Almadia

10 kgp / 20 kxp Almadia (Fantasia)

Awfulthing: a dragon

Grandad: one of Bride's priests (m 56)

Hakkum: Fantasia's god of evil

Bride: Fantasia's god of good

Toughtokiss: evil queen of Almadia (f 48)

Grabbin: the queen's champion (m 24)

Darkeye: a courageous young woman (f 21)

Torsion Crowbar: a dwarf with an axe (m 87)

Soloquie Inbough: a bard with a sword (m 36)

Pedalicious: a warrior leader (f 26)

Angry Jack: a skeptical ranger (m 34)

Travis Traven: a chivalrous ranger (m 25)

Alvin Primrose: a clever ranger (m 54)

Fantasia is a game-world of the gods. It has a couple of land masses a thousand kilometers across, and one large archipelago. Its maeon wind is only 0.1 Y (therefore dodging points are one-third the Claran number). It has only three conjunctions, one on each land mass, and one in the archipelago. Gravity is 0.95 Claran. The days are nineteen hours long and three hundred days to the Fantasian year. The axis tilt is twenty degrees. There is one small moon with a period of fifty days, two very bright stars, and six visible planets.

Two gods are playing a game on the world, and have been for three hundred years. The world's intelligent inhabitants are almost all sapien, but there are a few elves and dwarves. According to sapien legends, sapiens have lived on the world for thousands of years. They point to many ancient ruins to back up their claim. But the people who live there now are the descendants of people brought to the planet three hundred and forty years ago. The ruins are the remains of cultures that arose during previous games staged upon the same world.

The current game will run for another two hundred years, assuming no clear victor emerges before that. The game is designed to enact a mythical conflict between good and evil. One god, known as Hakkum, stands for evil and darkness. The other, known as Bride, stands for goodness and light. Hakkum is male, Bride as female.

Before the game began, ten thousand sapien colonists were brought to Fantasia. They were left in peace to multiply for a couple of generations. These were good times for the colonists and their descendants, which have given rise to myths about a golden age upon the planet, when Bride was worshipped by all, even though the truth is that there was no worship during that time of either Bride of Hakkum.

Fifty years later, the game began, and a dozen priests of Hakkum and a dozen of Bride were sent into the world. Each priest carried a toroidal adamantine talisman with a two-centimeter hole through the middle. The passage through the middle is one centimeter long, and houses a bridge doublet. On each end of the passage is a space bridge to a room on Olympia. Normally, these bridges have their Olympian halves arranged on either side of one-centimeter adamantine tube, so that nothing untoward is visible from Fantasia. The bridge is tuned always to molecular class, so chemical matter will pass through undisturbed. But the gods can at any time look out of the talisman, or tune pass things through it by taking their two bridge halves away from the one-centimeter long tube and working with them individually.

The competition is to see which of Bride of Hakkum can have people perform more of their own type of ceremony. A qualifying ceremony must involve at least a thousand people, and can occur only on the spring equinox (good ceremonies) or the autumn equinox (evil ceremonies). An evil ceremony is accompanied by at least ten sapien sacrifices. A good ceremony is accompanied by a choir of at least one hundred singers, singing for an hour. A qualifying ceremony scores fifty points plus up to fifty more for style. Five judges on Olympia observe the ceremony through a talisman and each give a score of zero to ten, which is added to the fifty point minimum. Evil is judged for the brutality of its sacrifices and the innocence of the sacrificial victims. Good is judged for the quality of the singing, and the devotion of the singers to the lyrics, which are all about goodness and light.

Biological warfare is forbidden in the game. Only revenues donated by worshippers on Fantasia, via the talismans, can be used to fund the contest. The evil side usually uses its money to hire demons that make appearances during ceremonies, and nasty creatures to fight in battles. The good side uses its money to buy arms, and, in the case of this episode, to bring in help from outside in the form of adventurers. There are hardly any wizards on the island, or sorcerers, partly because the game forbids their use by either side, and partly because the maeon wind is so weak.

The priests and priestesses of Hakkum went straight to work trying to set up evil princes, and staged their first ceremony fifteen years later. Those of Bride remained hidden a few years and then emerged claiming to be Bride's answer to Hakkum's priests. They held their first religious ceremony after two years.

Bride thought she would win easily, and at first she did far better than Hakkum. But now he is catching up. Bride's score is eighty-three thousand and Hakkum's is sixty-two thousand. The struggle has kept the population of the world down to less than one hundred thousand sapiens.

It is easy for Bride to find a thousand people willing to perform one of her ceremonies, especially during the long periods of peace and prosperity that her leadership cultivates. But Hakkum can disturb such ceremonies simply by launching an attack upon the choir. A demon or a gang of suicidal murderers will scatter the singers thus disqualifying the event. Bride has to guard her ceremonies well, and the choir must be courageous. Furthermore, even when one of Bride's ceremonies runs to completion, it rarely gets a high score. The Olympian judges are very particular about singing and devotion.

To Fantasia's inhabitants, much of what is said in Bride's hymns is cryptic, and open to many allegorical interpretations. For example, here is the lyric from the hymn called Time it Was.

Old friends,

Old Friends,

Sat on their park bench like bookends,

A newspaper blown through the grass,

Falls on the round toes,

Of the high shoes,

Of the old friends.

Old friends,

Winter Companions,

The old men,

Lost in their overcoats,

Waiting for the sunset.

The sounds of the city,

Drifting through trees,

Settle like dust,

On the shoulders,

Of the old friends.

Can you imagine us years from today,

Sharing a park bench quietly,

How terribly strange to be seventy,

Old friends,

Memory brushes the same years,

Silently sharing the same fears,

Time it was,

And what a time it was,

It was,

A time of innocence,

A time of confidences,

Long ago,

It must be,

I had a photograph,

Preserve your memories,

They're all that's left you.

Paul Simon

Evil ceremonies, which take place during the brief and brutal regimes cultivated by Hakkum's leadership, score well. An attack by Bride's forces tends to add to the bloodshed and raise the score of the ceremony, rather than disqualify it.

In the last hundred years, Hakkum's servants have captured and destroyed eight out of Bride's twelve talismans. Bride, on the other hand, has destroyed only three of Hakkum's. Since the occurrence of an equinox is simultaneous around the planet, a talisman can be part of only one ceremony per year. Consequently, with only four talismans, Bride cannot possibly score more than four hundred points a year, while Hakkum can score up to nine hundred points.

On Olympia, the Fantasia story is one of many followed by the gods. Some gods pay to watch Fantasia's ceremonies through the talismans, or through other space bridges present upon the world. Some gods are satisfied by reading about the ceremonies in the divine newspapers and journals. Bride and Hakkum, who are intermittent lovers on Olympia, share the profits from such distributions.

The gods who are most interested in events on Fantasia can pay to take possession (similar to the wizard spell, effects like telepathy) of demi-god birds on the world. There are twenty or so such birds available, with a variety of outward appearances. They tend to gather around pivotal conflicts. The locals, for whom the conflicts are a matter of life and death, do not know the true nature of these birds, but they have come to regard them as omens of great events.

Bride and Hakkum have made it part of the folk-lore of Fantasia that it is bad luck to kill the birds. Naturally, neither Bride nor Hakkum want them killed because both are profiting from their presence. A few of the birds are so distinctive that Fantasia's inhabitants have given them names, and there are stories told about them. The gods who take possession of these birds take pleasure in perpetuating the stories. For example, Tammaz is a red-headed vulture who is thought to be an omen of war. Mylitos is a golden eagle. When he circles overhead, it is an omen of good fortune. Drago is an out-sized raven whose presence is an omen of danger. By convention, neither Bride nor Hakkum solicit information from the possessors of the demi-gods.

Both Bride and Hakkum keep the inhabitants of Fantasia ignorant of the truth of their predicament. They do not know about the game. They do not know that neither Hakkum nor Bride would have such power over them if they refused to worship them. They do not know that Bride and Hakkum are occasional lovers, Bride drawn to Hakkum and he to her by their struggle in the game. It is how they fuel their affair, and at the heart of their design.

In Almadia, a temperate country on one of the large land masses, the evil priestess Toughtokiss has ruled for twenty years. Every year she has holds magnificently brutal sacrificial ceremonies (scoring a total of eighteen hundred points for Hakkum). But the cost of keeping the people subjugated, and enduring the corruption and waste that accompanies evil government, has diminished her initial captured wealth almost to nothing. The country has a population of ten thousand. Toughtokiss's standing army of two hundred and fifty infantry, fifty cavalry, and twenty royal guards are all she has to keep them in line. But she has been doing a great job. She has three wyverns at her disposal, two dozen dark-hounds (cross between a boar and a dog), and a deputy who is both her lover and her champion: Grabbin the Ghastly.

Grabbin is younger than Toughtokiss, and not ghastly, nor even particularly evil, but he has a large family that Toughtokiss will torture and enslave if he does not serve her well, and he is of a pragmatic disposition. She looks only thirty years old, because she takes longevity drugs supplied by Hakkum. They lover one another, but are at pains to hide it from Hakkum, who forbids his servants, especially his priestesses, to become too attached to anyone. He does not know the extent of their affection. If he did, he would order Toughtokiss to have him killed. It has come to the point now, where Toughtokiss has secretly said to herself that all she wants to do is get away from Almadia and live alone and in peace with Grabbin.

But outwardly, Toughtokiss is as nasty as ever. She keeps her army stationed at her fortress on a plain. Food is brought in from the land around. Her servants and army number five hundred in total. She brings in five hundred more people from the country to attend her annual ceremonies, which are held in her fortress with the drawbridge up and the moat full. She has regular attendees of the ceremonies, evil mayors and civil servants of the nation, but she must also gather up peasants and force them to come, so as to make up the required one thousand attendants.

Toughtokiss's rule is enforced from day to day by her cavalry, who collect taxes and terrorize the people. Whenever protest against her tyranny arises, which is several times a year, she sends out half her infantry to suppress it, leaving the other half to secure the fortress. She herself rarely leaves the fortress. But she talks frequently with Hakkum, who inspires her to take joy in her evil empire and to be exhilarated by her evil doings. She has dozens of evil ways to pass the time. She tortures prisoners. She listens to her staff tell her stories about the abject misery of her subjects. They are too stupid and cowardly to overthrow her. After her ceremonies, the women peasants who have been forced to attend are raped by her soldiers for a couple of days. Toughtokiss likes to watch.

Darkeye is a young woman chosen by Bride to lead a rebellion against Hakkum. This rebellion is not just an uprising by a few disorganized and unarmed peasants, but one instigated by Bride. It will make use of the eighty armed and intrepid renegades who call themselves the rangers. They have roamed around the fringes of Almadia for the last twenty years, faithful to Bride, waiting for the time for light to drive darkness from the realm.

Darkeye is the second daughter of an evil lord in Almadia. There is a prophesy that a beautiful young woman will lead the people to victory. Toughtokiss is on the lookout for such a one, because she has heard the prophesy. When she hears of Darkeye's association with the rangers, she orders her captured and imprisoned, hoping to have her sacrificed at the upcoming autumn ceremony, which is only five weeks away. But Darkeye is rescued by the rangers just in time, and flees with two of them. They are pursued by Grabbin, six other mounted men, and some dark-hounds. The next day they think they have shaken the pursuit, but they are wrong, and Grabbin surprises them with his hounds at lunch time. Darkeye's escort is killed, and she is about to be captured. At that point the adventurers arrive and save her. Grabbin is riding after Darkeye with two dark-hounds. But he is tired after his fight with the ranger-leader, so he cannot stand against the newcomers.

(In the original playing of this adventure, it was Quayam, Thristen, and Gristel who arrived to save Darkeye. They were blackmailed by the Brannan Gateway to come to Almadia and `follow the cause they saw fit' in order to get back to Clarus from Domus with Lichtenhauer, as described in the adventure Lichtenhauer's Prison.)

It is the end of summer, five weeks before the Autumn equinox. Toughtokiss is preparing for her ceremony. The people of Almadia are dreading it. Farmers are sending their daughters away into the hills to avoid their being ensnared in the proceedings, and raped in the fortress afterwards. The leaves are turning red and brown. To off-worlders it may look beautiful, but to the Almadians, these are the colors of blood and death.

Darkeye is beautiful, courageous, realistic and resourceful. Her one problem is that she is a virgin, as is required in her interpretation of Bride's prophesy (see below). She has been keen to take a lover for several years now, but has held back with the prophesy in mind. She always believed that she would be the chosen one. She has heard many of the secrets of sexual enjoyment from her servants, and from books. If she falls for one of the adventurers, she will not be able to think clearly or act decisively until her affair with him has begun. After that, she will rapidly establish herself as leader of the rangers, by sorting out their disputes, punishing disobedience, and assigning each a role that suits his talents. She will put the adventurers to use in the best way she can. If that means making one of them commander-in-chief of her forces during war, she will do so, provided she is absolutely confident that this commander will not turn the army against her once the battle is won.

For the last twenty years, the rangers have taken their advice about Bride's wishes from a man called Grandad. He is a druid of sorts. He lives in the woods, with no fixed abode, and has many animal companions, including two demi-god greyhounds and a demi-god crow that speaks. One of the services he provides to the rangers is to take confession. He does not have a talisman, but he has a space bridge in a small, silver ring, which he keeps strictly secret. He has already told the rangers that Darkeye is the woman anticipated by Bride's prophesy. Some believe him, others do not.

A pure Almadian woman,

Fair in her youth,

But wise beyond it,

Will be my princess.

To her aid will come,

Three heroes,

One a man as from Almadia's legends,

One a woman with fire in her hair,

And one an elf, perfect and dangerous.

She will claim the talisman,

The will gather swords,

And she will march to vanquish,

the scourge that tortures the land.

(The lines in italics are directed at the adventuring party, these are for Thristen, Gristel and Quayam.)

The adventurers show up with Darkeye in the ranger's camp (to which Darkeye knows the way), and it appears that the prophesy is indeed coming true. Grandad is there. He says that the talisman of Almadia must be recovered from the dragon named Awfulthing. The talisman was given over into Awfulthing's care by the last priestess of Almadia, when she was running from Toughtokiss's men. They caught her soon after, and tortured her to death. In the course of the torture, they found out where she had taken the amulet. Toughtokiss sent her soldiers on several efforts to retrieve the talisman that year and the next, both by force and stealth, but none succeeded.

Even Bride has tried to retrieve the talisman with her own servants, but she too has failed. The dragon was told the prophesy, and will not be tricked into giving the talisman away to the wrong person. Nor is Bride willing to interfere with the flow of time by faking a premature fulfillment of the prophesy.

Grandad sends his crow to guide Darkeye and the adventurers to Awfulthing's lair in the mountains to the north-west. When they get there, they find the base of the staircase leading up to Awfulthing's cave in a cliff occupied by a dozen of Toughtokiss's cavalry. Among them will be Grabbin, assuming he survived his first encounter with the adventurers. But he is still tired from his recent fight. He is physically fit, but mentally drained. Once the talisman has been recovered, Bride will be able to communicate directly with her priestess, and the rebellion can begin.

When the adventurers return from their trip to Awfulthing's lair, they find that the rangers have moved camp to their favorite place, hidden in the Maze of Gorges. A ranger is hiding near the old camp to meet the Darkeye and her protectors. He leads them to the new camp, which is set amidst the ruins of an old fort, deep within the maze. In the middle of the fort is a healthy spring. The rangers feel safe there, and even light big fires at night, cook dinner, and sing.

Singing is very much a part of Bride's doctrine, as it should be to cultivate the choirs she requires for her ceremonies. The rangers begin to coordinate themselves into a choir. Darkeye is a good singer, and a dancer. She performs for them gladly.

On the third night in the camp, the ranger lookouts on the outskirts of the maze see a party of twenty armed and mounted women. They are Amazons. Their leader is Pedalicious, cousin of the queen of the Amazons who live in the hills several hundred kilometers to the north. Darkeye is expecting them, because Bride has ordered a contingent to come and reinforce the rangers.

Pedalicious enters the camp with her followers at a gallop. She is proud and vain. Proud of her heritage, and pleased with her beautiful feet. The Amazons hold feet to be one of the most important parts of a beautiful body. But she is strong and courageous too, and her followers are loyal. She declares that they have come to fight alongside the rangers, but as a separate unit, not under their orders. She can be persuaded otherwise, but it will be a tough negotiation. If she fights on her own, she will be impetuous, but once she has lost a few of her followers, she will look for an excuse to go home.

The day after Pedalicious arrives, Darkeye instructs Grandad to take confession from all the men present, while she takes confession from the women. Aside from the Amazons, there are twenty other women there, and fifteen children. These are the families of some of the rangers, who they saw fit to bring out of the low-lands in order to protect them from Toughtokiss's upcoming ceremony. As mentioned above, there are a hundred or so rangers. Their most respected members are Angry Jack, Travis Traven, and Alvin Primrose.

Angry Jack is a violent man. He likes war because he gets to kill people. He is unafraid because he does not enjoy life. He is suspicious because the people he meets are usually afraid of him. They will be obsequious and then betray him. He gained acceptance among the rangers because his skepticism has saved them from several of Toughtokiss's plots to trap them, and he is a good man to have on your side when your backs are against the wall. Jack is tall, heavy-set, and ugly.

Travis Traven is the best fighter among the rangers. He is tall, lean, steadfast, good-looking, and kind-hearted. He is also gullible, and is a poor judge of character, especially when it comes to women. His latest lover is a servant in a lord's mansion in the lowlands. Unknown to him, she is a spy. But he has not brought her here, since she should be safe from Toughtokiss so long as she retains the favor of her lord. This she does by granting him sexual favors, which is a source of some personal anguish for Travis.

Alvin Primrose is one of the older rangers. He is gay, but he doesn't admit it to himself. He is celibate. His clothes are always clean. His face is clean-shaven. He is handsome, and looks ten years younger than his fifty-four years. He is of average height and build. He is astonishingly quick with a small-sword, and a fine horse-rider. He is one of the few rangers who troubles to keep a horse. He is a good singer. His prominence among the rangers comes from his cleverness, his foresight, and his diplomacy. Recently, however, he has been confused and depressed, and unable to act assertively. He has been dreaming about a boy he saved from the sword of one of Toughtokiss's soldiers. He is in love.

We mention also one of the rangers who died defending Darkeye in the woods before the adventurers arrived. His name was Cotery Strongheart. He was the unspoken leader of the rangers, and his loss is a great blow to them. He was the most experienced, and the most trusted leader. Once he entered Toughtokiss's fortress as a member of the audience, with the intention of freeing his sister from the sacrificial rights. He failed to save her, but he killed six soldiers trying. He was captured, tortured, but then escaped thanks to a slave girl who gave him a key. She was killed as they ran ran for the woods, after they had escaped through a sewer. He was slain by Grabbin and another soldier in hand-to-hand combat while Darkeye escaped. As mentioned above, Grabbin was severely under-strength when he first met the adventurers. He had just gone several rounds with Cotery.

The camp in the maze is not a secret from Toughtokiss. Her wyvern spies see it at night. Now they start to fly over during the day, sometimes coming in very low. They map out the maze and count the people in the fort as best they can. Based upon what she learns, Toughtokiss has to decide whether or not to storm the fort.

First she decides to set a trap for the rangers. She sends her spy, Damaskus, to the maze, begging to be let in on the grounds that her affair with Travis has been discovered and she is being hunted down for the sacrifice. Once she's in the camp, she says that ten young women are being held in on her Lord's property. They are to be sacrificial victims. They are waiting for twenty more women to be brought down from the west of Almadia. Only five soldiers guard these poor virgins.

If the rangers launch a rescue-attempt, they will find that the buildings around the stone cottage in which these women are being held are filled with a total of fifty soldiers, including Grabbin. Toughtokiss's hope is to kill one of the adventurers. She believes that without the adventurers, the ranger force will not be able to defeat her. Damaskus, meanwhile, has to try to pull off the feat of being horrified by the ambush.

During the ambush fight, or during another fight, we introduce Soloquie Inbough the bard, and his companion Torsion Crowbar. Torsion is a dwarf from another continent. Soloquie is from a country to the south, but he is known around here for his occasional visits. Toughtokiss leaves him alone because Grabbin and he used to be friends. Now Soloquie joins the fray on the side of Bride. He fights on their side to win their trust. He is a fine singer, and will deliver songs for all occasions, accompanied by the lute, while Torsion plays the bongos or the fiddle. Many of his favorite songs are written by Torsion himself. They have strange lyrics, however, and will not be received well by the rangers. Soloquie is not a believer in the gods. He has learned, in his travels, much of the truth about Fantasia. The reason he joins on the side of the rangers here is because he wants to get off Fantasia with the adventurers.

Here a popular song to a dead warrior that Soloquie will no doubt be called upon to sing by the end of the adventure.

These mist covered mountains

Are a home now for me

But my heart is in the lowlands

And always will be

Some day you'll return to

Your valleys and your farms

And you'll no longer burn

To be brothers in arms

Through these fields of destruction

Baptisms of fire

I've watched all your suffering

As the battles raged higher

And though they did hurt me so bad

In the fear and alarm

You did not desert me

My brothers in arms

Now the sun's gone to hell

And the moon's riging high

Let me bid you farewell

Every man has to die

But it's written in the starlight

And every line on your palm

We're fools to make war

On our brothers in arms

Mark Knopfler (edited)

This song comes from a Cult of Mithra that was stamped out after a century of popularity one hundred years ago on Fantasia. Here's another song that Soloquie might sing, perhaps if Grabbin is killed, and he speaks of the time he had Coterie in chains in the fort.

I'm just an ageing drummer boy

And in the wars I used to play

And I've called the tune

To many a torture session

Now they say I am a war criminal

And I'm fading away

Father please hear my confession

I have legalised robbery

Called it belief

I have run with the money

And hid like a thief

I have re-written history

With my armies and my crooks

Invented memories

I did burn all the books

And I can still hear his laughter

And I can still hear his song

Well I have tried to be meek

And I have tried to be mild

But I spat like a woman

And sulked like a child

I have lived behind walls

That have made me alone

Striven for peace

Which I never have known

And I can still hear his laughter

And I can still hear his song

Well the sun rose on the courtyard

And they all did hear him say

`You always were a Judas

But I got you anyway

You may have got your silver

But I swear upon my life

Your sister gave me diamonds

And I gave them to your wife'

Oh Father please help me

For I have done wrong

Mark Knopfler (edited)

It is traditional for a dying man to give confession to a priest before he dies, if possible. And it is traditional for a friend of a bard to sing a song once he has died. These are residuals from the days of Mithra, when the wars between Bride and Hakkum became bogged down because warriors saw no point in them. Only after the cult was suppressed by religious ferver could the two gods continue properly with their games.

Combat Descriptions of Characters

The dodging points given are those that apply to Fantasia.

Grabbin: dp=6, hp=18, +1 scale ap=13, +3 longsword sa=17, sp=25.

Toughtokiss: dp=0, hp=8, no armor, dagger sa=7, sp=2.

Toughtokiss Infantry: dp=1, hp=15, leather ap=6, shield and shortsword sa=8, sp=13, crossbow fa=5, fp=10.

Toughtokiss Royal Guard on Horse: dp=3, hp=17, plate mail ap=18, shield and lance sa=13, sp=24 (charging), shield and sword sa=13, sp=18, heavy crossbow fa=10, fp=12.

Toughtokiss Royal Guard on Foot: dp=3, hp=17, ring ap=10, longsword sa=10, sp=22, heavy crossboow fa=10, fp=12.

Toughtokiss Cavalry: dp=1, hp=15, leather ap=6, shield and lance ss=8, sp=24 (charging), shield and shortsword sa=8, sp=13.

Soloquie Inbough: dp=3, hp=16, leather ap=6, small sword and dagger sa=15, sp=15, bow fa=13, fp=10.

Torsion Crowbar: dp=7, hp=22, +2 chain ap=16, +4 battle axe sa=13, sp=27, heavy crossbow fa=13, fp=12.

Pedalicious: dp=5, hp=20, leather ap=6, shield and lance ss=17, sp=24 (with horse), shield and +3 smallsword sa=17, sp=13, bow fa=14, fp=10.

Amazon: dp=1, hp=15, leather ap=6, shield and lance ss=11, sp=24 (with horse), shield and smallsword sa=11, sp=10, bow fa=8, fp=10.

Ranger: dp=2, hp=20, leather ap=6, longsword sa=8, sp=20, bow fa=8, fp=10.

Angry Jack: dp=4, hp=20, leather ap=6, longsword sa=13, sp=25, heavy bow fa=13, fp=14.

Travis Traven: dp=6, hp=20, leather ap=6, longsword sa=18, sp=14, heavy bow fa=18, fp=14.

Alvin Primrose: dp=3, hp=16, leather ap=6, shield and smallsword sa=20, sp=10, bow fa=17, fp=10.

Almadian Peasant: dp=0, hp=10, ap=0, spear sa=-3, sp=13.