Progress and thoughts

The Map So Far

The regional map so far

It's taken a surprising amount of work to get this far, but here we are.  This is the result of drawing a map roughly with gimp, following a few tutorials for drawing coastlines and rivers, tracing it in hexographer, and then reimporting it back into gimp for finer details.

Not shown in this map are the breakdowns of "Civilized" vs. "Borderlands" vs. "Wilderness" Hexes, but going by the recommendations in the back of the book, almost all of this part of the map is civilized.

ACKs breaks market classes down into 6 categories, from I to VI, with I being the largest.  I got burned being too sparse in my last campaign, so I promised my players they would have access to bigger cities.  The capitol of the purple region is a Class II, the capitols of the yellow and blue regions are Class III, and every other named town is Class IV.  The book recommends ignoring Class IV and smaller on the campaign map and class VI in a regional map.  Unfortunately, this particular map is a bit of an inbetweener, it's about the size of what ACKs would consider 4 regional maps.  This felt like the right size since the players would be starting at "Adventurer Tier" which is the first tier higher than level 1.  There will necessarily be a greater degree of mobility, so a bigger map felt right.

That being said, the rules (even the updated ones from Axioms Magazine Issue III) say that anything within 48 miles (aka 8 6 mile hexes) of a city or large town town is civilized.  The core rulebook puts a large town at Class IV, therefore everything within 8 hexes of a town drawn on the map is civilized.  Everything 6 6 mile hexes away from a civilized hex will be borderlands.  Technically this only applies to settled territory, so I may use that to my advantage to make the mountains, forests, and the plains to the east hotbeds of monster activity.  It may be possible that I planned out my regions poorly, but for now I'm rolling with it and hoping it will turn out ok.Fortunately I used layers aggressively, so if I need to change the market classes to have an actual adventurable region, I can.

Naming Conundrum Solved

You may recall from my last post that I was struggling to come up with a decent name.  Ultimately while trying to find inspiration from naming conventions in the real world, I found something that resonated.  Saudi is a subdivision of the Arabia region known for their ruling patriarchs, the Sauds.  Since I knew I wanted this region to be strongly defined by their ruling family, I decided to pursue the convention of <Family Name> <Region>.  The family name quickly shook out to Halveni, but naming the region itself required a bit more thought.  Ultimately, because I had drawn the region with both jungle and grassland, on the border with forest, I decided the region was defined by many shades of green.  From there it was a few permutations out of Verde and Viridian to get to Veralia.

The Political Landscape So Far

This might have warranted it's own post, but I don't want to go overboard with details so I'm hoping cramming it all into one post will force me to be succinct.

Halvani Veralia

This is the main region.  It's independant, and it's culture is presumed to support the players desires to have access to any and every class.  The capital at least is cosmopolitan even if the region itself is predominantly human.

The Ruling Family

There were two ideas I wanted to chew on with the ruling family, the Halvenis.  First, I thought the idea of nobility of humans taking elven spouses in order for their family to live longer but still be able to rule humans was interesting, hence why I made them half elves.  There are no half elves in ACKs, so a half elf is simply either an elf class or a human class, possibly with the elven heritage proficiency, depending on whether they are more human or more elf.  The second idea was in a worldbuilding article about different ways succession and inheritance could be done.  History is rife with tales of bastards, illegitimate children, and uncertain parentage, around which an obsession with chastity and loyalty emerged.  The Halveni family skirts this with matrilineal succession: they are always certain that their daughter is of the royal bloodline.  They are the only group to do that, further adding to the realm's status as a place of outsiders.

Factions

In addition to factions representing influences from neighboring realms, there are two internal factions opposed to each other despite both wanting an independent Veralia.  The Azurists are loyal to the royal family and want the princess to remain powerful and independant. The Statists believe the princess as a singular powerful entity makes the entire realm vulnerable to overtures from foreign powers, and want her to concede some powers to an elected governing body.  Clever observers will have probably figured out by now that I play a good deal of Europa Universalis IV.  I found the interplay of the Dutch Republic mechanic, where a republic and a monarchy coexist while vying for power, very interesting.

The Holy Imperial League

A successor state to the empire that first saw the appearance of the Deva (Nobirans in core ACKs), a powerful Tarkaun (emperor) is elected by several prince electors after each emperor's death.  The Emperor then acts with wide lattitude but is still at least nominally beholden to a senate.  If the players decide they wish to meddle in senate politics like those described in Axioms Issue 3, this will be where they'll do it.  The league is at least partly responsible for a faction operating in Halveni Veralia calling themselves The Federalists.  After several failed campaigns to annex Veralia, the league is attempting to persuade the princess to accept a position as a princess-elector and join the league.  The yellow region on the map is merely a colony of theirs.   The main region is much larger on a continent to the east.

Bael Turath

I hope I don't get in trouble for this one, I have shamelessly stolen the name of the tiefling kingdom from an empire of the same name from 4th edition sourcebooks.  I use the Zaharan race from ACKs as a way to represent Tieflings in my campaign setting and this is their kingdom.  Like The Holy Imperial League, the region is blue is merely a colony of a larger realm elsewhere.  They also have designs on Veralia.  The tiefling king wants the ruling princess to marry him, and abolish their old succession rules, ensuring that any offspring would inherit both realms.

Wrap Up

that's all for now!