A proper solo RPG journal must include sketchy maps, hasty portraits, and plenty of marginalia. Hand written letters are the bare minimum, and can tell you a lot about the author, but if your journal doesn’t look it was written by a half-in-the-tank Call of Cthulhu character what are you even doing?
I’ve got the map glued in place (they sell stencils, but for some geometric designs you just can’t get away with anything but the precision of a printer), and a couple sessions under my belt, and so help me, I tried to run full pagan campaign. Honest!
Kal-Arath is grimy. It’s a sweat-soaked bloodbath set in a land where life is cheap and a strong sword arm is invaluable. High adventure means rolling in the mud, and plenty of exposure to the decrepit and destitute. With limited loot tables available, you’re going to be scrounging for every meal or feel as cheap as the painted girls when you hand wave your way into an all-too-easy to rationalize score that isn’t justified by what you had to do to earn it.
It’s just that kind of game, and I was there for it, MAN!
But we plan and God laughs. What can you do but laugh a long with Hom when day one the oracle shows you a peaceful statue of hope that could only be Our Lady of Good Success? This isn’t the kind of setting for the infinite love of a merciful God weighs heavily on the souls of the steppelanders. Oh, there is plenty of opportunity for the wrathful side of things, sure. But the Queen of Heaven is the Queen of all Heavens and she treads where she will, and few settings need her as much as this one.
Thar, having just escaped from his pursuers, shelters in the lee of her arms as a raging blizzard drives them off. Perhaps they sensed the dim echo of the White Lady’s aura and could not face her sad and loving gaze. The region with within sight of the statue is deeply unsettling to the natives. Raised on a marble plinth, which rests on a white stone altar, and taller than a barbarian, she commands a wide view. To come under her gaze is to feel the love and hope that has abandoned this grubby little corner of the multiverse. Most natives cannot handle the strange and alien sense of the place. To them it is a ceiling bird that just won’t chirp.
Even Thar cannot linger long in her realm. The snow is deep and the winds still blow, and he has but a few days ration to fill his belly. He leaves a token of esteem behind, but has not heard the tale of her son nor of the great gift He brings to all who would share in his burden.
He is a barbarian, and his lands answer to far darker gods.
Hey, I tried, but all paths lead to Him. And at a minimum, I must genuflect before turning away from His face.
Anyway, Thar soon found a pair of yurts that doubled as coffins for two families, the fabric from which he managed to cobble together a crude tent. The nights become a little less cold.
The next day, Thar meets his first living soul in the Sea of Grass and Stone. This time another lone wanderer, a disgraced Warlord named Kor-Ki’Ren, who knows of the yurts. From their description they belonged to traitors, two of a dozen families that he took into the sheltering shade of his battlebarge. A sort of nomadic camp-follower caravan, these two families knew of the impending mutiny and paid the price for trusting the perfidious wizard, Aghar of the Iron Shroud. He was certainly less benevolent and trusting than Kor-Ki’Ren, who is himself wandering the region in the hopes of crossing paths with the sorcerer that he might gain retribution.
I’m using the artwork to inform my game, so the classic John Buscema art of a black bearded barbarian with a shield and ax tells me what this warlord looks like and what he carries.
The warlord breaks bread with Thar-Alak, and shares the warmth of a winter fire. Whether he will join Thar on his journeys is a question that will have to wait for tomorrow.