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| So Far |
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Adventure 3: The Hedgepeth Beowolf, Jennish, Kasskar sail to Hilde on the Hedgepeth, with captains Burns and Krill. They meet Mikal, a young stowaway. Off Pitcairn on Hilde, the Hedgepeth takes the Blackwells ship Durst as a prize. Scoping out a greencake facility they plan to plunder on Lake Annika, the characters are attacked by guard wolves and defeat them. Adventure 2: Meade Hospital Morgue Beowolf goes one win, one loss at the illicit bareknuckle boxing ring under The Whipsaw. Kasskar, Jennish, and Beowolf are recruited by Herndon the anatomist to steal a body with goiter from the Meade Hospital morgue. While searching in the morgue's Great Hall, they're accosted by walking dead and defeat them. Adventure 1: Lofton Castle Beowolf, Jennish, and Kasskar are recruited by Gregor the Naturalist to seek out a giant squid in the caverns under Lofton Castle. There, they're apparently beguiled, and attacked by giant spiders in the confusion. Soon after, they're driven off by the pickpocketing tentacles of an unseen sea monster. Adventure 0: Balaal and Hollin The players are introduced to the world of Balaal and the city of Hollin.
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| Beowolf |
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Born in Highpyre on Hilde, Beowolf was orphaned as a baby when Highpyre was burned as part of the continual war there. He was brought to Hollin by his adoptive parents and he's lived with them since then.
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| Jennish |
| Raised in a distant settlement on Anhault, now living in Hollin. He has showed his hand as a magic user in Hollin once or twice, but gadgets are his real interest. |
| Kasskar |
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Kasskar was orphaned in Hollin as a teenager and has survived since then as a thief. He's a skilled lockpick available for hire, if there's something in it for him. He can be contacted at The Graybeard where he has a room.
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| Herndon the Anatomist |
| Herndon is an anatomist, and spends much of his time dissecting and diagramming human bodies, which is illegal in Hollin. Finding human specimens for dissection is a grim business, and he is often forced to rob graves. When he hears of a cadaver with a specific condition, he may be willing to get it at any cost. |
| Gregor the Naturalist |
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Gregor the naturalist collects cures, specimens, and hints from foreigners coming into Braddock's port. Some of the cures seem outlandish, like touching an elephant's trunk to cure headaches. On the other hand, Burgess -- a port doctor studying contagious diseases -- has confirmed Gregor's claim that mosquitos spread malaria.
At his lab, Gregor has many mummified animals -- a crocodile, a crane -- and a coelacanth that Anhault Company fishermen found recently. But giant squid are his real obsession. No one has ever seen one alive, but last year whalers brought him a giant squid's tentacle still wriggling on their hook, and with Brunn he's trying to keep it alive in a salt bath and make it move again. |
| Chambers the Apothecary |
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Chambers sells painkillers and anesthetics, poisons and antidotes, aphrodisiacs and contraceptives, and perfumes and incense; in the form of tinctures, fumigants, ointments, and poultices. He has some curious items like treacle, leeches, and mandrake. He'll suggest civet to spur the characters' imagination.
Chambers can supply a non-magic healing potion equivalent to the initial D&D magic healing potion. It's the Hollin equivalent of the orc medicine in The Lord of the Rings -- harshly unpleasant but effective. He can also supply treacle as a poison antidote -- it's effective against venom and maybe some other things. |
| Balaal and Hollin |
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The world is called Balaal. The map shows it looking down on the north pole, where there's an Antarctica-like landmass called Hilde. The Bellem Sea surrounds Hilde, and in turn the Bellem is surrounded by continents including Anhault, Kiln, Beiden, and Luhne. The map scale is large -- the visible part of Anhault is about the size of North America. The Bellem Sea is a kind of combination of the Arctic Circle, Northwest Passage, and the Mediterranean Sea. There's a network of major cities that trade on the Bellem, including Hollin, Naumkaeg, Kravnik, Welkin, Blackwells.
The city of Hollin is the New York or London of Anhault. A good mental model is 18th century London combined with medieval Cairo. It's cosmopolitan and about a million people from all races and continents live there, including many foreigners. Hollin is home to the Anhault Charter Company. Originally the Company was chartered out of Naumkaeg to trade in cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpeter, tea, opium, and whale oil, which are all still big business. But, over time the Company grew to be the de facto government of Hollin and much of Anhault, with its own fleet and Admiralty. To many locals it's still a foreign power. Besides the Company's trading, major activities in Hollin include shipbuilding, fishing and whaling, private trading houses, and a financial industry. The private trading houses manage the business of foreigner trading companies in Hollin -- just like the Anhault Company trades on other continents, other organizations trade here. The financial industry supports a range of enterprises: they might fund or insure a single whaling ship's single season; they might underwrite the Company and Admiralty; or they might charter yet more companies to build and populate remote settlements. The campaign's home is Braddock, one of the oldest boroughs in Hollin, and much of the city's key activity is there. The salt and fish market is here, which is where fishing vessels drop off holds full of salted fish from their season's voyage and take on more salt. The Admiralty has a shipyard here. Besides partially completed ships in the drydocks, you can see the keels of new ships being laid there, made from huge oak trees. Besides the ships in the port and shipyard, the prison and asylum hulks are here -- obsolete ships that hold overlow prisoners and patients from the prisons and asylum. And, navy press gangs prowl Braddock looking for hapless men to draft into service. But, the market is the heart of Braddock -- it's like the congested Times Square of Hollin. It includes costermongers, who sell fruit and vegetables; a rag fair that sells clothes; and a meat market with live animals called the shambles. People are afraid of the supernatural in Hollin, so magic users beware. |