Hi everyone!
Progress on the book is really good (116895 words, feels like I am approaching half-time maybe?), I am through with the cultures and have moved on to describing the continent of Shanarel. Obviously, GMs and players want to know where on the map the interesting places are. Me and Mark Smylie are in the process of making regional maps, and I am going through the countries one by one, and writing a little bit about every country. To give you an idea, this is how this will look like:
Moreta
“We sat, lost in thought and rather tired, on a viewing platform that had been attached to one of the largest pukita trees I had ever seen, at a dizzying height. The tree stood right on the border of the Pamwanuna, and so we looked out from the treetops over the monstrous vegetables and fruit. We had known what to expect, of course, but nothing can really prepare you for the sight. Guidesta chuckled, pointed to a titanic structure in the distance, and then said with a slightly crazed look: “Broccoli. None of our group could contain themselves, we screamed with laughter. The waitress, who to her great credit didn’t even bat an eyelid, topped us up and placed a few more plates of overly hot and spicy food on the table. “Eat, you can see we have too much.” She gestured vaguely at the landscape while we could only gasp.” Gondolfo Sapirano, “Hurricane of Desires”
Population: 8,000,000
Peoples: Pongolo (75%), Malar (18%), Yigut-Bal (4%), minorities of Nargot-Bal, Kamberins, Shurts, Gnysta and Volloshin
Capital: Bytaty
Form of government: Indirect democracy. Each Vavatu appoints a deputy, who then moves into a room in the Na-Vavatu, a gigantic, confusing palace in Bytaty. And then things get complicated.
The heart of the Pongolo culture is the island of Moreta. Thanks to the Pamwanuna and the rich farmland in the south, it is no problem at all to feed a bunch on the island. In fact, it is so easy that the Pongolo have so much free time here (with friendly Malar support) that they were once able to completely remodel the island. It certainly looks naturally overgrown, and in a spectacular way, but everything has been changed in such a way that the traveling observer has no choice but to constantly walk through a spectacular environment. That completely natural-looking giant grotto over there? It has several paths that lead you to the most beautiful places. The promising trail into this seemingly impenetrable jungle? Turns out to be a well-maintained path with regular snack stops and a stop at wonderful thermal springs. But that forest back there, there really isn’t a path leading into it, is there? Well, let your eyes wander to the jetty and then look a little higher up, ah, there’s a kind of apparently grown branch road.
This is by no means to say that Moreta is completely safe, oh no, such a thought would be a completely inadmissible fallacy! The Pongolo of Moreta like animals and plants of all kinds, even the dangerous ones, so please be careful, especially in the Tokutu Mountains and in the far northwest. In many places here, the idea of monsters is even neutral, as long as the monsters stick to certain basic rules. And in the far east of the island is one of the traditional breeding grounds for dragon mothers, so it’s best not to go there at all unless you have an invitation.
And now to Pamwanuna. Translated, this place means “orchard”, which is a misnomer: this vanuvil is home to an unbelievable variety of fruit, herbs, nuts and vegetables, some of which defy description, but all of which defy logic. As this place is so terribly practical and doesn’t need much tending, the Pongolo have done little more than build a few roads and villages to make harvesting and transportation easy. If you are very lucky, you might catch sight of the Fosalanna Junish, a crocodile-like lizard the size of a medium-sized terraced house, which crawls leisurely through the Pamwanuna, wants to be left alone, but sometimes lets children ride on it. Of all the fosalanna, it is probably the one with the least ambition, and you can well understand it when you see it so contentedly eating a giant leek.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
You can see that I made some conscious decisions here. I always start with a short in-game text, because they are fun to do. Then you get a few rudimentary facts, so you know what people live in the country, and how it is organized. And then there is a short text, which will tell you 2-4 interesting things, and then we move to the next country. I have stated this before, but the first aim of the book for GMs and players is always to be fun, and never to be boring. So this section of the book is mainly about throwing ideas at people, so that they can pick them up and make something out of them for their own campaign. Once we get to individual adventures (Like the one at the end of this book), the focus will change, become much narrower, and we will talk about details. But as we can’t describe every country in detail, what you will get here are some impressions that give you a general idea of the place.
To finish this, here is a regional map done by Mark Smylie:
