Renegade Crowns Writeup Part 1

 I got turned on to the supplement Renegade Crowns for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (written by David Chart) by a fellow denizen on the Night At The Opera Delta Green discord.  What Renegade Crowns is, is a kit. It is a kit with random tables for generating your own slice of the territory within the Border Princes, and populating it with monsters, lairs, villages and rulers for your Warhammer group to explore and politic with.  And I have to say, the book is very good and brilliantly designed.  Construction of the region flows organically from geographical placement of different biomes to natural results of points of political friction that the rulers of the area will vie for.  I was also very impressed (and entertained by) the development diary included in the book called Making Masserschloss.  I found another very well designed and written development diary on the RPG.net forums called Steve’s Renegade Crowns Diary.  In addition, there is a GURPS adaptation of a Renegade Crowns development diary here.  Inspired by the above three, I decided to try my hand at making a wild and (mostly) random driven Border Princes location of my very own. To make things easy on myself I googled how to make graph paper out of Excel and I used the humble Paint program to manipulate the images.  Excel was great for setting the landscapes of the Borderlands because I could easily fill a large number of cells with a specific color indicating their terrain composition. So, let’s begin, shall we?

The geological results of the map of the region I’m calling Two Geysers are interesting. Interesting in that there should be a food crisis for anyone living here. A good half the map is unfarmable barren plains. I’ve decided that that means the region is largely lacking in topsoil, and consists mostly of rocky ground. It is bisected by a small mountain range.  The only saving graces of this rocky expanse of nothing are two geysers that produce rivers and the scrubland plains that are sort of farmable.  So, I expect the rivers and scrubland plains to be natural resources to be fought over, and that food would be a major import of all settlements in the area. It is also possible that some folk turned to animal husbandry of grazing animals (likely goats) and that may fare better in the scrubland plains and possibly even in the scrubland mountains, assuming the latter is absent of greenskins.

There are four Ancient Ruins in the region.  The first is an Arabyan ruin of an outpost that dates back to the time when the Sultan of Araby attempted to invade the Old World. I roll again and I find the reason for the ruins is magic and the ancient menace that lurks in the ruin is a plague.  I juggle these details in my mind. I decide that the outpost is located in the mountain range, likely to have a lookout post so it could have overview of the surrounding plains and badlands. Being a military outpost, I figure it is self sufficient with a large enclosed courtyard for training, a well, possibly sanitation that is approaching the sophistication of a sewer, and a large barracks adjoining kitchen.  As to why it fell? Well magic and a lingering plague seem to me like the work of Skaven, so I imagine the proto-sewer accidently broke into Skaven tunnels close to the surface in the mountain and the dastardly rat-men took advantage by invading with poison globe bombardiers. Is the well tainted? I don’t know right now. It would make the ruins more of a prize if the well was untouched, that’s for certain.  All I can imagine is the lovely mosaic inlayed walls of the outpost marred by a foul miasma that the Skaven left behind that clings to ground level and keeps the bones and treasures of the outpost company.  I also figure there is a minaret for the call to prayer that is dwarfed by the outpost’s central scouting tower.

For my second ruin I also roll an Arabyan background.  This time it is a fortress. Not wanting to copy my previous decisions, I consider that this fortress also may have more of a political oversight role, so it’s half a fortress, half an administration building.  Rolling nothing for the ancient menace and the reason for ruin being resource loss, I figure the fortress is unguarded and a good building to base a settlement in. I place it in the grassy badlands to keep it away from the mountain outpost and I figure it would be the main prize for a prince of that area. That is exactly what happens, and a very interesting Dark Elven Knight actually takes up residence there, but that is a story for a future blog post.

The third ruin is a recent human ruin for a change.  Turns out it is the ruins of a settlement, with a swarm as an ancient menace and a policy change as the reason for the ruin.  I figure since it is a recent human ruin it might as well be about 100 years old.  The swarm menace makes me think of Skaven again so I figure a swarm of rats occupy the area and maybe they helped the decline of the settlement into a ruin along. If a rat swarm was present in the ruins, then because the land is significantly food poor, it makes sense that the powers that be ordered the settlement abandoned simply because they could see their rations would be running out in such a situation.  I place the ruined settlement on the central hills as I imagine the humans wanted to capitalized on a high place to oversee the valleys and plains below.   

The last ruin is a Khemri tomb. Since I have two squares of desert plains on the map of Two Geysers, I place it there.  This is going to be an old place I’m sure of it with many ancient murals and statues still standing. I roll swarm again for the ancient menace and this time I roll enigma for the cause of the ruin’s abandonment.  With enigma I figure the tomb is largely untouched, with evidence of work and craftsmen present but dying where they stood. An ancient curse perhaps? For the swarm I’ve seen the Mummy so I just have to include a swarm of flesh-eating scarab beetles that patrol the premises.

Next time, I roll up the Border Princes who are unlucky enough to rule in this food-starved Province!