Why are there humans in Yoon-Suin?

The weekend is the witching hour for blogs. If posts only get a third of the number of page views on a Saturday or Sunday that they would get normally on a weekday, they only get a tenth of the number of comments.

This is the time for the silly, the experimental, the strange, the ill-advised, and the willfully obscure to sneak out of the window, climb down the drainpipe, and scamper out into the dark rain-damp streets to have their nefarious fun.

Today, I was thinking about the origin of Yoon-Suin and its place in the multiverse. Why are there humans there? I suppose the most sensible and natural explanation is that they have always been there, in the manner of fantasy races. Nobody asks where the elves came from in Mystara, or the dwarves in the Forgotten Realms. They're there because they are (or a god made them and put them there, etc.).

The second most sensible explanation is that humans came to Yoon-Suin from elsewhere. They were explorers, or would-be colonists, or refugees, or simply migrants. They came to Yoon-Suin, stayed, and proliferated. Now nobody even remembers that they're not actually native to the continent - except, perhaps, for some obscure monastic order somewhere in the Mountains of the Moon, and slug-man students of historical anthropology who have read the correct obscure tomes in the correct forgotten archives.

A third explanation: there is a rift somewhere in the fabric of reality that leads - or lead once - from Yoon-Suin to our world. In the ancient Australian outback, the deserts of Namibia, the Cheddar Gorge or the Lascaux Cave. Through it, slug-men once ventured and brought back slaves and captives for work, experimentation, pleasure, or perhaps merely to observe - and these slaves or captives, just like kudzu, Japanese knotweed, rabbits or the cane toad, found their new home much to their liking and spread with such rapidity it was as if they had always been there. As far as the slugmen are concerned, they really have: the introduction of humans happened so may eons ago that whatever forgotten archives may have documented it are long collapsed into dust and waste.

The latter two explanations raise further interesting questions: what was living in the Hundred Kingdoms, Sughd, the Mountains of the Moon, etc., before the humans came along and replaced them?

When Yoon-Suin Meets Rifts

In the lobby of the Museum of Historical Interface, at the Brunswick Dock in Hibap'ȕ/Liverpool, there hangs a framed letter, printed on a material now known to be yak skin and written in the High Yellow City Trade Tongue. It is hidden behind a large reinforced glass case which prevents the public approaching closer than three yards, and has two permanent security guards stationed beside it for 24 hours a day. This is necessary to prevent its theft, many attempts at which having been foiled in the time it has been housed at the Museum. It is the only known replica on Our Side of the Rift of the infamous letter which the explorer Omswarop Chal sent to his master, the Grand Matriarch of the Ulele Clan, at her residence in the Wagtail Quarter, on returning from his first journey through the Rift, and hence its value is beyond priceless. The year 2018 represents the tri-centennial anniversary of the sending of that letter and Chal's first traversing of the Rift, and hence the first contact between Our Side and Theirs, and on January 12th the great-grandson of the Grand Matriarch will be in attendance paying a full state visit. Given that the matriarch of the Wimxhȁ clan and her extended family will also be present, it is the most important event expected to take place in Hibap'ȕ/Liverpool this century so far. [...]

Nouns in the Yellow City Trade Tongue: Extract from the Journal of Laxmi Guptra Dahl

From The Journal of Laxmi Guptra Dahl, p. 378:

"The Yellow City is a city of many languages but the visitor is immediately struck by the fact that all of the populace shift with great facility to their 'Trade Tongue' whenever they are speaking to one outside their immediate circle.

"I asked many scholars about the origin of this 'Trade Tongue' and was told that it had been created by of all things a dwarfish sorcerer, Chinzin, who was a member of the court of an ancient emperor of the city. (There is nowadays, of course, no emperor, and has not been for thousands of years.) This dwarf was tasked with creating a language which could be spoken by both human and slug-man mouths alike, in order that commands could be issued and trades carried out between the two species without the slug-man masters suffering the indignities of being unable to pronounce certain words - it being known that the slug-man mouth is much less dextrous than that of the human.

"It is for this reason that, despite it being in common use for thousands of years at least, the Yellow City Trade Tongue has apparently changed little in pronunciation or grammatical rules since the earliest of Chinzin's Grammars. 

"The most noticeable characteristic of the 'Trade Tongue' is that it is a language which disdains nouns and adjectives. It is said that the dwarfish languages with which Chinzin was familiar are composed entirely of verbs, so that if one were to refer to a tree, for example, one would express something akin, mutatis mutandis, to one speaking our language making the expression: 'growing, greening, talling'.

"Whether or not this be true, the 'Trade Tongue' functions largely on the basis of verbs. Chinzin's genius, if it can be described as such, was what to linguistic scholars in the Yellow City became known as the Great Gerund Moment. The 'Trade Tongue' is a language comprising entirely verbs, except when those verbs are transformed into nouns through the use of special 'gerund classifiers' as follows.

"Consider the word in the 'Trade Tongue' for 'fish'. It is omifamofö.

This can be broken down into constituent parts thusly:

omi (which is the infinitive of the verb, 'to swim'), famo (which is the infinitive of the verb, 'to breathe water'), and then a particular gerund classifier, fö (which might be said to be the equivalent of our "-ing thing"). Hence, omifamofö, or 'swim breathe-water -ing thing'.

"To which the perceptive reader will ask two questions: namely, what is the origin of this strange 'gerund classifier' and the rules governing its use; and does this not result in nouns which are of extreme and unusable length?

"Chinzin developed not one gerund classifier but 14. This was in accordance with the prevailing epistemological philosophy of the time, which held that all things could be classified into 14 archetypes. Hence, 'nouns' in the Yellow City Trade Tongue take a separate gerund classifier according to what archetype they fit.

"Over time, of course, the vision of perfection from which Chinzin was drawing proved too restrictive for the messy and chaotic nature of living things, and over time gerund classifications have become somewhat arbitrary. Nonetheless, the Yellow City Trade Tongue can still be said to have 14 noun classes based on the following schema. The schema lists Chinzin's classification and the comments in parenthesis elaborate on the modern usage.

(a) things that belong to the Emperor (there is nowadays no "emperor" so this in general classifies things associated with the slug man caste) wi
(b) embalmed things (includes things that are artificially constructed or altered) xȁ
(c) those that are trained (includes children, agricultural animals, and so on) öha
(d) suckling pigs (this includes most mammals) ma
(e) mermaids (includes fish and other scaly things, and also hybrids) fö
(f) fabulous ones (includes abstract concepts or things known not to actually exist) bo
(g) stray dogs (includes things associated with low-status castes) iwo
(h) those that are included in the present classification (only used for the noun "thing" itself) ȍwȉ
(i) those that tremble as if they are mad (includes things which are amorphous and cannot be fixed, such as clouds) pi
(j) innumerable ones (includes things found in clumps or other large gatherings) p'o
(k) those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush (includes things artistically created) ahi
(l) others (a miscellaneous category - usually whatever is not currently classified or where the speaker does not know what class something belongs in) xhu
(m) those that have just broken a flower vase (includes things that change form or location) wu
(n) those that look like flies from a long way off (includes insects, and other tiny things) hȍ

"Hence the word for 'fish', omifamofö, takes the gerund classifier for mermaids, or fö. This may be contrasted with another word, for 'peas', or fuwafap'o (from fuwa, the infinitive for "to be green", fa for the infinitive for "to be edible", and p'o, the gerund classifier for things that are innumerable or found in clumps.

"At some point there may be required second-order agglutination as in: p'abahuwupixȁ, the word for a cup or bowl. Viz: p'aba (infinitive for 'to contain'), huwu (infinitive for 'to be liquid'), pi (gerund classifier for amorphous things, such as liquids), xȁ (gerund classifier for embalmed or constructed things). Similarly, rather than having adjectives, nouns are modified through the use of particles comprised of the stem of verbs. Thus, omifamoȕfö, or 'big fish' (formed by inserting the stem of the verb ȕmȕ, 'to be big', or ȕ, before the gerund classifier).

"The question remains: does this not result in unwieldy and lengthy nouns which make communication lengthy and difficult? The answer is that in ordinary circumstances, users of the Yellow City Trade Tongue are extremely aware of context, more so perhaps than any other peoples using any other oral form of communication. Thus, when from context the meaning is clear, it is quite natural and normal for a person to refer simply to a fish as a fö (for example, when there is a fish nearby, or when the topic of fish has already been raised in the conversation). In another circumstance, he may use the word fö to refer to another thing which is classified with mermaids, such as a lizard, in abbreviation, where the context is clear. 

"Likewise, when sitting down for a meal, a person will not ask to be passed a p'abahuwupixȁ, but simply a pixȁ."

[With thanks to Borges and The Analytical Language of John Wilkins.]

310 Pages of Possibly Incomprehensible Gibberish?

Let me tell you a story.

Long ago (in 2009) a young British man living in Kawasaki began doodling some pictures of slug-men in an idle moment. This dovetailed with a D&D campaign world he'd been running off and on in various forms for a few years, called provisionally The Mountains of the Moon, whose concept was in essence "Fantasy Tibet by somebody who has never been to Tibet and knows nothing about it, but likes the idea of yak-folk and self-mummifying monks".

The result eventually grew into something weird and terrible called Yoon-Suin. Over the following five years the British man made various rash and rather pathetic promises to release it as a campaign setting - each promise being less convincing and trustworthy than the last. During this time the idea morphed from a hexcrawl into something else entirely: a kind of toolkit of random tables, hex locations, bestiaries and rumours that, in the right hands, may come to resemble a living, breathing Frankenstein's Monster of a campaign setting - a Frankenstein's Monster with yak horns, leaving a trail of slime wherever it goes.

Looking at the final product (because yes, it does exist, and yes, it'll be available very shortly) the British man feels at turns proud and concerned. Proud because a heck of a lot of effort, willpower, creativity and yes, let's use a dirty four-letter word, love went into its production. Concern because the British man suspects that the neutral reader - i.e. everybody else - may very well view the thing as 310 pages of useless, blithering nonsense spewed from a rather unhinged mind. (And not in the good, creative way; unhinged in the sense of being mad enough to think anybody would be able to make sense of this crap.) The prevailing view may be, rather than "Wow!" or even "Hmm!", something closer to "Huh?" or even "Jesus wept".

But in any event, it's done now, and despite all the broken promises, the fundamental promise (that one day there would be this thing called 'Yoon-Suin' that people could get their hands on) has been honoured. That, the British man feels, is probably the main thing.

Suffice to say, Yoon-Suin is finished. I'm letting a few friends/comrades take a glance at it first, to see if they can salvage something understandable from it. But yes, in any case, finished. If you've ever thought to yourself "I want to be a slug-man with a crab-man slave", then don't worry: soon it will happen. Perhaps sooner than you think.

Fu Ying and Lee Ba

This pair of magicians travel the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon, offering their services in return for magical items and precious gems. Fu Ying appears as a humanoid rat and Lee Ba as a humanoid pig; if this is as a result of a curse neither behaves as such - indeed, they seem to find each other irresistibly attractive and constantly paw at one another, even during conversation with a third party. Their grotesque lasciviousness makes their company less than enjoyable, but the pair have their uses.

Fu Ying
Level 5 magician
Spellbook consists of a dozen strings of quipu, each containing one spell. These are as follows:
Colour Spray, Dancing Lights, Light, Levitate, Rope Trick, Hypnotism, Charm Person, Forget, Hypnotic Pattern, Web, Item, and Hold Person.
She is equipped with the Kukri of Peeling. This magical blade (+2) slices so deeply it causes skin to necrify and peel away from the body, causing 1 hp damage per day per wound; this can only be healed by a cure disease and cure serious wounds spell cast simultaneously.
She wears Fu Ying's Hat, which provides resistance to fire, acid, and electricity and creates a screen which wards away missiles, providing AC 4 against such attacks.

Lee Ba
Level 5 magician
Spellbook is a hat made of fine bone china, which is decorated on the inside with tiny lettering. It contains the following spells:
Magic Missile, Sleep, Armour, Grease, Taunt, Jump, Shocking grasp, Glitterdust, Web, Wraithform and Ray of Enfeeblement.
He has the Claws of the Rajah of Saliput, two Bang Nakh +3 which allow the owner to climb perfectly and which can be activated to provide perfect camouflage once per day. These items can only be used in conjunction with each other and function as ordinary bang nakh if not used as a pair.

Arch-Mage Tower Generator and Yoon-Suin Update

Enough with the politics. Here's a table from the Yoon-Suin Gazetteer. This is what's consumed much of my summer: formatting tables like this. About 250 pages of them. I am to all intents and purposes finished, but I need to put the art into its various placeholders. I don't anticipate this will take very long, but I've learned a dark secret during the course of this project, and it's as follows: everything to do with layout is a massive faff, and while that is something you expect, you can never expect the level of faffing around that will be required in practice. So I expect a whole host of unexpected problems to suddenly unearth themselves in the course of this final furlong.

Yoon-Suin Sample

I thought I'd post a few pages from Yoon-Suin to show what kind of thing I'm playing around with regarding layout. The first page is a chapter heading; the second is a section of the bestiary; the third is a table from the Yellow City chapter. The picture of the slug-man is by an Australian illustrator called Matthew Adams.

Things may not look exactly centred. That's because I'm formatting it to be used for a POD version so the margins are slightly longer on either the left or right side depending on the page. As you'll see, it's going to be landscape. I prefer it that way.

I selected three pages from the full Word document and simply copied them into a second document to make into picture files, which is why the second and third pages are numbered '2' and '3'. These pages obviously don't come directly after each other. Anyway, hopefully it gives an insight into what the final product is shaping up to look like, and proves that the whole thing isn't a mere figment of my imagination.

A Yoon-Suin Location

10 thin, long black rocks sticking up through the forest floor arranged into two roughly semicircular groups of 5; close inspection may reveal that one of the rocks in each group is slightly shorter than the others. They are the fingers of a demigod imprisoned in a subterranean tomb. Over the eons he has stretched his hands up towards the surface in a vain attempt at escape; they now poke up through the loamy soil. If anybody stands in the middle of one of the ‘hands’ it causes the fingers to close, grabbing the victim and crushing him or her to death instantly on a failed DEX check. The demigod then leaches the victim’s soul to empower his eventual escape. Careful examination of the topsoil in the area will reveal old bones and treasures equivalent to TT Sx3, Tx3, and Ux3 around the fingers – the remains of previous travellers the demigod has killed.

An Example of the Yoon-Suin Gazetteer in Action

I thought it would be nice to show what my Yoon-Suin supplement (provisionally entitled the "Yoon-Suin Gazetteer") allows a DM to do. This is an example of how a campaign centred in the Yellow City could be brainstormed. There is no fluff or interpretation at all, here. I simply spent about half an hour following the process, rolling dice and noting down the results. Some of it will not make sense without the book in front of you; it's just a sample of what can be done in a very short space of time.

There is still leg-work for the individual DM to do after such a process, as will be apparent: joining up the dots and fleshing things out is something that takes a little extra time. What the book doesn't do is tell you what to do with the data that's generated. That's for you to use your imagination. 

So, the first thing to do is to draw up a social circle for the PCs. This involves generating a handful of social groups which the PCs know of and are known to, and a handful of NPCs they likewise know of and are known to. Not all of the information regarding them is known to the PCs, of course. And this is just a tiny fraction of what is out there in the Yellow City; this is a huge city, teeming with life. 

First, the social groups: 

A Noble House, called the Purple Family. [A Noble House is a mercantile, trading family, somewhere between a mafia clan and a legitimate commercial interest. They control all the trade in and out of the city together with the other Noble Houses, and are the only form of government, such as it is. All the members are slug-men.]  

There is a conflict within the Purple Family: the spouse of the matriarch and the teacher of the matriarch's children are in an adulterous relationship.
There is a rumour that somebody tried to poison one of the high-ups in the family, but accidentally killed a taster instead. The family want to know the culprit.
*
A Shrine, to a hawk-aspected demigod with food, males, and death as her spheres of influence. She demands sacrifices of invertebrates, and her holy colour is green.
The head sacrificer at the shrine has an incurable addiction to a certain type of opium.
There is a rumour that an important holy artefact has gone missing.
*
Another Shrine, to a crane-aspected demigod with famine as her sphere of influence. She demands sacrifices of mammals, and her holy colour is black.
A mad visionary has stolen something from the shrine.
There is a rumour that under the shrine there is a network of catacombs the members believe to be haunted.
*
A Philosophical Society, who practice sophistry.
One of the members, an important scion of a Noble House, has been driven mad by his ruminations.
There is a rumour that the society wants a former member, who has renounced its beliefs, assassinated. There is a further rumour that the society wants hallucinogens to further expand its theoretical insights.
*
An Exploring Guild, called the Society of Many Journeys. 
A magician patron is betraying them by passing secrets to a rival.
There is a rumour that the group have recently brought a strange, puissant artefact back from a journey - and powers in the city want it. 

Next, some individual NPCs contacts of the PCs. 

(The humans)
A cockroach butcher, over-friendly, called Pallab. He desires adventure.
An embezzler, called Rusheek, who is always accompanied by a small child. He has a rival.
A jeweller, with a haunted, desperate air, called Raakhi. She has a rival.
An assassin, with white pupils, called Mahek. She is jealous of the possession of another.

(Slug-men)
A scholar of automata, called Po Le, who is always accompanied by two slaves. He desires more knowledge.
A teacher, called Polaha Vo, who is especially slimy. He needs to pay off crippling debts.
A magician, called Malaba, who is a lover of the arts. He hates an enemy. 

As you will see, there are plenty of opportunities for adventures, missions, jobs, plots, and schemes there already.

Once the social circle has been established, the next stage is to develop further hooks. These are jobs or adventures that can be found out by the PCs simply by asking around the nearest opium den or tea house.

First, there are random connections.

A holy man, a small person called Edhas, needs to transport something to an assassin.
A cockroach clan chief, a grossly fat man called Mahantha, wants a dwarf refugee kidnapped.
A philosopher, Giriraj, who always walks on tip-toe, wants something stolen from Puli, an over-friendly beggar.

Then, there are simple random rumours. I'll just roll up 3. 

Russet mould has taken over a ghetto and is turning everyone in it into mould men.
A vampiric mist has made its home in a park in the grounds of a palace.
Golden wormlings have burrowed from somewhere into the basement of an archive and have been eating all the books and scrolls. 

This creates the raw material for a city-based campaign; as I said, it took roughly 30 minutes to generate it. It's now the job of the DM to start fleshing this out as appropriate. Clearly, there is no need to flesh out everything here. But as I hope you'll see, you can start off with the Yellow City chapter, roll some dice for less than an hour, and hey presto! there should be at least a dozen different hooks there for you to create into fully-fledged "rumours" to begin a Yellow City-based sandbox.

And it only scratches the surface of the different possibilities available.

Next, we turn to the surroundings of the Yellow City.

The map looks like arse; it will look better in the final version. The red city icons are the Yellow City proper; the black ruined icons are the Old Town - parts of the city which have been abandoned over the course of the aeons and gradually returned to the forest; they are home now to ghosts, exiles, outcasts, and mysterious magical features. The sea hexes are dotted with small islands - the Topaz Isles - which contain many small communities, monster lairs, etc.

There are three steps here. The first is to generate, and place on the map, some small communities which are found on the Topaz Isles. I generated four:

A Mine, which mines turqouise. It has 13 guards, a 2 HD leader, and 75 slaves, with 16 units of turqouise ore. The ferry, which is the only line of communication with the city, has sunk, leaving the mine isolated. Three significant NPCs were rolled up: the ferry captain; a disloyal, influential slave; and a brutal foreman. 

Another Mine, which mines tourmaline. It has 12 guards, a 2 HD leader, and 60 slaves, with 19 units of tourmaline ore. A gang of slaves are sneaking resources out to local smugglers. Three significant NPCs were rolled up: a brutal foreman, another brutal foreman, and the chief engineer. 

A Smugglers' Den. The smugglers are being actively sought after for retribution by a Noble House. It is a medium-sized network, with 60 members. In the den they have Treasure Type E, 14 units of opium, 15 units of tea, and 6 slaves.  

An Observatory. Important equipment has recently gone missing. There are 10 clay golems, 10 slaves, 10 guards, 11 astronomers, and 1 2 HD head guard, and Treasure Types K, L, N and O. 

Next some lairs. Again, I generated four.

Makara. [Stone statues resembling a humanoid crocodilian with a peacock's tail; they are found here and there in the Topaz Isles, sometimes submerged in the shallow seas, sometimes on land.] They are 8 in number. The makara are waiting for the return of an ancient artefact; one of them, obviously marked out as a leader, seems to be holding its hands out in waiting. Once the artefact is returned, the makara will serve the returner for one lunar month. Treasure: Lx5.
-The ancient artefact is a disc, 18 inches in diameter, of complexity 10. It is made of shell. It emits a shimmering sword of sheer force which can be wielded as per the Mordenkainen’s Sword spell, activatable once per day for d6 turns. 

Locathah. 150 in number, with a 5 HD leader, 12 3 HD guards. Treasure Type: A. The locathah are experts at capturing squid-men and have d3 of them captive on any given day.  

Sea naga. It lairs in a deep cave in a cliff face which curves back on itself in a spiral; the naga's home is in the middle. It has Treasure Type G. It is worshipped by a group of tamasic men (gibbon men, 16 in number, with Treasure Type B). 

Tamasic Men. 19 in number, axlotl men. They have uncovered an ancient artefact during their miserable attempts at mining.
-The ancient artefact is a star, of complexity 2. It is made of stone. It can be activated for prismatic spray 1/week.

These lairs and small communities are then placed on sea hexes as desired. In addition to the random generator tables which create these adventure locales, there are also 20 pre-made adventure locales of my own design which can also be placed here and there on the map.

Ancient Artefacts are generated randomly and have a system a little like that found in Gamma World 2nd edition; the greater the complexity, the harder the artefact is to operate and the more likely that something will go wrong when the PCs are trying to figure it out. 

Tamasic Men are men who have been re-incarnated in animal form due to their indolence and complacency in previous lives. 

Finally, I decide to generate a few ruins in the Old Town. Whenever PCs want to explore the Old Town they can do this and there is a system for randomly generating their discoveries as they go. But Old Town locations can also be pre-determined if the DM desires it. I thought I'd roll a couple up as additional adventure locales which the PCs can hear about.

Ruin 1 – A park. Old, overgrown, with crumbling walls. The main inhabitant is a ghost - a seductive baital [a type of demonic spirit which inhabits corpses]. There are also gloomwings lurking in the trees. 

Ruin 2 – A ziggurat, ancient and reclaimed by forest. The main inhabitants are cultists. It is a small cult – a 1^st level holy man, 3 1^st level holy man assistants, and 14 1 HD members. Treasure Type: C. The cult is despised and persecuted by a religious sect in the city proper. They are millenarian and cruel. 

Ruin 3 – A plaza. Old, overgrown, and crumbling. The main inhabitants are exiled revolutionaries. They are race warriors advocating genocide of slug-men. But they only pay lip-service to their beliefs. They actually have abandoned themselves to wanton hedonism. They are a small band of 11, with one 2 HD leader and Treasure Type: C. 

A Special Site - A high column. It is covered in spiders' webs; the spiders are poisonous (save versus death; success is 20 hp damage). The column is hollow and a secret door leads inside to a narrow chamber. Within is a trove of Treasure Type: I. It is guarded by two chinthe [guardian lion/dog spirits] who have been trapped there for aeons. 

As stated, some of this will not make total sense without the book in front of you; also, bear in mind this is one substantive chapter out of seven; there are five other geographical zones which have similar random-generation systems for campaign set-up brainstorming. Each is approximately 60 pages. There is also a bestiary with 50+ entries, rules on character generation, and Appendices A-Q, ranging from a random poison generator to fortune telling rules, to rules on magical tattoos. 

And it should be ready....soon. 

Random Ghost Generator

For Yoon-Suin, I came up with a little set of random tables for generating the ghosts which haunt the jungles of Láhág. Here they are:

A ghost created with this method:

Basic type: 5, Emotion: 6, Shape: 7, Appearance: 6, Method of Haunting: 4, Abilities: 18, 1, 11.

Mother Baxawalu. Mother Baxawalu haunts a vast Banyan tree growing at the bottom of a dark, ever-misty ravine. She appears as a naked old woman, carrying her own severed head in both hands. She tries to ensnare anybody unfortunate enough to stray into her ravine through the use of her sleep and hold person spells; once she has them in her power she ties them to branches in the Banyan tree and attempts to adopt and raise them as her own children, treating them like her family and trying to convince them of her undying love. Unless they escape, they typically starve to death or die of sheer terror and despair.  

Mother Baxawalu, it is said, was the mother of a zamindar of the town of Alipurduar, who was taken to the forest and beheaded by her own sons after they mistakenly assumed she had been unfaithful to their father. Stories of her haunting terrify local children, and the very sound of her cooing voice is enough to cause fear to any who have heard her tale. 

What the Lazy Bastard Has Been Working On; Or, Yoon-Suin is On the Road to Completion, Honest

It's been a ridiculous November and December but I have managed to work a little bit on Yoon-Suin here and there. The content is entirely complete and I'm currently undergoing the laborious process of transferring everything from OneNote to Word (having given up on fancy schmancy layout programs after what seemed like aeons of aimless fiddling). This is about 5-10% finished.

Here are some mysterious screen grabs. No art as yet. That's the final hurdle.

Yoon-Suin Dwarves

In the comments on this post Amy asks, "Can you provide some kind of correlate for these oriental dwarves? I'm having a hard time visualising them, and because of this they kinda take me out of the setting."

Here goes:

Yoon-Suin Update

I feel as if it's about time for an update on the progress of my long-promised, long-suffering, long-postponed, long-awaited (by me, anyway) and very possibly long-forgotten campaign setting, Yoon-Suin.

The first draft is nearly finished. All I have left to do is fill in encounter tables. However, when I say "first draft", what I mean is, it's written in pencil on graph paper. I now have to begin the laborious process of typing the damn thing up.

Nonetheless, I feel relatively pleased with what's in there. I've had the intention for a long time of doing something which both pays tribute to the old TSR campaign settings of times past, but which avoids the primary pitfall of making things too detailed, too specific, and too focused on canon. The last thing I want is for people to do what I did with all my Planescape books and boxed sets, which was to spend ages gazing at them in awe and wonder, but to wonder about how to set about actually playing it. I set myself the task of coming up with a tool box to allow the reader to create his own Yoon-Suin, rather than play around with my Yoon-Suin.

(This has a poetic appeal to me too, since some tiny part of the inspiration for Yoon-Suin comes from the Viriconium books; M. John Harrison's philosophy, which was that Viriconium is the same place and yet fundamentally different in each story, gets reflected a little bit in the notion that no two DMs will have the same Yoon-Suin setting.)

And I think that's been achieved. Inside, you will find, amongst other things:

• How to create your own nasnas-populated, haunted city
• A way to randomly generate a generic ruin, which can be reskinned into an ancient dwarf fort or temple, a tumbledown palace in the Old Town in the Yellow City, a hidden jungle shrine complex, a mysterious stone circle in Lower Druk Yul, and more besides
• A random oligarchy generator
• Tables for creating your own varieties of tea, opium, and hunting worm
• A plethora of Yellow City-specific generators for tea shops, crab-fighting stables, cockroach tribes, crime families, archives, and guilds
• 20 sample hexes for each of the 4 main regions of Yoon-Suin, which can be arranged to taste or merely serve as inspiration for individual DMs
• A unique (I think) random encounter table, which creates geography of encounters and special "complications" as well as the encounter itself, lickety-split
• Ways to generate characters from any area of Yoon-Suin, from class to caste right down to name

That's not to mention a big fuck-off bestiary and treasure table, as well as lots of pretentious prose.

I don't anticipate imminent release, but the end is now in sight and I should be totally finished by the end of summer, fingers crossed. 

Were-Moray Eel

It's been a while since I've posted any Yoon-Suin stuff. It's ticking away.

Were-Moray Eels are a type of Lycanthrope encountered in the coastal regions of Yoon-Suin, particularly in and around the Topaz Isles. They often live alone or in small groups, and shun other human contact, but their strength and power occasionally leads them to dominion over brigands and sea raiders. They typically have three forms: human, giant moray eel, and a hybrid form in which the facial features and torso take on the appearance of the eel but arms and legs are retained. At the top of the food chain, they accumulate toxins from reef creatures, so their bite is cripplingly poisonous: if the victim does not succumb to Lycanthropy, he may well die from catastrophic diarrhea.

Were-Moray Eel

HD: 5+3*
AC: 5
Move: 120 (60'), Swim 150' (50') in eel form
No. Att: 1 in human form; 2 in hybrid form; 1 in eel form
DMG: As weapon +2; As weapon +2, bite 1d6; Bite 1d8+1
Special: Hit only by silver or magical weapons
Save As: Fighter 5
Morale: 8

Poisonous Bite: Anyone bitten by a were-moray, in addition to his Lycanthropy check, must save versus poison. Failure results in sickness and continuous diarrhea; he can only move at half rate, and loses 1 point of CON per day for 2d6 days. If he runs out of CON, he dies. If the 2d6 days expire and he still has a CON score, he survives and regains his CON at the rate of 1 point per day.

Ophiliones

In the lush valleys of Sughd live a race of giant, intelligent arachnids: the ophiliones. Omnivorous, they are as likely to eat fungus or guano as flesh, but they will not reject an opportunity to devour succulent human meat.

In combat, ophiliones attack with their two forelegs, with which they attempt to drag prey towards the powerful maw. They are by nature cowards, however, and they have two detachable legs (which they can regrow) to distract their enemies as they flee.

Ophilione

Armour Class: 5
HD: 3+1
Move: 180' (60')
Attacks: 2
Damage: 1d6/1d6
No. Appearing: 2d6
Save As: F1
Morale: 6
Treasure: Nil
Intelligence: 8
Alignment: Neutral 

If both leg attacks hit, the ophilione drags the target to its mouth and bites for d8+1 damage; this hits automatically.  

If an ophilione loses 75% of hits hit points or more, it will flee and shed two of its legs. These legs fight on as 1 HD monsters, with AC 7 and doing d4 damage.  

A successful hit on an ophilione has a 10% chance of dislodging one of its detachable legs, in which case the leg will fight separately from the host as above. 

Three Yoon-Suin Hexes

The Jade Baths

A grand bathhouse stands half way between Charikot and Bharatput, where a hot spring broils up from the bowels of the earth. The oligarchs of the two cities, and the local chattaris, are regular visitors, and an ancient  gentleman's agreement maintains its neutrality even during the (regular) wars which ravage the Vale of Flowers. It is said that Tamangh Nikil and Udit Ghimere shared a bath there together a month and a day after the Udit clan had slain Nikil's grandparents, and the two did not come to blows or draw blades.

The bathhouse is decorated everywhere with jade panels, statuettes and crenelations, although it is made of dark cedar. At the gate stand two jade lion statues; these are jade golems (AC0, HD11, Attacks 3, DMG d10/d10/d12, damaged only by magical crushing weapons) which will protect the life of the bathhouse's owner and any who serve there. The current owner is Jal, a beautiful but apparently ageless woman with three triplet sons, Dilip, Hari and Laxman (each is a level 5 magic-user). There is at least half a million gold pieces' worth of jade on the premises.

Altar Meadow

Here, in a small vale in the foothills, there is a wide area of pleasant meadowland dotted with flowers. In its centre is an altar of pale granite, covered with lichen; faint etchings in Old Sangmenzhang Dwarven indicate that this was an altar for the cult of Marvindhra, a local dwarven demigod long dead. The altar is haunted by 6 dwarven wraiths [stats as standard wraith] who appear in a circle around it d4 rounds after it has been touched by hand; they are the servants of Marvindhra who await his resurrection, at which time they believe they shall live again. In the ground surrounding the altar are the remains of travellers who the wraiths have slain, and their belongings - a few assorted pieces of armour and weaponry and other equipment; approximately 200 silver pieces, 100 gold pieces, and 50 platinum pieces; and a suit of Banded Mail +1 and copper Ring of Djinn Summoning. The fact that these treasures lie beneath the soil is discovered on a roll of 1-2 on a d6 - roll separately for each party member.

The Mute Drifts

On the high plateau is an area of snow drifts around two miles in diameter; some quirk of topography creates a microclimate in which the air is perfectly still and no wind blows. It is so silent than any movement - even the crunch of a footfall on the snow - can be heard for hundreds of yards. A tribe of bhuta inhabit the area, taking advantage of these unusual conditions to surprise and attack travellers. There is a 2 in 3 chance that anybody travelling through the Mute Drifts will be spotted by these bhuta and attacked by 4d6 of them; the bhuta are never surprised, while their victims are always surprised. Encounter distance is calculated the normal way. The bhutas' lair is a series of caves carved into the inside of a crevasse; inside is a randomly generated treasure trove of type C, along with the bodies of 2d6 children encased in ice for later consumption.

Yellow City Personages

Lefu Yi the Tall - In busy markets, outside boutique tea shops, by thronged quaysides, or outside fighting pits, there are always entertainers: Jugglers, jongleurs, puppeteers, and clowns. Wherever people come together in the Yellow City, these types can be found.

Lefu Yi is never seen in such locations. He is always alone. You may seem him at twilight, lurking under a bridge over a deserted canal in some forgotten neighbourhood. Or in the early morning, standing in the doorway of an abandoned tenement by the river, glaring mutely at its grey, murky depths. Or during the monsoon season in the pouring rain, alone under a tree in the Old Town, soaked to the skin because of the paucity of his chosen shelter. But he always wears his makeup - his face is always the fullest, most crimson red. And he is never without his stilts, those bamboo crutches that keep him eternally two feet from the ground and give him gaunt, lanky appearance of a mantis.

Children and faint-hearted people are afraid of Lefu Yi, but to nobody's knowledge has he ever been harmful. Because he lurks in the city's dark and dimly remembered places, he surely knows many of its secrets; those who would learn the geography of the Old Town in particular would be advised to seek him out. He can be approached and will take payment for his knowledge, in gold or a gem. His voice is querulous and you must lean close, standing on tip-top, to hear it.

Tripti - Tripti is a hijra from the far North, from distant, mountainous Sughd. Like all hijra, she has the body of a man though she lives as a woman, and her strange androgynous beauty is famed throughout the city by those who are of that persuasion. She abstains from sexual matters, however, and because of her purity she is able to offer blessings to those who need it, as well as curses to those who would insult her - or to those whose enemies are willing to pay her.

She has of course never married, though it is well known that she is loved by the Lamarakhi trader, Bemsh Kwellaminamon. Bemsh is the headman of a barge-village which plies the God River between Lamarakh and the Yellow City, bringing precious metals and opium from the North and taking slaves upstream. He is a small, wrinkled, shrivelled man of late-middling years, possessed of a fierce, wiry strength and even fiercer wit. He is a man of considerable power and influence in Lamarakh, and particularly among the Lamarakhi traders who come to the Yellow City.

Bemsh has at least a dozen wives, perhaps more, but his true love - at least in his own mind - is the unobtainable Tripti. Undoubtedly, the hijra's unobtainability is nine tenths of the attraction.

Bemsh's oldest and most trusted trading contact in the Yellow City is the slugman, Po Lu. Po Lu is a scion of an ancient merchant clan which is itself part of one of the great cartels in the city - the Indigo Cartel. Po Lu is sarcastic, bitter, and incredibly old, but his one weakness is loneliness. Though constantly engaged in mercantile activities, he longs for discussion of history, philosophy, and art - and this Bemsh provides.

Po Lu is the patron of many archives, libraries, and museums. He is constantly searching for opportunities to add to his collections - and although he will accept only the rarest curios, he will pay vast sums in return.

Cross My Palm With Silver

"Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money."

The idea of monetizing RPG products is somewhat divisive. Huge Ruined Scott has always been adamant, as far as I can tell, that his creations will always be available for free. Kent also has strong views that RPG-related stuff should be created and shared for free, and people who try to sell them are grubby, greedy and vain.

I have some sympathy with that sort of stance. I used to have a button for PayPal donations which I never really felt comfortable with and eventually removed, because it didn't sit right with me to imply that I expected anybody ought to feel that I thought I deserved money for this constant stream of bullshit I spew forth onto the internet. The clumsiness of that sentence is strong evidence for the argument that I don't deserve it.

Moreover, I think there is something honourable and good about creating things for others to use, for nothing in return. It is something to be encouraged.

And nor do I need the money. I have a good job. When I finish and release Yoon-Suin, it's not as if it will make a material difference to my life even if I were to charge money for it. I'll spend it on booze and women and just waste the rest.

On the other hand, let's not kid ourselves: I like money. And being paid for doing something is a nice feeling. It shows that your work is valued. I have done enough freelancing to be aware of that - working hard to produce something and sending it off for financial reward gives you warm fuzzies simply by dint of showing that your work is worth something. It wouldn't be human not to enjoy that feeling.

I'm also of the view that people value things they pay for above what they get for free. I've downloaded plenty of free products (lawfully) that I have never so much as looked at, because since they are free I subconsciously view them as throwaway. If I've paid for something, though, you can be sure I'll give it due care and attention.

"I listen to money singing. It's like looking down
From long french windows at a provincial town
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
In the evening sun. It is intensely sad."

What I Did Tonight

Tonight I jotted down notes on the following "things to go in the Yoon-Suin book":

• Lunar observatory
• Velvet worm breeder
• Magical tattooist
• Glacier spirit
• Wishing pool
• Silk weaver
• Blessed hijra
• Desert troll wiseman
• Black powder artisan
• Ape temple
• Blessed carp pool
• Butterfly breeder
• Chrysanthemum orchard
• Bronze dragon statue
• Glacial waterfall
• Elephant cult

I sometimes think I lead quite an odd life.

What Comes Next

My PhD is now (finally) written and submitted, and I have had the subsequent, obligatory three week period of doing fuck-all creative. My batteries are recharged. I have no other responsibilities except my day job. It's time to finish a publishable version of my Yoon-Suin campaign setting.

Don't worry - there'll be no Kickstarter.

My plan has increasingly moved towards a tool-kit rather than a fully-fleshed out campaign setting: the conceit that I am aiming for is that you, the Reader, will be able to Create and Run Your Own Yoon-Suin with the use of the tools provided (a shitload of random tables, setting fluff for inspiration, and sample maps, NPCs, and locations). Most of these tools already exist for some areas of the map - the Yellow City and surroundings, and Silaish Vo and the Mountains of the Moon. They don't exist for others, however, so I have some work to do on that front. But in its complete form, what I produce will, I hope, enable a willing DM to take an overview of the entirety of the Yoon-Suin map, pick a region he likes the look of, and create his own  version of it in which to run games - with a little bit of work and lots of dice rolling.

My thinking behind this has two strands. First, I want to steer away from the ridiculous obsession with setting canon which can overcome these sorts of endeavours. And second, I want to avoid "doing your imagining for you" while still providing inspiration, ideas, and useful things.

But there will also be ready-to-go hex maps and dungeons for those who are lazy.

So watch this space. I've been posting in this blog about Yoon-Suin for 3 years now, by my reckoning. That's altogether too long. It's time to get this thing done!