Kingdom of Sussary

Creating game materials? Monsters, spells, classes, adventures? This is the place!
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Solomoriah
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Re: Kingdom of Sussary

Post by Solomoriah »

Smaller than Morgansfort, but a bit bigger than a tower. It's a hardened fortress, not a comfortable place to hang out, purely a military facility. There isn't even a town nearby.
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Seven
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Re: Kingdom of Sussary

Post by Seven »

Normally, a small fortress can have barns outside, but it looks like they need to be inside in this case.
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Re: Kingdom of Sussary

Post by Rosisha »

Seven wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 8:25 pm Normally, a small fortress can have barns outside, but it looks like they need to be inside in this case.
Most fortresses have some kind of civilian infrastructure built around them or near them. This is a factor of basic economics. It takes time to build a castle, and you need a place for the workers to stay - they then have families, need food, so that results in farms, and before you know it you have a village. Even if you don't want a village nearby, it makes sense for one to start. Lords have money. Merchants want money. As a result, merchants are going to get as close to the money as they can get. However, it can also be planned - the village itself can be an attack vector a la Edward's planned villages and castles in Wales, which were used to build a local and loyal population.

I'm hard pressed to think of a castle that didn't have some kind of civilian settlement close by, though plenty of villages had no castle/manor.

Edit to Add: It's also a ridiculously bad idea to build a castle without a town or village. First, it increases supply lines dramatically. If you can't grow your food locally, then you're importing your food. That's a huge risk. Secondly, it is going to significantly increase expenses for maintaining the fortress if all your craftspeople are days and days away. Third, it has a negative impact on troop readiness. Again, every time you need new shoes or uniforms you have to go two days out and two days back it's a pain in the butt. OR you have to dedicate more storage space to things a village would produce organically.
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Solomoriah
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Re: Kingdom of Sussary

Post by Solomoriah »

It is in a ridiculously difficult area, precariously perched over a road literally cut into the side of a mountain. The supply line now is a bit long, roughly 18 miles of excellent, Roman-quality road from Glastavel; with Odellia no longer a factor, all supplies would have to come from the south. Suboptimal, but not impossible.
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Seven
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Re: Kingdom of Sussary

Post by Seven »

If it's all stone, the quarry might not be too far.
Roman made mortar from a mixture of lime and volcanic ashes.
You just need combustible for the oven. Maybe coal?
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Re: Kingdom of Sussary

Post by GrimlinJoe »

Solomoriah wrote: Tue Sep 14, 2021 5:29 pm*crickets*
I meant to reply to this thread sooner. I've already advertised this on my discord server and it has my players very excited. We love the Western Lands and all it has to offer so seeing this got people pretty stoked. I had been working on a project populating the western lands hex map with many of the printed content from both adventure anthologies and some of the community created campaign books. Having this as the icing on the cake will make the campaign really shine.
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Solomoriah
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Re: Kingdom of Sussary

Post by Solomoriah »

Thanks Joe! (Or should I shorten that to Grim?)

There's a lot to do, and I have a number of other projects going on, so any assistance offered would be appreciated. Maps, dungeon designs, you name it. I'd like at least one level 4 to 6 dungeon near each of the towns, for example, and the Lair of the Chimera is the only one I have any plans for. The more contributors, the better on this one.
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Solomoriah
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Re: Kingdom of Sussary

Post by Solomoriah »

Seven wrote: Fri Sep 17, 2021 5:49 amIf it's all stone, the quarry might not be too far.
Roman made mortar from a mixture of lime and volcanic ashes.
You just need combustible for the oven. Maybe coal?
Not sure what you're getting at here. "Roman-quality" just means "very good." The road through the pass is cut from the rock face, and so provides a rock surface (automatically paved, in effect) with necessary bridges made from the rock cut from the mountain. The part of the road south of the pass (to Glastavel) is paved with large flat stones to provide a solid, passable surface of moderate smoothness.

The road isn't as well maintained as it used to be, but then it's not as well-traveled either since trade ended many years ago... only the King's army uses the pass itself, though of course close to Glastavel the locals would use it some.
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Solomoriah
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Re: Kingdom of Sussary

Post by Solomoriah »

Here's a floor plan for the upper level of Uzenhold. No numbers, some symbols left undone (including ladders and ceiling trapdoors to access the upper tower levels, and probably stairs up to the roof of the main section). But this shows the layout. 50% MapMatic, 50% Gimp.
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Re: Kingdom of Sussary

Post by Bumblepig »

I like the overall idea, especially because there isn't anything quite like this among the current Basic Fantasy adventures.
The background story is engaging, and there are multiple "points of entry" into that story via the NPCs.
Uzenhold is cool. I can only think of one old school adventure that had a similar fortress-in-a-mountain-pass thing. Ice goblins are a nice touch.
As for realism (e.g., Uzenhold should have a village/civilian infrastructure), yeah that's true and realism can help flesh out a setting. But screw realism when necessary, because...um... this is a game where fire-breathing dragons are real and you can turn someone into a newt through magic.
One nit: I don't see the point of listing deceased NPCs in the NPCs list. The dead guys are interesting, but unless you plan for them to interact with the party (resurrection, speak with dead, turned to undead, etc.) I think they should stay in the history writeup.
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