Hjorimir
Adventurer
rycanada said:
Ah. The Plot.
What the children know:
They are the Aradî and most everybody has blonde to tawny hair along with a fair complexion.
They live in the town of Kan Poril; it’s the only world they know.
Most adults are soldiers and are away for months at a time.
A greasy, fat foreigner called Casimir resides within the Holding and is treated as a valued guest. He is disgusting, rude, boisterous, and demanding, yet tolerated with amazing endurance and patience.
The grown-ups encourage them to play hide and seek an awful lot. To most this is a great thing. However, Silas has considered the possibility that this is more about training than entertainment.
Silas was given a book by Old Eira (see attachment if you’d like) that tells of an ancient kingdom, Pelandir (see attachment if you’d like more about that). But Eira warned him not to even mention the word Pelandir as it is outlawed.
The children have started to notice that more and more of the men have had to leave home to go fight in far away lands as Casimir decides.
Two of the PCs (the twins) have a family that really promotes the glory of being an Aradî soldier. When it comes down to it, they are a couple of bullies who beat up other bullies (and each other). They have taken a looking out for poor Silas. At first this was because they were told to, but it is starting to come down to something a bit deeper.
Two brothers, the sons of a fisherman, are pretty good friends. Unfortunately, their father is an extreme pacifist and often interferes with their friendship to the twins who he sees are a pair of violent rapscallions. He often says, “No son of mine will be a soldier!” He has a serious limp, which the children have gathered is from an old wound. (Rhys, one of the fisherman’s boys, has been out on his own a little too much during play because his brother, Mathom, is the player that missed the first two sessions. Luckily, Silas found a way to get him involved in last night’s game.)
Anyway, you take all of this together (along with many things left unsaid) and the boys are really starting to see a different picture and it is troubling them. Silas told his friends about Pelandir and suggested that the Aradî fight for money, not honor and glory like the days of old. After the twins beat him up for saying that about their father they asked their mother (who never really gave them a clear answer). Rhys prodded his own father and has come to understand that he is trying to make a better life for his family; a life where his children grow up to be business men and live in peace.
So the PCs spend a great deal of time trying to figure out the truth behind their people. Of course, being children, they are given chores, food, or outright ignored by the adults. Casimir has had a few run-ins with the children and they all pretty much hate him. It isn’t anything sick, but Casimir kind of pushes the kids out of his way as he waddles by (often sending the poor kids to the floor). However, he is very fond of the twins. They are going to be excellent “assets,” not that they know that that means exactly, but they’re convinced it isn’t good.
Couple this with some rather mysterious happenings with Silas. He found an odd book with writings that seemed to crawl along the pages and written in odd patterns to form larger pictures when look at from further away. Mathematical notations are scribbled in the margins and between lines where there is room. It looks like different people have written in the book over time. As Silas hid away trying to read and understand the book he was visited by a strange man who claims to be his godfather. He dresses as a nobleman and has a jeweled dagger. As the Aradî are pretty darn poor overall it is odd to meet such a man who claims to be one of their own.
Long story short, his “godfather” took the book from him and told him that he cannot look at it until his sixteenth birthday. That there are laws that must be followed…and there are laws that can be broken if one knows how. But for now, the book is off limits.
Ugg. This post really doesn’t do justice to everything that has happened. I could write pages and pages (and pages) at this point. But I won’t bore you with the details.
Let me just say the plot is the people are exploited as mercenary soldiers because they have handed down knowledge of warfare for centuries. Yet for all their fighting and sacrifice, they are a dwindling people. The PCs, naturally, HATE this but it is the reality they find themselves in. At this stage they are very much in the “when I grow up I’m going to…” stage.
Revealing the world to them as the game progresses and filtering what I share with them based on their childish outlook is one of the things they are really enjoying. They’re asking a lot of questions, but they don’t get a lot of answers. Not knowing what is REALLY going on is what is driving them at the moment.
Anyway, I attached the Family Tree and Book Synopsis I have handed out.
