Necropolitans, episode 67: Or we’ll come and eat you and your children

The Necropolitans learn the importance of public relations, and experience further book-related inconveniences, in Episode 067: Or we’ll come and eat you and your children.

"I don't think anybody can help Jaal." -- Nathan.

I did not make up the things that local people would logically be terrified of! Those are legitimate, canonical campaign-setting details of the ancient mythical horrors that villagers in this region would all have heard about in their childhoods. They just happen to closely match certain members of the party!

I enjoyed the botched attempt at subterfuge by Iris and getting to flesh that out as something just totally unrelated to the party. Everyone in the world has their own concerns, and even when they're suddenly suspicious about something you did, their suspicion might be pointed in a completely different direction. This is part of the world being a living place, bigger than the PCs. There's a time for the PCs being the most exciting thing that ever happened in a village, and a time for them being a minor hiccup in somebody's routine.

Sudden Transpositions

And then... they're somewhere else. Yes, this is book-related shenanigans.

Okay, cards on the table: the campaign gets distinctly weird here on account of them travelling back in time. This is for a reason! In hindsight I was merely setting myself up for further complications and difficulty remembering what has happened during the campaign, but it made sense at the time. And the books gave me a pretext for suddenly moving them to an entirely different part of the world, over a century in the past.

See, part of the long-term goings on are Things With The Stars. But why hasn't anybody else worked this out? Well, for one thing, canonically, the best group of astronomer-astrologers in the world fell apart and largely took their own lives after... it's complicated, a prophecy turned out really badly and they found something that the setting never discloses when they tried to find out more. And you could just shrug and say, well, some sages maybe worked some things out and everybody forgot. Or, right, like me, you could create an elaborate backstory for a sage who did work it out and got banished for talking nonsense, and ended up in a distant part of the world, and whose notebooks were all in a castle that is canonically destroyed by a massive earthquake a hundred years ago.

Nobody else has seen what she wrote, but with the power of time travel, it can turn out that you stole those notebook before the castle was destroyed! For your reading pleasure, I include my backstory below...

The Saoc Connection

The current campaign year is AR 4709, in the normal timeline.

Canonically, the Saoc were a group of extremely talented astrologer-astronomers in the country of Lirgen. Lirgen was largely destroyed after prophecies of Aroden's return in the AR 4600s failed; instead, in AR 4606, a colossal and permanent storm formed, devastating the nations in that area and submerging much of the land. Following that, the leadership of the Saoc made a voyage into the storm's heart to try and uncover its secrets. On returning, they took their own lives.

Rajelsis Coor was a Lirgen astronomer following the Saoc tradition. She ended up exiled and travelled extensively, ending up in the distant town of Edgeside Keep, in the Porthmos Gap region, on the far side of the continent. She died around AR 4550. Her granddaughter is the librarian at the actual Keep, and Rajelsis' books have ended up there as the only significant library around.

Coor's books include a research journal describing (and demonstrating) increasing astronomic similarities between her current period and reconstructions of some records of the Cyclops kingdom around AR -5200, which is to say, roughly 9700 years ago, and importantly, about a century before a meteor strike wiped out most of the civilizations on the planet. Coor expresses a strong interest in studying the Cyclops prophecies of that time.

Later, Coor mentions gaining entrance to a temple archive in Hyrantam (the Emerald Temple), and investigating the prophecies and star charts of the oracle there. According to her notes, her findings support her theory but she made enemies during her studies.

Further notes include hiring ships to visit the seas above lost Ghol-Gan (the Cyclops capital), and a hired sea-elf aquamancer who bound deep-sea creatures to search for clues in the ruins. According to Coor, information was unsurprisingly extremely limited, but she discovered a few scraps that appear to support her theories.

In 4522, Coor reports falling foul of political realignments that left her family in strong disfavour, and a few weeks later, having an attempt made on her life. She is charged with embezzlement along with several relatives; the journal is rather ambiguous as to whether this charge has merit. They are exiled from Hyrantam and she gradually makes her way into Cheliax, then along the coast to Taldor. At some point she meets and falls in love with a Taldan noble, and ends up settling in the Porthmos Gap. The librarian and her parents kept the books, but had little interest in the subject, only in their familial value. Adnoi Coor, the current librarian, donated the books to the Edgeside Keep archive but they’re far outside most people’s interests and haven’t been read to any significant extent.

Direct Links

1. RSS feed for all episodes
2. Episode 001: Character Generation
3. Master list of episodes
4. Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
5. Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
6. Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
7. Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
8. Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)