They don't know he's a fractured fairy tale. They think he's an advanced scout for the Beastmen Horde that Shamballans are certain will come out of the Empty Lands someday to lay waste to the Lemurian countryside. 

I love this version of Parsool. I particularly like the market with all the cookshops - I often detail food and drink shops in my fantasy games, as well as the usual taverns. As both Alison and I are rather food obsessed I try to distinguish the different food cuisines of fantasy cultures, nothing over the top, but I find that little details about food styles and types of beverage add to a sense of place and build over time so it becomes part of the world.

In my Lemuria anyone drinking Dragon's Blood wine was both a serious drinker and had money. Meeting a patron to discuss a new job in some grotty inn, it was always an indicator of wealth if the employer offered Dragon's Blood in a place that never usually served it. 

As I mentioned in another post, in our Lemurian game I put a lot of work into Parsool but the PCs left the city asap in such a way that they could never go back. A pity.

My first group was just like that. They must have run out of printers ink in that world - sooo many wanted posters!!!

Oh, yeah, that! Maybe I've got some time for that, I could certainly use the distraction. Where was I? Oh, yes, the princess had just arrived at the market for lunch.

So, Princess Melita arrives with her entourage, a squad of elite guardsmen and the princess' chaperone, Lahmi Bekar, a distant cousin of the king and long-time member of the household. She goes to the largest fish vendor in the market, the one that supplies the royal household, and selects some fine fresh seafood and local produce, and she takes it to the cookshop of Eshmun.

Now, Eshmun is a controversial figure in the Parsool cooking world. He's probably the best chef in the city, but he has a philosophical bent. Even though he could cook for the royal household, he feels he does more good working in a cookshop in the market, and he has shunned all attempts to woo him to a more prestigious gig. If the nobles want to eat his food, they can come to the market like everyone else. (Imagine a cross between Emeril and Diogenes.) So now, the Princess Melita has come to the market, like everyone else. On another day, this might have been a touching moment of reaching out to the common people by someone who may well be Queen someday. But today, everyone is on edge from the endless screeching of the gulls. 

Anyway, our heroes (to recap, we've got half the group: Nymox the Red, a young and impulsive thief, Laurits, a courtier and all-around fancy boy, Cownann, a Beastman from out of the Empty Lands, and the group's current companion and employer, the Lady Avita of Satarla, on the run from a murder charge) want none of the action here, maneuvering to keep themselves far away from the princess and her entourage. Probably a wise choice, as that's about the time the cries of the gulls started driving people mad. Various people around the market started losing their tempers and becoming violent over minor or entirely imaginary annoyances, and most notably, Eshmun and one of the princess' guards succumbed to a violent rage and attacked one another.

Seeing that things were rapidly turning into a full-blown riot, Nymox urged the others to leave the market post-haste, and they sped towards the nearest exit. Of course, it wasn't going to be that easy - as they reached the borders of the market, they discovered a group of Yellow Druids in their path, heading into the market!

Four toughs vs. three heroes is in no way a fair fight, but it did take long enough for events to unfold throughout the market. First off, another group of Druids swept in behind the princess' guards and engaged them in combat. A snake charmer working near where the players were fighting succumbed to madness and threw his snake into the crowd, spreading panic. Eshmun brutally stabbed the maddened guard with a kitchen cleaver. And the Princess Melita herself succumbed to the madness and fled down the length of the market in terror, followed by her chaperone, straight into the path of a third group of Yellow Druids.

The heroes, particularly Cownann, made short work of the Druids at the south end of the market, but could see the larger situation unfolding. As the rest of the group worked on mopping up their group of Druids, Nymox, seeing a pretty young woman in danger and not being able to stop himself, leaps up on top of the nearest cookshop stall so he can have an uninterrupted path to run to Melita's aid, with the rest of the group following a round or so behind. So he's spending a couple rounds running along the rooftops while Melita draws ever closer to the Yellow Druids - a wonderfully tense bit that worked well in the system, I have to say. When Nymox gets there, he charges into the fray and starts working on taking down the Druids, when, much to his surprise, the nanny, Lahmi, tries to put a dagger between his ribs. A dagger matching the design of the Druid's weapons, as a matter of fact. 

When the rest of the group catches up, the tide turns against the Druids and their chaperone-conspirator pretty quickly, and someone manages to catch and calm down the panicking princess. Having saved a princess and uncovered evidence of a conspiracy against the throne, Melita invites Nymox and his companions to come to the palace and present their account before the King. 

That's where we left off. Next time, court intrigue! Laurits will be back in his element. And hopefully I'll be back here in a timely manner to tell y'all about it this time! It's coming up in two days...


 

Gruntfuttock wrote:

I love this version of Parsool. I particularly like the market with all the cookshops - I often detail food and drink shops in my fantasy games, as well as the usual taverns. As both Alison and I are rather food obsessed I try to distinguish the different food cuisines of fantasy cultures, nothing over the top, but I find that little details about food styles and types of beverage add to a sense of place and build over time so it becomes part of the world.

Why thank you! My main inspiration for this plot was the line in the rulebook about the sea birds of Parsool being enough to drive one mad. I thought, well, what if that were true? And, hey, there's a God of Madness in the setting! Cool!

And I'm trying to keep an ancient-world flavor to my Lemuria, which means no taverns, inns, or formal restaurants except in the most civilized areas, and even then mostly only for the rich. Those roles are filled by agoras and markets with vendors, and by divinely-enforced rules about hospitality extended to travelers. It's a bit of a challenge, but I think it will help distinguish it from a High Fantasy campaign, and that's very important to me.