Greyhawk: Going from the Ashes to Dust

Greyhawk: Going from the Ashes to Dust

This is going to be a rough campaign. Character death is no more likely than in any other GURPS campaign, but I don’t hold back from other outcomes and results and my villains act like villains. They are often despicable and seldom willing to deny themselves anything out of a sense or propriety.

The themes are heroism, horror and as a tertiary theme, Sword and Sorcery. The folk in this will need to be heroes…but heroes need not be “Good”. The heroes will be powerful in their own rights, but young. They will be built on 250 points, with no more than 75 spent in skills and up to 100 points of disadvantages and flaws. This should allow for a considerable amount of differentiation and will still hopefully keep them from being too overwhelming personally.

The average human being will have anywhere from a 1-50 point build. The younger they are, the fewer the points. And by average I do mean 9 out of every 10 of them. In a village on the frontier this may be closer to 6 out of ten and in many cities it may be closer to 19 out of 20. Still, the PCs will stick out. Also, magical ability, outside of alchemical and herbalist lore will be rare indeed, and even those exceptional fields will have few practicing members. Roughly 1 human in 100 is born with the capability to even learn magic. Of those most never get the opportunity to do much with it. In most societies in the Flanaess fewer than 1 true wizard exists per 3000 inhabitants. Elves are the biggest exception to this, since every elf is capable of magic and few don’t bother to learn at least some minor spells, but they are few in number and have children so seldom there is no place outside of the few primarily elven realms where their abilities help them to dominate the cultures they mix with.

The Dwer folk in my game include the Gnomes and the Halflings as well as the Dwarves, of which there are three major divisions, the most numerous being the Ath-Dwer of the central Flanaess, then the isolationist Havahd-Dwer of the northern mountains and finally the Muir, or Dark Dwer of the Sulhaut Mountains, or more precisely, the spaces below them. Each dwarven race has their own secret tongue that is only spoken when they are sure they are amongst their own alone. The various gnomish and Halfling sorts are seen as distant cousins and the halflings and gnomes share the same universal dwarven pantheon, albeit they have their own “saints” such as Garl Glittergold and Sheela Peryroyl, who are also revered by the dwer as well.

The humanoids of my world do not have their own deities and sometimes (seldom) worship the human or dwarven gods in their regions. Usually they worship the Dukes of Hell, or occasionally, they get caught up in cultism when an avatar of a particularly strong or violent deity appears. Presently almost all of the humanoids in the Empire of Iuz worship him, but outside of the Empire it is the diabolic lords, especially Dispater, who receives the greatest veneration.

The lands and much of the canonical history remains the same, simply deemphasizing the role of magic in all that was undertaken. Also, there has been more involvement by the deities themselves directly, through their aspects (not avatars). A Divine Aspect is an individual, almost always one chosen because of their great faith, which is chosen by the deity to represent a part of their portfolio that the deity believes needs to be stressed in a particular place and time. They become imbued with a not insignificant amount of raw divine power that is tailored to represent most clearly whatever aspect of the divine will that the particular deity wants stressed. In game terms they are characterized as a broad 300 point (usually) imbuement that the GM adds on to an existing character that fits the portfolio and desires of the deity. This can be nearly anything, of course, but is more useful if applied to an already powerful figure, which is the reason that most aspects are already well known in their own rights before becoming (almost always temporarily) divine aspects.

Avatars appearing are a much more problematic thing. Few ever do this, as it has no small degree of risk for the deity… like the possibility of death for the deity if the avatar dies, and while immensely capable, avatars ARE mortal. Still, these beings are vastly powerful representations of the deity’s divine will. The most famous avatar is Iuz, a god incarnate in the form of a cambion. But he still isn’t the “real problem”. The real problem won’t be quite so easy to discern and may get missed entirely, until it is too late. The kid gloves are coming off in this campaign, which may end up being Apocalyptic. Still, Iuz plays a truly major role in the campaign as it exists now too.