(D&D) Small Faroth adventure

Gromet Silvering and Cupola Coglatch are a pair of gnomes living under Faroth mountain in the Rudston Classic tunnels, the first dwarven works on Faroth. This is the tunnel system that Jamnut Fender Works started in. Gromet and Cupola don’t care much about being forge gnomes but live on the sidelines of the forge dwarves of Fenderworks.

Today, a rowdy crowd of human sailors squeezed their way into the Drunken Whaler pub, and started talking rude about the dwarves. Gromet was quick to play both sides and soon the dwarves had flattened the sailors and both the mine police and shore patrol were headed in.

In the last few seconds of the fight, Gromet convinced Knifeswill, the Dwarven barkeeper to pay him to stop the fight. Messaging with Cupola, Cupola impersonated sheriff Ironblock, abd the dwarves were distracted from killing the humans. The next moment, Ironblock himself steps onstage and pounds the handle on his hammer on stage to marshal the attention of the dwarves.

Later, Gromet and Cupola get kicked iff the docks suspiciously watching the Serpent Blue docked with the wounded humans being carried on board. Visibly irritated, a Yuan-ti in a golden robe berates the crew.

Clearly, this Yuan-ti needs his purse lightened, but no good plan arrives until Sarah Tite’nale, a banished faery who doesn’t sparkle, decides to join the fun.

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[DnD] Geography South of Sing’jar

whitechalk-cliffs The islands south of Faroth start with Belgar island. Belgar is populated with sea elves, and they trade mostly with the eastern shore, the Burati valley. Burati is populated with elves and humans, bounded on the north by Burati mountains and to the south by the Burati river. The mountains are enough of an obstacle that overland trading is uncommon at best.

On the south side of the Burati river, is the kingdom of Kyln. Kyln is ruled by hobgoblins who have an amicable peace with the elves to the north and an active defense to the west against the Ogres of the Whitechalk cliffs. This far south, the southern end of the Sing’jar mountains curves west and ends as  the Yil range, holding the Yil valley. Kenku and hobgoblins freely mix, under the rule of the Kyln kingdom.

The Whitechalk cliffs are a giant slope from north to south, with giant chalk cliffs on the south side facing Danclar bay. Not only do communities of ogres protect the peninsula, other accursed beasts and undead inhabit the chapparal of the region. Deep canyons hide communities of lycanthropes and rumors of dinosaurs have been heard, too.

At the western tip of the cliffs, the Danclar islands are a dangerous place for sailors to stop: Yuan-ti have occupied these islands once peacefully occupied by lizardfold sahaugin. Trade is sanctioned in official marketplaces and tourists are arrested and deported if they are caught away from the marketplaces. There are no inns on the Danclar islands. Any ship sailing south is obligated to pay for permits for access to the south. The Yuan-ti navy patrols the islands.

If a crafty trader sails south east of the Danclars, heading into Danclar bay is frought with challenges that often take rituals and sacrifices to avoid. Elasomosaur, chaotic aquitic elves and merfolk populate the bay. Sirens camp on the rocky shores beneath the chalk cliffs. Navigating to the Yil valley, you would meet the last free lizardfolk and kua-toa, that are ostensably policed by the yuan-ti Yaan’bu empire. Since the lizardfolk are unable to escape, they are the only effective kelp farming and fisherman for the Danyil bluffs region, and given some latitude of freedom.

Yuan-ti bougeoise live above the Yil valley in the rocky bluffs in the Danyil bluffs. These snake peope own the trading companies that operate out of Dardan City, in the bay to the southeast of the bluffs. Dardan city is the heart of commerce, with a healthy population protected from the dinosaurs and other sea monsters to the northwest.

Off the west shore of Danyil bluffs is Egza island, the largest prison island of the yuan-ti. Egza island used to be the prison island of the previous despots: the Naga nation of Bundash. Egza island is now a prison for the remainder of the Bundash naga. The waters around Egza are policed by sahaugin and other aquatic races allied with the yuan-ti.

The other island on the south side of Dardan bay is Fylwen island, another yuan-ti prison. Fylwen is the ancestral home of the region’s minotaur. Six hundred years ago, Sing’jar straight saw a fleet of minotaur refugees travelling north. This was the wave of refugees displaced by the Yaan’bu empire. High elves and sea elves were also displaced by this yuan-ti expansion hundreds of years ago.

[DnD] Fall Season Adventure Setting

600px-Squid4Shane and I worked up a setting for the Fall season: we’re sailing south! South of Sing’jar we have other kingdoms that have run many races out of their borders. The minotars and many sea elves came from the south seas. What drove them north?

Geography plays a part in separating the west coast of the continent. South of Sing’jar, the Whitechalk Cliffs are an accursed ridge that splits the currents of the ocean and defy overland travel. Kingdoms of ogres and oni defend the the ridge.

South of the ridge there are dramatically warmer currents and climates. Strange sea beasts, like elasmasaur and giant kraken patrol the islands and bays. Escaped lizard folk tell of snake people who held them prisoner. Black bird people and hobgoblins live behind the Ogre kingdom. South of them is an even stronger empire, possibly entire of snake people.

Islands can be traps and prisons. Remnants of previous societies remain isolated on some southern islands, unable to sail off or trade because of the brutal marine animals swiming in the surrounding waters. When Crimskill traveled south, what did he see? Did his giant’s hand play an unfair card to the nacent evil nations in the south?

(D&D) End of the spring season

Last game at BUF this season is 10 June. I know many will not be present. We will be discussing Fall seasons options.

Would like to have a BBQ D&D day sometime on/after 21 July, weekend preferred. Please contact me directly about your availability.

ZFS Rebuild Script

I’ve rebuilt my zfs modules often enough that I’ve written a script to do a clean build that should avoid old kernel modules and old libraries.

#!/bin/bash
sudo find /lib/modules -depth -type d -iname "spl" -exec rm -rf {} \;
sudo find /lib/modules -depth -type d -iname "zfs" -exec rm -rf {} \;
sudo find /usr/local/src/ -type d -a \( \
   -iname "spl-*" \
   -o -iname "zfs-*" \
   \) -exec rm -rf {} \;

sudo find /usr/local/lib/ -type f -a \( \
   -iname "libzfs*" \
   -o -iname "libzpool*" \
   -o -iname "libnvpair*" \
   \) -exec rm -f {} \;

cd spl
git reset --hard HEAD
git checkout master
git pull
git tag | tail -1 | xargs git checkout
./autogen.sh && ./configure && make -j13 && sudo make install
cd ../zfs
git reset --hard HEAD
git checkout master
git pull
git tag | tail -1 | xargs git checkout
./autogen.sh && ./configure && make -j13 && sudo make install

sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo update-grub2

[D&D] Amroth’s accord with G’ning-ar

spider-darkmoonAmroth Cavepool, a young 70, was a bright miner and good with his fellow dwarves who lived deep below the Sing’jar mountains. Almost since his birth under these mountains, he had been present either defending the clan against the Cult of Ulexnil or repairing dammage to the tunnels from purple worms. Everyone had been busy for years, people were constantly being hurt, but they were saved by two things: the passages between east and west slopes of the mountains that brought trade with the surface, and plentitude of fungus that grew in the old passages left by the purple worms.

Uncle Harnig Ruktite had spent many years leading ore cars up to the elves on the east and out to the humans on the west to trade for game and wheat. On his latest trip he was late, and Agus Cavepool, on patrol, found him slumped against the wall, unconcious from a stab wound in a tunnel on the west side. This was unusual, because the Cult would not have used blades, it would have been magic. The humans were too loud and typically repelled by the traps near the entrances to get so far. Some malicious cavedweller was on the loose!

Amroth, Agus and aunt Elinke stuffed their packs with jars of pickled mushroom slices and salted deer jerky, hefted their picks and set out to find the culprit. First, the connector tunnels between the family areas and the mining viens: normal. Next the ore discard paths that lead east: interesting lone tracks on the gravel. Then the discard paths that lead west: more tracks by the same foot prints and signs of dwarf scat. A new tunnel was found dug to the mushroom grove and it had regular footprints. No one would notice stealing fungus from the back of the cave. The team retreated to watch the path.

A single young dwarf appeared, climbing over a bolder they hadn’t considered had any room behind it, and started walking the path to mushrooms. As he approached, they noticed he was bald with barely a beard. Was he burned? He barely stood out from the darkness as if he was also the color of shadow. Agus signaled and they all jumped down from the walls and surrounded the fellow. Amroth felt a jab below his eye and immediatly fell backwards, but Agus and Elinke both struck him with their picks and he went down.

The prisoner was clearly foreign, and appeared to resent the sight of them. He was gray skinned and had a few spines as wiskers on his chin. This was a Deurgar, but none had been seen in this land…ever. His name was G’ning-ar, and he didn’t now how to get home. He liked how dark it was in the caves, because where he came from it wasn’t dark enough. But wherever that was, he couldn’t find a way back. He was lost from his family and doing fine by himself, thank you. The shook G’ning-ar down and found almost a sack’s worth of daggers, gems, and stolen jerkey from their pantries.

There was no way this Deurgar was going to live among the Cavepools, he was a thief and an unrepentant one. No recognition of good dwarven god was about him…this was a rogue from another world here for no apparent reason. Agus, Amroth and Elinke tied his hands and lead G’ning-ar up a dozen levels, nearly to the surface, and left him there on the floor, without his daggers. “Go any lower,” they said, “and we’ll break your legs and leave you on the surface, you thief!”

G’ning-ar hated the Cavepools. Hated them more than the other wierdo magic using dwarves he met in the south that kept shooting magical arrows and fire at him. That wasn’t comfortable, but at least he didn’t get a chance to be insulted and humiliated. These Cavepools were all dicks. Any chances to steal from them would be welcome!

And for the next 200 years, G’ning-ar make a trip every week to wreck something owned by the Cavepools. Not always successfully, but enought to keep them constantly cautious. No dimwitted knuckle dragging pick swinging dwarf would find a rogue deurgar in a million years, right?