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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 2402344" data-attributes="member: 812">Yeah, that's a great idea. Already in progress, sort of. See, over seven years I've developed an inordinately large number of "dunno quite what that is but it must be something" things in the campaign, and part of going back through my megabytes of notes is looking for such things and coming up with ways to integrate them into what's going on.Ferex, one of the primary religions on Barsoom was allegedly started by seven brothers, who heard the voice of god and founded the seven tribes of the Narid. That's a little detail that's just been hanging around since the very first days of the campaign, never really meaning anything.Well, whilst sojourning upon the Ghostwalk, our heroes encounter a strange series of thrones. Now, there's ALWAYS been an Iron Throne in Kish, and a Peacock Throne in Luc'Davarionne, and I always had a notion that maybe there was something going on there, but I never bothered defining it -- precisely because I know how helpful a bunch of "loose threads" are at the end of things as you're trying to wrap it all up.So ANYWAY, when I was casting about for something cool on the Ghostwalk, I thought, "Let's do something with those Thrones". Off the top of my head I decide there are seven: Peacock, Iron, Jade, Wood, Silk, Blood and Gold. Some are busted and they all have weird attendants and apparently relate to some actual chairs on Barsoom, but are also part of some ancient mystical mechanism. And that's cool and gets the players all confused which is always fun for me.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Anyhow, our heroes escape the Ghostwalk and are investigating these thrones, looking for connections. I don't really know where I'm going with them at this point, but whilst planning a session I wander across my Religions of Barsoom notes and notice that there are seven brothers. Seven thrones. So I decide that the Naridic names of the brothers (which I've had since day one), TRANSLATE into Imperial Kishak (the lingua common of Barsoom) as Bird, Iron, Stone, Tree, Silk, Blood and Gold.I didn't make up new names for these brothers, mind you. The names have been there since before the first session of Barsoom. Now there's a crazed seer named Sharina al-Sharina beni Howetait who's also been around since before the first session ever ran, and our heroes encountered her before but over the past few years the only news on her is that she's been captured by the Kishaks. One of the curious factoids about ol' Sharina is that she is the only surviving member of the priestly order of these seven brothers.And thus, she is connected to these thrones.I guess. The PCs are about to bust her out of Kishak prison, anyway, based on that theory. I like it, so I reckon I'll come up with something. Thinking currently is that she knows how to talk to the freaky-deaky creatures that have been trying to explain the PCs how to use the thrones.I STILL don't know what's actually going on, but that's a very very big part of the fun, for me. But it IS very satisfying that little notes I made seven years ago (hey, seven years, seven brothers, seven thrones...) are proving instrumental to the entire cosmology (and the actual narrative) of the game. I AM confident that in the end, I'll look like a genius.Important tip, kids: Make up more stuff than you need, but don't make it up too much. Leaving yourself wiggle room is how you keep from going crazy.</blockquote>

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