought one of the elves within 1700exp from leveling to LVL5. When this adventure finishes, it will end in a TPK or character retirement anyway, so I'm just playing things fast and loose.

I'm having a lot of fun with B/X D&D - I had to do a lot of house rulings for one adventure, maybe a record. I'll try to write down the things that came up and maybe post them up here for discussion (if anybody is still reading my blog).

My military buddy is going to be around for the next couple of weeks so we decided we will try to get together at least one more time before he heads back to wherever. I'm skeptical that they can finish the adventure in 4-6 hours if they get sidetracked trying to find the lair of the werewolf, so I will probably try to reason with them. However, if they decide to go that route, I already have a mental layout for the werewolf lair and what they might find on the way. Good times.

I came up with a mental plan for an alternate ending to the Castle Amber adventure involving the abominations of Yondo, and mummy guards, and half-men worshipers of the abominations, for the tomb of Stephen, so I'm going to have to spend at least an hour writing down some notes and sketching up some maps to flesh that part out in case the PC's make it to the end of the adventure...

If they do, I'll make sure to blog out a play report from how it went!

Penhaligon Keep on the Borderlands

I combined the "Keep" with my concept for the Penhaligon village. In the keep I removed the tavern, provisioner, etc... which I believed would be sufficiently taken care of by the surrounding walled village. All of the keyed items correspond to the descriptions in the module by Gary Gygax.

The Manor house and Guest houses will only be detailed if I think I have need of them. These areas will not normally be visited by the PC's unless they are of sufficient level and notoriety to be tipping wine glasses with Lady Penhaligon.

Next up... details of my Ettercap adventure.

Map of Penhaligon

Well, I took a bit of time off from blog posting. I've been having a good time with my Castles and Crusades Greyhawk game that I GM. The players are getting a lot closer to the final campaign enemy and have defeated some Forest Giants recently and all gained levels! In addition, I've been posting on the wonderful PBEM CoC game that is now being helmed by O4E.

But in the few hours I have to dedicate to this hobby, I've become obsessed with a Mystara campaign that I'm planning to incorporate many of the early B and X modules that I have in my possession.

I'm planning to start the game in Specularum with B6, move north to Penhaligon where I'm planning to first run an encounter with Ettercap's and Spiders based out of the Dymark, and then run a heavily modified version of B2. I anticipate that the PC's will be at a high enough level to be enticed to head south on a small ship to search for treasure on the Isle of Dread (X1) and then I plan to move things into X4 and X5 running both of the David Cook modules involving the Master. I will then move the PC's into Alphatia and Thyatis and run a few adventures off the cuff. I have never GM'd any of these adventures and I don't think my PC's have ever read them so this will be a lot of fun.

Oh yeah, I wanted a map of Penhaligon but couldn't find one. The map resolution in the picture came out pretty ok, it gets bigger if you click on it. I plan to key important buildings on the map and produce a detailed map of the Castle of the Three Suns, which will be an adapted "Keep" from B2. All this is for my campaign notes, but I will try to post as much as possible in case somebody else would like to run a game of B2 set in a home brew Penhaligon.

I downsized the population from ~4000 referenced in the GAZ1 to a smaller 1000-2000 size. The village is 1/2 outside of the wall and 1/2 in the wall. There will be a lot of empty buildings in the city that serve as siege housing during raids by humanoid creatures from the Wufwoldes. I read the Penhaligon Trilogy and I'd like to bring a little of that flavor to my game so I'm making a few other changes to my Known World to bring out some of the flavor. I hope to blog about some of these changes soon!