Unique Additions to Your Birthright Campaign

[MatanThunder]

My contribution….”The Wandering Inn”.

*I am borrowing this in part from the author Joel Rosenburg and the series “The Guardians of the Flame”.*

Grondel looked through the driving rain and thought of his days of youth on his windswept farm near Polovtsiya in Zoloskaya and thought for the 20th time today that traveling to see the world and find adventure may have been a really bad decision.

The elves of Tuarhievel had slaughtered 4 party members all but one horse, and had left the 5 wounded members of the party and Grondel fleeing with their musical laughter ringing in their ears and their arrow shafts sticking out of their body and armor. They hadn’t even made it to the crypt of the Elvish Lord they had the map for, or had the map for…the Vos Sorcerer Voalney was as dead as a doornail back in the wood.

Grondel was sure that the Halfing Bristletoes was as good as dead, he was slung over the back of the horse, while the lone cleric (of Rournil) Dronaad was slumped over the horses neck….two arrows in his back and a head wound that kept him from gaining consciousness and healing some of the damn damage to the remainder of the group.

To make matters worse the wolfs in the area had seemed to have picked up their scent and were now trailing the party out of bowshot. Finally his boot had sprung a leak in the sole and ice cold rain water was sloshing in it.

He was thoroughly miserable, and it looked as if two other members of the group were going to die this night if he didn’t find shelter here in the mountains of northern Markazor…not likely.

The group trodded on for over an hour as the life leached from Bristletoes & Dronaad….there seemed no hope.

I the wee hours of the morn Grondel came stealthily around a bend near the creek they were following and caught the wiff of fresh baked bread, and was that laughter and singing in the distance. The party had traveled this same route less than 24 hours before and he knew few lived in the region and fewer still would be up at this hour. He suspected a trap.

He followed the scent and sound to the most amazing site he would have imagined. A well lit inn was setting on a bar on the bend of the creek. The sounds and scents were real as he could discern. The party was in no shape to ask questions as Bristletoes was wracked by coughs and fever. He approached and a well rounded inn keeper came out to greet him…..

Grondel was toasty and near a roaring fire. Bristletoes was grey, but he was alive. And some stew that the innkeeper had given Dronaad had allowed him a remarkable recovery that had allowed him to heal some of Bristletoes and the rest of the parties damage. If this was an illusion or a trap Grondel thought, then it was one hell of a way to go….he of course had a fine tankard of black ale in one hand (already emptied twice)…….it was getting warm and fuzzy here…….

Grondel started awake. The party was on the back of a hillside, and he woke just in time to see the last of the inn slip into insubstantiality. The party was spread out under blankets fast asleep on the hill, without apparent harm. He was amazed. Now his purse seemed to be almost empty, but considering the alternatives he found in money well spent……heck (he shifts his foot in the worn boot) he turns up the sole and to his amazement even that damage is gone.

The rest of the party still dozes, and he slips to the hill crest. The site that greets him leaves him dumbstruck. He is looking over a harbor that he left weeks before on the trip. It is the bay off Stormpoint. Now the weather is still overcast, but the party has been deposited 200 leagues from where they had been. He didn’t know if the party that was left would ever have reached here again…in fact he would have bet money against it. He know that Bristletoes uncle had a holding there. He set about to rouse the group….at least Bristletoes was home…..

A nice fantasy for the game. Having inns that can move about a setting can be a small help for even healthy groups and leads to all sorts of plot twists.

In fact I can think of an evil ending here where poor Grondel finds the party on an very familiar (but different shadowy hillside) and are those shadows…moving…….what is that diving at his head………wait there is the inn vanishing and it is followed by an evil cackle that goes on and on as the seeming swoops in to strike his head…..

What ideas can you offer to the setting that will enhance it???


Later

[ShadowMoon]

Having inns that can move about a setting can be a small help for even healthy groups and leads to all sorts of plot twists.

Popping Inns / Wondering shops (Discworld) in Birthright; are You serious?

...

[cccpxepoj]

The next thing will be Rinswind the court wizard, what ?????????

[bbeau22]

If you like the idea of a movable Inn I would suggest having only one in the entire continant. You could truly flesh it out and make it intresting.


Better yet you could have a magic item that springs forth an Inn as a variation on Derns Instant Fortress. The carrier could be a powerful blooded individual that has the Brenna travel ability. He could have pre-set up spots for the Inn or just simply puts it up where it looks nice.

-BB

[AndrewTall]

Actually it works fine as a shadow world entrance point - you slip in it while it connects to one place, you leave after it has connected to another. It wouldn't work for a part of the 'hollow' shadow world which simply mirrors an empty Cerilia, or for a truly dire part ruled by one of the Lost, but part of the 'wild lands' where reality is what you - or something else - dream it to be? I can handle those places having variable connection points to Cerilia / elsewhere.


Of course I wouldn't want to risk the inn, the gods know what you might meet in it - let alone where the inn might leave you - and is that innkeeper really as jovial as he acts? Hasn't Bristletoes been a bit grim since he was healed - even for a halfling? And what happened to the horse?


I wouldn't make the inn a common occurrence, but I might drop it in to the game as a legend, or in person if my rolls had been overly blessed by Sera - or I'd just DM'd when in a godawful mood and perhaps been a tad harsh...

[irdeggman]

Perhaps it could transport between regions that are steep in the Shadow World. Like maybe connecting places of tremendous "disasters" like tuar annwn in Vosgaard. Some kind of linked curse that "traps it in limbo between worlds".

[Riggswolfe]

Wasn't there some canon adventure maybe in Legends of the Hero Kings that had an inn that connected to the Shadow World?

[irdeggman]

Seeking Bloodsilver (from Dungeon mag) had an adventure that went into the Shadow World, but no real inn connection.

Great Adventure by the way, except for the "item at the end" - too powerful. But that is minor compared to the overall quality of the adventure itself.

[MatanThunder]

Do any one of you add some interesting tid bit to your Cerilia campaign??


A unique or borrowed component??????

I don't mind the feedback...it makes me feel.......

But don't you add anything uniquely yours to the setting???

Later

[Gwrthefyr]

At some point, I had a writeup ready (it was part of a yet-unplayed campaign which would have taken place during some kind of BR Enlightment era; I posted one of the prepared writeups at some point on my brother's old account: other notes included political and ethnic maps over time, etc.) about a world where the Gorgon has completely fallen into mythology (whether it always was, partly was or was actually fully real was still undecided), but which still kept a prince Raesene (I had two stat blocks for the current prince, Thaddeus Raesene, one which assumed he was actually Raesene Andu with lots of simulacres and deceit woven around him, and one which assumed he was actually simply his heir, partly to toy with the players in case they read my notebooks during the campaign, and partly because, while leaning for option A, I still had a few doubts). The idea was trying to get him elected to the Iron Throne, most likely with PC support, despite centuries of hatred between the rest of Anuire and what I had tentatively named the Northern Aenwe (assuming the Southern Aenwe to be the tribe in Avanil, Brosengae and possibly Taeghas or parts of it).

And then I decided to introduce my the 9yo sister to tabletop RPGs, and I considered that Birthright would probably be too complicated as a starting game, particularly with no french-language rulebook and a whole notebook for PCs handwritten in english (which would have made it worse), so I never got to testing it.