I’ve been doing some more work on my dark fantasy treatment for Freebooters on the Frontier, which I’m calling…

I’ve been doing some more work on my dark fantasy treatment for Freebooters on the Frontier, which I’m calling Mistmarch.

First up, I’ve written the third of the magical traditions: the knotty sorceries of the Witches of Pelethé. Link here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11JLR4BX6do9nj-82AIOcgBFSFkoIjHgCTlsNc6288pY

This document also includes a revised draft of all the traditions. Thanks to critique from David Perry I’ve carved each table down from 20 entries to 12. They generate more provocative spell names, now, and spit out fewer clunkers.

And secondly, here’s the introductory text for players:

Listen, oath-breaker, and I will tell it. The mists have lifted, the storms have stilled, the fires have died. This is the Age of Stone.

For a thousand years the wall has stood. Giants built it to guard their primordial thrones. Behind it, giants swore oaths to giant-lords, who swore oaths to the gloomy Mountain-King. But a generation ago, the earth heaved and the wall cracked. Those first souls who ventured through found its sentinels long-dead: mounds of great, graven bones.

Joda, the Queen of Nails, had long dreamed of the jeweled halls of the giants. Forsaking her king, she led her armies beyond the wall. Her champions accompanied her:

The Knight-Judge Laurentine, the Queen’s executioner.

Noske Knee-breaker, last of the giant-killers.

The Abbess of Owls and her prisoner: Bernhardt, the Living Saint.

The Six Sisters and their seven masks.

The leveler of kings, Eiron the Rhymer.

Twice-hanged Scholovander, the thief of days.

And the wanderer Spiral, who promised nothing.

They soon learned that not all the giants were dead. Some the Queen drove from their halls. Some she nailed to the grey hillsides. But the Mountain-King had champions of his own: the titanic Knights of the Chalice. The Queen’s March ended in ruin beneath a trembling sun, brave soldiers ground to paste.

Now, the Queen’s folly is condemned, and the lands beyond the wall forbidden. To all except you, oath-breaker. There is the gap, grey with mists. There is your new home. Go, and trouble us no more.