Factions and Region
I have very, very little planned about this character. I want the process of campaign creation to drive my ideas. But I do have some vague thoughts before I get stuck in:
- Will is young.
- He could be described as bright-eyed and/or naive.
- He has a thirst for adventure tempered only by his desire to do good, though “good” is relative.
So! Onto creating the factions!
Factions
Factions
Ah, this means I’ll finally get to roll. 🙂
The Griffin Academy of Natural Sciences
The Griffin Academy of Natural Sciences
Ok, so the first faction is a small organization with marginal influence in a relatively limited area. There doesn’t seem to be built-in functionality for the cursed faction roll because it’s atypical, so I rolled a d10 separately to be sure. Lemme see about some more details…
Ooh, okay. Cool. Maybe these guys are in the process of establishing a museum or university or something. They want to document and study the flora and fauna of the isles. That could be cool.
I poked around the name oracles and the things that jumped out at me were the words charter, fellowship, foundation, and guild. Since this is a small, perhaps freshly founded organization, I’m gonna circle back to this once we establish the names of the island/settlement it’s a part of. I’m also gonna hold off on making any more specific rolls until we need to know more, since this is the kind of group that wouldn’t be familiar to an average islander. Though I have a sneaking suspicion this might be a group Will is familiar with…
Coming back later to add a name and another roll or two because I have determined that Will belongs to this faction!
I kind of picked and chose these since I already have an idea about how this group functions. It’s an academic organization and all of these are pretty straightforward. The coded messages might be more like a mixture of group-specific shorthand and science jargon rather than like a real code language. And the resource, obviously, is money.
Finally, A name: The Griffin Academy of Natural Sciences
Here again to mention that The Griffin Academy is the name of Archer’s starting org in The Bad Spot podcast, but I swear I had no memory of that until Matt named a different group after them in his sundered isles playthrough as well. I’m not nearly as original as I think I am, ha.
Ok, next faction!
The Fiorin Empire
The Fiorin Empire
Alright, well! The shadow of this empire is going to loom large, at least in this neck of the woods. I’ve already decided I want to start in the myriads, so it makes sense that this particular cluster of islands is firmly under colonial rule. Let’s figure out some more about them…
Alright. This is great! And it reinforces a lot of what was established in the world truths. So this area is ruled over by a regent who is more interested in appearing rich and powerful than actually governing on behalf of the Empire that sent him here. There’s probably a sycophantic population of courtiers attracted to his wealth and status (and ineptitude), all scheming for themselves.
And over all that, the sheen of piety. There’s probably at least one massive cathedral where all the nobles show face, though Sunday morning mass is reserved for the regent’s court so they don’t have to rub shoulders with the common rabble.
And, of course, amongst the rabble, those who have had enough of the riches on display for the pleasure of the court, while infrastructure slowly erodes, the poor subsist on scraps, and imperial taxes seem to creep higher every season. Tasty. This is very French-coded to me.
Let’s call these guys The Fiorin Empire, or just Fior in common parlance.
Let’s do one more!
The Ember Syndicate
The Ember Syndicate
Wow, alright. Another empire. This one isn’t as ubiquitous as the Fiorins in the starting region, so they could have a consulate, or control of a single island, or maybe they’ve got a city state in the middle of the Fiorin regency that’s at the center of much strife. Let’s learn more about them.
Well, woof. That’s a powder keg. Sooo… this is an empire that has limited reach in the area, but there’s a power struggle and infighting between a council and a dictator. Okay, Ceasar. And the empire exerts control through worker exploitation and propaganda. I’m getting some communist Russia vibes here, too. And since we’re in a period of industrial expansion, maybe this is the aftermath of a bolshevik revolution type thing, and now the leader who seized power is doing what all dictators do and ruining what could have been a good thing. So I think this is a city state that is growing out of a monarchy to quickly become an industrial hub, with expansion fueled by worker exploitation and propaganda saying that The Empire is leading the charge into a new era of enlightenment. The leader appointed a council of trade and union leaders, but he makes more and more unilateral decisions without their say, and they’re growing more and more unhappy with the new status quo. Gonna call these guys the Ember Syndicate.
Ok. Since we rolled two empires, I think I’m gonna do one more and reroll if I get another empire.
Quicksilver Trading Company
The Quicksilver Trading Company
I didn’t mean to roll on the secrets table, but I like that so I’m keeping it. This is a neat faction. I think this trading company acts almost like a private militia. Since the waters of the isles are basically cursed outside the few established shipping lanes, these guys are the best of the best. Tough and seasoned sailors who are prepared to take goods through uncharted waters or pirate territory. They’re a mercenary fleet that have a small presence in the myriads just for moving goods, but their real business is in the margins. They’re the only company in the entire isles that will sail to the reaches with any regularity. As for why their base of operations is secret, who knows! Maybe I’ll find out in play. They’re called the Quicksilver Trading Company or the Quicksilver Fleet. Their symbol is three daggers like a sunburst over a three-masted ship.
The book recommends making notecards with short summaries of each faction for easy reference, so I will do that here and probably also find a suitable place for the summaries in the factions folder as well.
Faction Summaries
Faction Summaries
The Fiorin Empire
- Massive empire with a long reach
- Monotheistic, dogmatic
- Regent in the isles cares more about appearances than running a government
- Unhappy citizens on the edge of revolt
- Isles capital is Port Fiora
The Ember Syndicate
- Industrialist
- Recently overthrew a monarchy
- Political infighting and worker exploitation
- De facto leader has grown too fond of power and made enemies in the vanguard council.
Quicksilver Trading Company
- Bulk of business done in the margins
- Strict code of conduct, run like a private army
- Secretive and dangerous
- Make money taking goods through routes no one else dares to travel
The Griffin Academy of Natural Sciences
- Fiorin nationals with aims to establish a university in Port Fiora
- Looking for funding
- Discovered a unique natural wonder in the jungles of Stravi
- Named for the explorer who discovered the use of the Starmarked’s tablets
Chart Your Course
The game suggests making a character and a ship next, but I want to get a feel for the area, so I’m gonna figure out what the map looks like first.
Starting Region and Faction Grid
The starting region is going to be the Myriads. I think probably in a major city, but we’ll see how the dice fall I guess.
Next, we’re going to do the faction influence grid. I’m not entirely sure if I can have more than one Grid for different regions, because it’s likely my second character will start somewhere else, but I guess we’ll find out…
So I can make multiple grids, good. I’m not even sure if there’s a built in mechanic for rolling on the table at all.
Reveal Islands
Onto the good stuff! We get 4 islands to start with in the Myriads. Let’s roll for the first one.
Medium in this case means you can walk the circumference of the island in several hours. We’ll hold off on determining if there are any settlements here until we get the rest of the islands sorted.
And number three…
And finally
So this one is going to be where I put my settlement, which I want to be a city. This is going to be the main hub of the Fiorin Regency.
WAOW. I’m gonna keep going but three tens? That’s bonkers. This place just got way more interesting. Gonna have to think about that combination a while. For now, let’s roll some more.
Well, lots to ponder. This is presumably the colonial capital city, so we’ll call it Port Fiora.
It seems like they settled in maybe one of the largest and most intact Starmarked ruins, based on the aesthetics. Probably people from the first time these islands were colonized were living here already. Maybe there was a war on the continent and Fior took this colony as a result, but they never bothered to invest here or establish a real presence until more recently, maybe the last 25 years or so. The entirety of the isles is still considered more a pet project of the empire than anything, but as industrialization has sped up partially due to magical discoveries in the isles and huge swathes of unclaimed land might contain valuable minerals, Fior has started paying more attention. The Regent is probably some cousin of the king who kept making a fool of himself at court, so he’s been sent here as a punishment despite acting like the appointment makes him a king in his own right.
To make sense of the rest of it… The lanterns hung on every surface suggests there’s an abundance of some substance that makes it feasible to waste fuel. This could tie in with the nearby valuable resource, the guarded force (which is clearly a contingent of the Fiorin army), and unwittingly helping or unleashing a cursed power.
So the place my mind went to put this all together with gather love, lanterns everywhere, and alcohol production… what if it’s bees? Gather love is uh…. a funny way to say tending to a hive. Wax for the lanterns, and honey to make mead.
Let’s say the… ooh, the naturalists discovered this massive ancient hive almost swallowing a tree whole deep in the jungle. And when they told the Regent about it, perhaps to secure funding for further research on the curious properties of the bees, the Regent sensed an opportunity to get himself back into the good graces of the King, and he sent the army out to protect the hive, along with some naturalists simply to keep his new resource safe and learn more about how to best exploit it.
The nature of the wax is that it gives off a beautiful pinkish glow and a sweet floral scent. It burns for much longer than any other beeswax and even lamp oils. The mead brewed from it makes people almost giddy.
This is a new discovery, though, so I think the major export here before was wine. The island is sloped so it might be a dormant volcano, which means the soil is perfect for grapes. The lanterns are also new, just another way for the Regent to make a show of his shining city on the sea. The hive was probably first discovered around 6 months ago.
This is a totally unexpected direction, but I think I’ve got an initial setup. Will is going to be the assistant to a senior researcher from this naturalist organization, and the researcher disappeared along with the rest of the newest group that was sent into the jungle to safeguard and research the hive… No idea what the nature of the curse is, but I’m sure we’ll find out in play.
Welp! I was almost done making my map, but the program crashed and nothing saved, so we’ll do that another time I guess.
Another day, another attempt, and this time I managed to save something, but I need to give the Islands names. I’m gonna do Stravi for the island that the city is on, but I’ll roll for the other three.
These are really hit or miss for me. I’ll take the Maori word for apex, akitu, and use that for one of the mountainous islands. Carmine Isle is fine for the other one, and for the archipelago I’ll stick with the aesthetics but make them more dramatic and call them the Saw Tooth Islands.
And notable locations.
Name the Area
Let’s call this place the D’ioro Sea
There we go!
The sentinel tree is a little on the nose, lol. But obviously that’ll be the tree with the beehive on it. And I stuck the ship graveyard in the saw-tooths, which feels obvious also.
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