The Band of the Wolf

The histories and songs of Tellene contain innumerable heroes and bands of heroes who rise up throughout the ages. But there is one company in particular that appears in a whole cycle of tales spanning centuries, if not millennia: The Band of the Wolf.

In truth, there is not just one Band of the Wolf, but many. The Band has come together to fight back the forces of darkness and Chaos, only for its members to die in glorious battle or to go their separate ways when their labors were completed, and then reappear a generation or a few centuries later of a new company of individuals completely unrelated to those who came before. Nevertheless, all know that there are not many bands, but one Band, always gathered together under a single Banner and bearing the silver, wolf-head dagger on their persons.

The Banner of the Wolf was woven in the dawn of the world by the Durvalk, in the days before their occultation. They knit it together of strands of sunlight and cords of blood on a loom of dragonbone, their skilled fingers crafting its weft of cunning spells and its warp of the blessings of the Creator. The Banner can neither be harmed nor destroyed, unless it be unraveled upon the very dragonbone loom on which it was made.

The Banner will always be found by a company, whether a cadre of paladins on quest or by a group of simple tomb-robbers seeking their fortunes. No one individual of the company is ever able to claim sole possession of it; it is always the fellowship's property. Those who find it, and those who ride under it, always have their lives changed, for the Banner never appears except when it is needed. When unfurled in battle, the Banner grants the benefits of a bless spell to all on its side.

The banner is usually found with one or more silver daggers with a distinctive wolf's-head pommel. The company will find themselves wishing to have enough for every member, and will seek out a dwarven smith to create enough for the company. And though the Adurek have lost much of their Art since the vanishing of the Durvalk, the making of the wolf's-head daggers is one that has been steadfastly passed from father to son.

The daggers are made of mithril, with ebony hilts, enchanted to afford a +1 to both attack and damage rolls, and doing double-damage to the undead. One who bears a dagger feels a subtle pull towards the Banner, and can always find it. This pull becomes urgent even to the point of a geas when the Band is in great need or as the Banner draws near to one of the great battles of the age. 

Though the Band of the Wolf is always destined to turn the tide of history, it is not always destined to do so for the better. Though Darryn Dracwn and his Band won many victories against the forces of darkness, in the end they were betrayed by the sorceress Aurora, also of the Band, leading to the fall of three of the Fhokki kingdoms and the Ban of the Doulathan. Nor does riding under the Banner guarantee victory, fame, and honor, as many a man resting in a shallow, unmarked grave can attest. 

The Church of the Law, the Disciplines, and the New Order

While they aren't updated as fast as some, I do enjoy reading the Kenzerco Kingdoms of Kalamar forums, just to see the different takes the fanbase has on the setting.

While I don't remember which thread it showed up on anymore, I remember a discussion some time ago about whether the Lawful gods were more organized than those of Chaos. I was somewhat surprised that many didn't seem to think there would be any difference at all. To me, it's obvious that there absolutely would be.

In my B/X Kalamar campaign, the three lawful alignments have each developed their own organized religions: The Church of the Law (lawful good), the Disciplines (lawful neutral), and the New Order, known in the distant past as the Elder Fane (lawful evil). Now, all of this is within the contexts of my merger of B/X's three-fold alignment system with the nine-point system assumed by the AD&D-inspired KoK books via Holmes (see A is for Alignment). To briefly sum up:

Lawful: LG, LN, NG
Lawful (evil): LE, overlapping NE
Neutral: Some NG, CG, N
Chaos: CN, CE, overlapping NE
Unaligned: None of the above, though some N are viewed this way 

In short, the nine-point alignments describe the groupings of the gods, while the three-point (or five-point alignment (Law vs. Chaos) is the way most humans are brought up to think of the cosmic conflict. As in real life, the world is usually more complicated than we'd like to believe.

The Church of the Law overlaps somewhat with the Neutral Good faiths, but while there is usually cooperation between them when an outside foe threatens, the Friends of the Fields, Peacemakers, Children of Love, Merciful Fates, and Journeymen are seen as schismatics, and the relationship is often a strained one, not unlike that between Catholics and Protestants in the centuries after the Reformation Wars of the late middle ages. This tension is often exploited by evil and Chaotic forces, who infiltrate both groups to stir up strife.

In practical terms, this means that a cleric may have a particular patron deity, or may simply be a servant of the powers of Law generally. There would be little problem with a cleric shifting his focus from one LG god to another, though there might be some real tension (on the earthly plane, if nothing else) if he turned to one or more of the NG gods--or vice-versa.

(Incidentally, not every priest of the Law is a cleric. Other priests, particularly if they have been long and faithful in their orders, may well be able to call upon the gods to perform miracles, and many of them can regularly produce miracles particularly associated with their patron: Truthseekers can detect lies, the Order of Light can use its lanterns to repel the undead, Friends of the Fields increase the harvest just by blessing it, etc. However, a cleric as described in the rulebooks, who can do multiple miracles a day that reflect the blessing of many gods, is a truly rare individual.)

The Disciplines, as they are usually called, are nominally allied with the Church of the Law, but rarely produce clerics. (The Seekers of the Three Strengths, however, do produce martial-artist monks.) Their focus is on knowledge and wisdom. Many of the Disciples deny that there is an afterlife in the Seven Heavens such as preached by the Church of the Law, but either believe in a form of reincarnation, or believe that after death, all souls are reunited with the First Soul in Nirvana, or some combination of the two. This belief is taken as heretical by both the LG and NG faiths, but there has never been a concentrated effort to stamp it out in modern times, perhaps because it is too esoteric to take hold in the common folk.

Many of the Disciples regard the gods as Platonic ideals of concepts rather than as living, thinking (albeit non-material) beings. When they use the proper names of the gods (particularly their own), they think of them as mortal beings who, by perfectly representing one of the Two-and-Forty ideals, Ascended as Divine Masters. These Masters each paved the way for others to become enlightened, and thereby achieve true Nirvana (either breaking the cycle of reincarnation, or else more perfectly reuniting with the Oversoul).

The New Order, as it is called by its current followers, is actually a revival of the Elder Fane which ruled the world in the ancient days when only the Dejy had yet crossed over from Svimolz to mainland Tellene. In the days before his imprisonment, Asha the Tamer taught the Dejy to domesticate animals, particularly the wild horses that roamed Tellene, thus enabling the Dejy to grow their kingdoms across the face of Tellene, culminating in the great empire that once bore their name (forgotten now to all but the Lathlani and the Adurek). As a result, even when forgotten by all but the elves, the Dejy have never fully forgotten Asha--indeed, his name lingers in many tribal and personal names, such as the Ashyr of Ek'Gakel.

The gods of the New Order are seen as related and married: Asha the Tamer (known in Kalamaran as E'Patali the Overlord) is both the brother of and the consort of Ojob the Jealous (Kar'soloti the Corruptor), while Lord Nyko Twilight (Lamas the Dark One, aka Mravroshkha-Kheilshor, the Devourer of Light to the Krangi hobgoblins) is the brother of and consort of Slen Iceheart (Pirabi the Flaymaster). When the Overlord was imprisoned, the others fled away and remained hidden in remote parts of the world, known only to their secret cults. Now that Asha has returned, the Elder Fane has reformed under a new name, and the nations who openly worship the Four are growing in strength.

The New Order teaches that in the afterlife, good and evil alike will reside in Hades, or Hell (differentiating the two is a more recent conceit of the philosophers). Those who serve the Order well will be given greater dominion in both this world and the next, while those who fall for the deceits of kindness, charity, and sacrifice are destined to be sheep in both worlds.

Much as the relationship between the Lawful Good and Neutral Good faiths, there is some strain between the Lawful Evil and the Neutral Evil. In ancient days, the two were joined within the Fane, particularly in the late Dejy Empire, where they managed to stamp out nearly all other faiths, but after the imprisonment of the Overlord, a split occurred. The New Order seeks to bring the Harvesters, the Gaunt, the Veiled Ones, and the Purgers under its dominion, but looks on them as shock-troops at best, and points to the fact that none of those priesthoods have true clerics as a sign of just how degenerate they have become.

And as for the gods of Neutrality (and Chaotic Good) and Chaos? For the most part, they work independently of each other, though they may ally briefly when it suits them. While not worshiped by completely organized churches, they do have both druids and shamans--and even many magic-users--who seek them out for their gifts or placate them to protect their tribes. Druids (the Fhokki term) and shamans (the Dejy version) in B/X Kalamar don't worship Nature in the abstract, but all of the gods of nature which aboriginal and "primitive" people depend on and fear. That will be a subject for a future post, if and when I ever develop a shaman class that fits with my vision of Tellene.

The Fine Line Between Enchantment and Death

In Tellene, this is the sacred animal of the Riftmaster, the Sorcerer Supreme:

And this is the sacred animal of the Harvester of Souls:

Though seldom admitted by the disciples of the Sorcerer Supreme, there is a intrinsic link between runic magic (the sort practiced by the Lathlani and most human users of magic) and death.

From the Myrad Gadal d'Magi Guldan Relcren:

The Sorcerer Supreme has appeared at many times and places in Tellene to teach his Art to its peoples. The Lathlani knew him first of all as Halobrendar, who taught the Fey Kin in mortal guise to channel their intrinsic control of Chaos (which warps and bends the moral world to a strong will) into constructive forms. In the legendary past of human history, he appeared to the Dejy as Djahn, King of the elemental spirits who bore his name (the Djinn). The Brandobians were taught the Art by an elf (though they themselves deny his race) named Emnon, while the great College of Magic in what would become Bet Rogala was established by one Hokalas. . .

Runic magic stands in the gap between Law and Chaos, ordering the flows of Chaotic Mana by formula which must be memorized and carefully spoken and worked. The nature of Mana is such that the channeling of it erases the ordering runes from the caster's mind, forcing him to re-memorize the forms all over again. True Enchantment (not the petty works of charlatans) therefore requires a careful balance between the two cosmic forces. A magic-user may be a champion of Law or a master of Chaos, but he is using a tool that can never be wholly of either. Indeed, since magic depends on the existence of Chaos, it is intrinsically corrupting, and one dedicated to Law who lacks a strong personality and a measure of wisdom will find himself drawn to the other side. . .

If magic is poised between the mortar of Law and the pestle of Chaos, it is even moreso arranged between the twin forces of Life and Death. Any user of magic who would become a true Wizard must first pass through the rank of Necromancer. We call the Riftmaster by many names, not least of which is the Gatekeeper. But what is the Gate that he keeps? It is the Gate that all mortals must pass through under the scythe of the Harvester. To pass into the true domains of magic, all must cross this Gate and learn to master it. Those who fail to master it find the Lord of the Underworld waiting to devour their souls.

Those mastered by the Harvester are consumed by death. The Dragon of Magic becomes stripped down to the bones of undeath, the darkest underbelly of the Art. They are both obsessed with death and fearful of it, sacrificing even their very souls to gain eternal undeath. These "Harvesters"--harvesting the souls of the living that they may attain the "privilage" of eternal undeath--inevitably carry the dark tome known as the Teleftaia Logon with them, and wear pendants and knotted cords to indicate their rank among the Congregation of the Dead.

In game terms, this means that the priests of the Harvester are not chaotic clerics, but magic-users who decided to go down the dark path. In addition to having access to special necromantic spells, Harvesters can wield sickles (d6 dmg) and scythes (d8 dmg, two-handed pole weapon), and can "turn" (actually, compel) undead as a cleric three levels lower. However, they can never be raised from the dead and are particularly susceptible to the corruption of Chaos.

Thinking About Wisdom

Since D&D's beginnings, Wisdom has always been a bit of an oddball attribute. It's easy enough to tell what Strength does, or Dexterity, or Constitution, or Intelligence, or Charisma--each of these have easily quantifiable affects on the game. But wisdom? "The word 'wisdom' refers to inspiration, intuition, common sense, and shrewdness" (B6). How does one rule that without taking away from player agency? Other than as a prime requisite for clerics and a very minor bonus to saving throws vs. magic, it's usually used as a dump stat.

There have been some attempts to rectify this over the years. Swords & Wizardry, for example, gives a bonus to experience for any character with a high Wisdom, not just clerics. In 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition D&D, many survival skills, such as foraging and direction sense, have been tied to the Wisdom stat, as have skills relating to perception. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that this makes your clerics your best survivalists. Now, that wouldn't be so bad if you conceived of a cleric as being basically a ranger--a divinely-empowered guardians of the outskirts of civilization. And honestly, that would be a pretty cool take on the class, though you'd have to loosen the weapons restrictions (what ranger couldn't use a bow and sword?) and figure out another way to balance it. But that wouldn't be the D&D cleric, and I want to hold onto the basic assumptions of the game.

Finally, the idea came to me that maybe the bonuses to hunting, foraging, maintaining course, and so forth could be a unique feature of fighters (and elves, halflings, and to a certain extent, dwarves). That actually made perfect sense, the more I thought about it: Clerics may be wise, but most would come from some kind of militant or monastic order--not the sort of people who spent all their time hunting in the woods. But why not let the Wisdom ability give fighters a boost to their survival skills?

The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It made it possible to have an illiterate fighter (low Intelligence) who is nevertheless quite smart and adept in the ways of the wilderness (high Wisdom).

Why do we assume that all abilities must affect all classes the same way, anyway? There are plenty of class abilities that are affected by ability scores, so why not let certain abilities function differently depending on your class?

• Fighters, elves, and halflings: Wisdom modifies one's rolls to hunt, forage, and maintain course in the wilderness. 
• Dwarves: Wisdom modifies one's rolls to hunt, forage, and maintain course in the hills and mountains, and one's dwarven detection abilities underground.
• Thieves: Wisdom modifies one's ability to detect traps and secret doors.
• Magic-users: Wisdom grants additional languages/knowledge, as it reflects the greater diligence of the magic-user in his studies.
• Clerics: Wisdom modifies experience, of course, but a cleric with a Wisdom score of 16+ also casts spells as if a level higher (so a 1st level cleric with a 16 Wis casts one first level spell, instead of having to wait until second level). 

This would give Wisdom some importance to all characters, and keep it from being just a dump stat, but without sacrificing flavor in the classes. Something to consider.

Migrating For Loot and Plunder

Tellene's rich backstory includes a prehistorical legend about how the various human tribes--the Brandobians, the Fhokki, the Reanaarians, and the Kalamarans--migrated from Svimolz, the Cradle of Civilization after the collapse of the half-forgotten Dejy Empire. The backstory is that the Traveller and the Storm Lord warred over thousands of years, building and destroying a land bridge from Svimolz to the mainland, as the human races migrated one-by-one onto the continent. It's not a bad prehistory, giving you a sense (especially as you read the rest of the sourcebook) of the temperaments and movements of the races, including a sense of where one might find the ruins of their old kingdoms.

There's just one problem: For some reason, all of these great movements (with a couple of exceptions that I'll get to in a moment) take place in Tellene's prehistory. Once the races settle in their various areas, they seem inclined to just sit there.

That's neither particularly realistic nor particularly interesting, from a campaign-world design perspective. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, KoK--like most D&D worlds--is a pastiche of ancient history and Medieval European culture. In Kalamar's case, there are actually "time" zones one can pass through, from Brandobia (14th Century Europe, or thereabouts), to the Young Kingdoms (Early Medieval Europe, aka the "Dark" Ages), to Kalamar proper (late Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire, depending on your preference), to Reanaaria Bay (the pre-Roman Iron/Bronze Age). But Middle-Ages Europe was profoundly impacted by two elements that KoK lacks: The rise of a universal Church that worshiped a single God, and the mass migrations of the Germanic tribes and later the steppe peoples (the Huns, Mongols, etc.). 

As an aside, those interested in this area should check out Dan Carlin's Hard Core History podcast, particularly "Thor's Angels" and "Wrath of the Khans." Carlin has a great "voice" when talking about history, and really knows his material. Also, he tends to rotate his podcasts so that older ones are replaced by newer ones, so get them while they're hot.

In any case, despite being a late Roman culture and the Young Kingdoms being a Middle Ages culture, neither Kalamar nor the Young Kingdoms have ever experienced a mass migration of the Fhokki or the horse-nomad Dejy from the Wild Lands, even when Kalamar was so weakened politically and militarily that its outlying provinces just quietly broke away. Neither do we have any indication that Svimolz used the chaos of the Age of Great Anguish (c. 89-171 in the Imperial Reckoning) or Time of Misfortune (c. 228-236 I.R.; the "start" date of KoK being 563 I.R.) or the long, slow loss of Kalamaran dominance to try to establish its own colonies on the mainland. Why not?

The only real migratory movements noted in modern history are in the Young Kingdoms: The Brandobian conquests in c. -40 I.R., the rise of the hobgoblin kingdom of Kruk-Ma-Kali from 22-35 I.R., and finally the Kalamaran conquests from 41 I.R. on. The Atlas shows that there is still a minority Brandobian presence in the Young Kingdoms by the occasional village with a distinctly Brandobian name. (One thing that I do truly love about KoK is the attention Kenzerco paid to those kinds of details.) That's pretty much it.

And again, that's boring--and not particularly realistic. At the very least, even if they didn't try to hold territory, we would expect waves of Fhokki, Dejy, and Svimolz raiders hitting all of Kalamar's outlying districts during the times when the Vast Empire was weak. Okay, granted Kolokar built a "great wall" (Kolokar's Barrier) to try to keep the Fhokki out--but that didn't exactly work for the Chinese against the Mongols, did it? Yet, the entries for Tokis and Dodera say nothing about Fhokki raids leaving their distinct . . . genetic mark on the local populations.

And that's a great pity, especially for a world otherwise so carefully thought out. KoK thrives on grey-and-grey morality, where people can do terrible things while thinking that they're right and justified. What if Emperor Kabori's obsession with conquering the Thars wasn't just a matter of wanting to expand his empire, but because for hundreds of years Thar raiders had raped, pillaged, and burned the Vast Empire's northeastern borders? What if Basir, Tarisato, and southern Pekal had at various times been conquered by Svimolz, and the people had a distinct chocolate tone to their skin as a result? Maybe there are racial tensions in Tarisato due to the lords tending to be lighter skinned "pure" Kalamarans, and the lower classes having the darker skin tones of Svimolz. For that matter, maybe those conditions are reversed in Tokis and Dodera, where pale, freckled skin (a sure sign of Fhokki blood) is looked down on. 

What about the Young Kingdoms? Did they break off just because they could, or because the Empire proved too weak to protect them from Dejy and Fhokki invasions? Maybe many of the nobles are of Dejy and Fhokki blood as a result, even if they identify ethnically as Kalamaran or Brandobian.

None of this contradicts the canonical material. Tellene's history, as detailed as it is, is really quite sparse and mostly focused on the events that directly lead to the nations' current situations (exactly the way most people would remember it, actually). There are vast centuries details in but a few sentences here and there to fill in.

A final note, which ties into my observations in a couple of recent posts: It seems to be taken as a given by the peoples of Tellene that there are and have been since the Godswar exactly 43 gods (well, 42 for those who don't know that the Overlord is loose again). Each of these has certain titles that seem to be universal, and each seems to be known by different proper names by every culture. My own supposition was that those proper names were the names known by those cultures of the last avatar of the gods, who are hypostases (personified traits) of the Creator, platonic ideals of that which they represent. Since the gods represent all that is in the world of Tellene as endowed by its Creator, every culture instinctively knows all of them.

In some ways this is a shame. There is only other commercial D&D world that pays such close attention to the migration of cultures and how they effect the world, and that is Gary Gygax's own World of Greyhawk.

As Rob Conley and the Greyhawk Grognard have both pointed out, you can derive a lot about the cultures of the Flanaess from the simple one-page listing of the gods of Oerth because it contains a single column noting which gods are indigenous to which cultures--and in turn, by paying a bit of attention to the migratory patterns of Oerth's human races, tells you a lot about the cultures, including which gods are likely worshiped in different regions.

Looks like I'm going to have to spend some time figuring out where each god's major temple is, where else they're worshiped, etc. Should be interesting to try to map that to the different racial movements.

Yes, I'm a geek.

Generalizing Tellene's Regions (First Draft)

A question came up on the Kenzerco Forums, "How do you generalize regions?" Here's my own list, far from complete, just off the top of my head:

Brandobia - 13th-14th Europe as interpreted through both the Matter of Britain and the Matter of France, but with strangely Oriental influences from mysterious Westerlin, across the Brandobian Ocean.

Cosdol - Estcarp from Witchworld, but without the magic being confined to women.

Eldor - Robin Hood era Britain, as seen through the lense of the 1991 version of the movie (the one with Uma Thurman)

Mendarn - Spain/France in the era of the Three Musketeers, with a bit of Argos and Zingara (from R.E. HOward's Hyborian Age)

Pel Brolenon - A forested Mordor and the Blight, mixed with the Seanchan from The Wheel of Time.

Young Kingdoms - Your "standard" sword-and-sorcery D&D realms; a dangerous, half wild land whose history has been shaped by the countless empires that have conquered it, by having the fey Kalalali Forest dominating it, and by the threat of the Krangi.

Ek'Gakel - the American Old West as seen through Clint Eastwood movies, but with swords instead of guns.

Korak and Ek'Kasel - Rohan and Gondor, holding back the Dark One from devouring the world.

Pekal - The Dalelands of the Forgotten Realms and Valdemar, with a bit of an Arabic twist (due to the influence of the Elosi), but in the throes of societal change due to the influences of the elves.

Paru'Bor - A lone bastion of true Law in a Chaotic world (basically, the setting of The Keep on the Borderlands); Cormyr from the Forgotten Realms; the origin of the word "Paladin" (Paru'Diin).

Elos Desert - Arabia through the eyes of 1001 Arabian Nights and Weis and Hickman's The Rose of the Prophet.

Prompeldia - Greyhawk

Kalamar - the late Roman Empire (3rd-4th Century), striving to regain its former glory

Tokis - Pre-Revolutionary France, ala the Brotherhood of the Wolf

Tarisato - Colonial Africa, if the colonists were Roman instead of British

The Wild Lands - Romanish Germany, Skyrim, the North of the Forgotten Realms, Eriador of Middle-earth, Norse and Celtic legend.

Dhrokker - Mostly Skyrim, but with a significant number of Huns/Mongols/Horselord Dejy roaming the countryside.

Torakk - Northern Skyrim and Cimmeria mixed together, with a touch of Rasheman from the Forgotten Realms

Tharggy - Much like Dhrokker, but with the whole Amazon element--one which cannot survive long thanks to simple demographics.

Thybaj - Native American plainsmen, with a touch of central Asian culture

Skarna - Viking-land, heavily influenced by the Thirteenth Warrior

Slen - Iuz from Greyhawk, Angmar from Middle-earth, D'hara from the Sword of Truth series, and the Yuuzhan Vong (sp?) from the later Star Wars novels

Shynabyth - Native American in outward culture (albeit with an advanced metallurgy), but in the midst of a war between atheism and the old spirituality.

Narr-Rytar - Blackmoor

Reanaaria Bay - Early Mediterranean city-states, with the west corresponding to the northern Med and the east corresponding to the southern Med/Saharran/Egyptian region.

Svimolz - Ancient Ethiopia and Africa, inspired by a combination of Shaka Zulu, Afro Samurai, and Tekumel.