Next new start

I think if I were going to do another D&D campaign I would get the players to meet in an inn, a group of background characters.  In 5e there is a thing called a background and that is what the character was doing before they took on a professional character.  I would have them select that character but not to put it down, instead they would roll up stats and select a background and then I would throw them into the inn as their town is overrun with goblins.  Professional characters were staying in the inn and they went to fight the goblins and they died.  The player characters have to pick from about the possessions available and continue the fight against the foes outside.  The urchin, the acolyte, the sage, the solider, the outlander and who ever else.  At the end of the fight they get to decide if they want to continue being who they are.  Maybe they all become Folk Heroes and their class.  

They would be heroes of the town, if anyone else survived the attack.  Maybe they would be heroes that protected the inn and only the people of the inn survived.  Maybe they did a sortie out to surrounding buildings, maybe they gathered the village folk together.  Did they save the village children?  Get the militia together?  In any case a group of professionals died in the first assault and they left gear at the inn and now the characters have it.  The spells they have are from the spell books left behind.  They start out with cantrips, maybe one or two.  Maybe in the midst of the fight, gods grant acolytes powers or the magic users cast spells off of scrolls and the fighters engage the enemy rogues backstab enemies et al.  

That would be a great beginning to a character's life.  

Being a Male Politician

Right now every male politician is out there thinking carefully about what they did for the last twenty of thirty years.  They are trying to think about every interaction that they had with every woman and girl.  The noses that aren't doing that think that what ever they did, they did nothing wrong, which either means that they were acting like every woman they interacted with was their closest female blood relation or what ever they did was okay.  So that means that there are three types of male politician out there.  One type treated every woman well, one treated women like objects and conquests because that was their place and the last set, thinks of them as regular people, but is worried because they too are regular people and people waver between ideals constantly in their lives, did they in fact treat women poorly and did some woman out there think that he treated them poorly.  Worse did he treat a woman not exactly poorly, but the woman was overly sensitive for various reasons like prior poor treatment.  

The problem is, how do you know which one they are?  Conservatives are all family values and family values are so against assaulting people, theoretically.  In practice so many times family values has been about keeping the family behind closed doors and male privilege.  So which are they, the family man who is good or the family man who is bad?

Liberal values, pro-choice and feminism are another grouping.  They are all about valuing women, but they are also not free from scandal.  Freely. Ovine between women and sexual improprieties.  Many won't remember, but John Turner owns said to often pat women on the bum at campaign gatherings.  So we see that there are issues in male politicians period.  We wonder about the politicians of the past, if they were here, what would they have been doing and standing trial. 

I ask you, are you male?  Would you stand up as a politician, if every interaction that you had with women, we're to come to light?   I don't think I would, and I can plead autistic misunderstanding and lonely desperation at the same time I never attacked a woman, but did I make a woman feel uncomfortable to be near me? Yes.  Did I make women feel unsafe near me? I don't know.  Would I be a good politician in today's light?  I don't know.  Would I strive to do the most good and improve the world for future generations, yes I would.  But you see at is the problem, in today's life would I be a bad politician or a good one.  Does a case of bad sex from twenty years ago make me a bad person?

Second setting Protagonist

Thinking about the second D&D setting I realize at the climate at the river would be different than the mountains and the other banks.  The Plains of Caranus are not just plains.  They are a rolling flatland that does have a lot of grasslands with massive herds of animals, but it also has deep rivers in river valleys with trees, the plains would also have forests too.  There are mountains and hills but they are dwarfed by the flatness of the region.  The region close to the river gets a lot of rain, not as much as the mountains, but a lot.  The plains would without the herd animals be covered with forests.  The river valleys are cloaked with woods, but the bottoms are wide rivers that flood with the great river, or if higher flood with the season.  Many of the tributaries are thousands of kilometers long, and navigable much of their length.  (The first setting is on the headwaters of such a watershed).  Cities and city ruins are more likely to be on these rivers where they are not likely to be flooded.  The empires of old stretch along these plains and watercourses.  Societies separated by different watersheds and a plain in between can be radically different with different common languages.  

Civilizations tend to set up around water, for trade and resources, like potable water and food.  Empires stretch the river courses but sometimes across and between them, but only if they can build a rod between the expanses—which is why rivers are easier.  There are ancient roads that stretch the plains, which aids conquest and unity across the plains. But they are rare, bus cause they can so easily be lost in growing grass.  A road might be a mound in the grass in a century and just a dry spot later; a city a hill, or perhaps a small forest with a ruin at its center.  Then there are other dangers, like the lone mountain in the vast plains where no one builds because the mountain is possessed by a dragon and it views the herds on it theirs.  Habitations, towns, villages, and cities that grow too large are faced with that threat.  

And there we have the kernel of the setting.  A locality has suffered many campaigns from surrounding nations and has built its Capitol in the plateau above the frequently flooded river plains.  The plains produce a lot of food, but are hard to defend.  A small cluster of hills near a long dormant volcano that was used for centuries as a source of ore has recently been occupied by a massive dragon.  The towns near there have been abandoned in recent years and their folk have joined this kingdom as refugees, elves, dwarves, gnomes and others.  They have come and bolstered the beauty of the city, but other things have come as well.  Goblin armies of the Dragon and other minions.   The towns outside the city are besieged by the humanoids and they need to be thinned.  Moreover there are some serious threats in those armies.  The king needs people to go and fight the dragon and defeat the forces.  There are quests to find great magic to vanquish the brute.  And it is a brute. The city in the dormant volcano was larger than the home city of the adventurers and it defeated it in one day and a night.  The fires of that night lit up the night sky for hundreds of kilometers.  Stories tell that it cast spells that turned buildings to slag and the people that it killed and did not eat rose as undead in its command.  Some of the characters, if they were from that now dead city tell of the night they fled the beast how it's wings blotted out the moons in the sky, how the Dragon's tail curled around the entire city, how that night, the volcano erupted for the first time in a thousand years, the flames and lava called forth by the mighty Wyrm's presence.  The Wyrm is at once a mighty Archmage and a high priest with a thousand hit points and a hide of rubies.  It has only been a couple of decades since the attack and the dragon has slept that whole time and it's minions only hold sway over a couple hundred kilometers of the mountain and it is clear that it intends to wake soon and claim a greater swath of perhaps a thousand kilometers edge to edge.  Either way, that is bad news for the people of the city.  It is bad news for the river too.  The dragon will cut the river in half for trade maybe more.  Maybe there will be a healthy tithe of the profit or perhaps just the stop of all commerce.  The dragon is waking; the volcano belches forth smoke and ash… 

 

The Troll

Last night I played in a friend's game with his family and children.  I had a lot more fun than I thought I would have and saw the game in action from a different side, the player's side.  I also was able to see the game in terms of running into an encounter where the players were outmatched and what happens then.  

We were entering the Caves of Chaos.  We were third level and although we were higher level than we were supposed to be when we entered the adventure in the first iteration of the module I was expecting it to be harder.  I was playing a ranger and I was playing smart and scouting ahead of the party.  So I discovered a whole bunch of tracks and all of them leading in and out of the area.  I also saw a whole bunch of cave mouths and some of them obscured by trees.  I thought that we should be careful and approach the caves with caution.    Since one was obscured from the front I thought that one was the best one to enter so our movement would be hidden.  The others thought this was a good idea.  We entered the cave and found a lot of bones, piles of them, hundreds of bodies and a giant skull as a totem on a pole out front.  We snuck inside ignoring the warning signs and looked around.  Inside e cave there was a single giant humanoid sleeping.  It had green skin and wiry black hair and a pointy nose.  It was asleep, and we though, why not?  We did not know what it was so…, besides it was asleep. Best condition to find a scary monster.  So we got the heavy armoured people up close and the squishes further off.  And we waited.  The Dwarf fighter hit the beast and woke it up and we all poured on the attacks.  I had put a Hunter's Mark on it so when I hit it I did d8+d6+d8 for colossus slayer ability with my bow.  It would have been nicer if I had hit it more than once.  Still it was for 16 points of damage.  

I knew it was a troll, but my character did not.  It was funny because we were talking to one of the NPCs and he was telling us how to fight a troll, but it was not supposed to be foreshadowing.  We were not supposed to fight a troll. They could have killed us, one attack per character.  But that is not what happened.  Instead we defeated the troll without injury.  It took three rounds of combat.  The bard kept using spells that caused the troll to run with fear or attack with disadvantage.  And we used fire attacks every round.  Burning hands, flame bolt and the such.  Soon we were looking at a burning corpse.  We later dropped the head in the hands of the keep's Castellan as proof of our seriousness.

We were uninjured and so we thought we would continue.  There was a secret door and we spotted it, but it was locked from the other side.  Luckily the Bard had a knock spell and he door opened and we found eight goblins playing together.  Two encounters where we had surprise so we took advantage of it and sprang into action.  I shot one dead and cut off their retreat, and the others used spells to incinerate them.  It was all over in one round.  No one was injured.  We thought that we were going to find the troll's treasure behind e secret door, but it was not there, instead there was a dungeon behind it, so we retreated and looked for its treasure.  There was one place we did not look, in the pool of mud.  

As the tallest person I volunteered and tied a rope around me and went looking.  When I was about 6' deep I thought I found something and dove in, they pulled me back and I brought out a large sack with 3200 gp and some gems.  We decided that we should head back with the money and count our blessings.  Two of the players were young and that was enough for them.  

Next time we play, I will suggest that we look in on the trolls den to see if the corpse was discovered, but we go somewhere else, because the dungeon on that level will probably on high alert, since we defeated its guardian and eight goblins inside.  But if they want to go in, I will support them.  It is the kids game after all.  Trolls, they are tough, average 84hp and do 30 points of damage a round when they hit.  That mean that if the troll had hit the cleric, he would be dead, the fighter might have survived, and same with me the Ranger, e Mage and the bard would surely die.  Odds are we would have been in much more danger with more players getting killed and even maybe a party wipe.  But we didn't.

It opened my eyes on how the adventurers in my group might fare in a truly challenging encounter.  The module they are running in has a scary surprise at the end that I have nerfed to allow them all to not die.  I wonder if that was a good idea or not.  Maybe I should just give them the whole bloody encounter.  But then I think maybe not.  I will play it by ear.  Afterall the final encounter creature in 5e in the monster manual is significantly more dangerous than the 1e version.  I will play it by ear.  

Seven months

Hey, the leader of the Provincial Conservatives just resigned, seven months before the election.  There are differences and similarities to the case of other politicians in the world since the #MeToo movement arose.  It came just after two women came forward and claimed sexual improprieties towards the leader and he denied them, and within ten hours he resigned.  

There are differences between what he did and what happened in the States.  In the states some of the politicians stood their ground and stood for election despite the claims.  President Trump was one of them, Roy Moore was another.  Bravo, Patrick Brown stepped down.  He did it the correct way too, he announced it in public as soon as it happened and then he took time to think about his future before resigning.  Unfortunately, his career is over, but because he fessed up so quickly and he may have helped himself.  He may indeed be innocent, but if he waited longer or resigned immediately, he would have looked more guilty.  

The similarities, are not in the person.  They are in the reactions.  My gut reaction was that of typical of a conservative politician, but I quickly tempered that, because it is not typical of any career politician*.  It was the reactions in the comments section.  Partisan politics is here.  He is not guilty, the liberals planted the allegations to win the election.  That sort of stuff.  That sort of stuff hurts.  It could be true, except if it was the timing would be off.

If the Liberals had planted the women, the best time two have the allegations arise would be two weeks before the vote, a month before the vote, two months before the vote.  As it is they came forward seven months before the vote.  Time enough to get a convention together and elect a new leader and enter the election after that.  If it were a Liberal plot it was a bad timed one.  The conservatives have plenty of time to elect a woman to the leadership.

Why a woman, because men are going to be suspect from now on.  Seriously.  Think about it.  Men grew up in a culture where they had opportunity to act with impunity and women were raised to not make a fuss.  So some men were allowed to be predators and some men were casually sexually offensive to women.  Many weren't, but enough were.  Right now, the smart thing would be to elect a person above reproach, like the other provincial leaders, a gay woman and another woman.  

That is what it is going to be like for a while.  Then what we will find is that the gender balance in politics will swing to mostly women.  It will happen.  Initially it will be because men will be afraid of women stepping out of their closets.  Why, because for the longest time men in power were an aphrodisiac and they could get sex easily, through slight coercion: see President Clinton, President Kennedy.   

The Face of Racism in Isolation

When I don't have anything to write about, I turn to Facebook; it can usually inspire me to write something.  It has been a year since six Muslim men were murdered in Quebec City and the outpouring of hatred of islamophobia.  Then the news cameras left the city and out of the light and the islamophobia has continued strong than ever.  What does that say? 

It says we need to change the culture of the Quebec.  Quebec is an island of French language and French culture in a sea of English that is Canada and North America.  That meant for the longest time that they were alone and seperate.  They created an identity for three hundred years cut off from France.  They did things their own way.  They built an industry of French language services in the 20th century, radio, television and movies.  News papers for centuries.  Literature.  Montreal was different, there was always a large English presence and migration is attracted to the cities, the bigger the better.  But the rural parts remained a monoculture.  Even Quebec City was mostly just French.  But who would want to live in Quebec City, I mean it is located there for reasons of control of the mouth of the St. Lawrence river in the time of sailing ships, but for no other reason.  It is so cold there that the ocean water their freezes every year.  There are farms their, but there are better places to farm.  There is not the site of a major natural resourse. So most people going to the province go to Montreal.  But not all of them.  There are ten thousand Muslims there among half a million people.

It is considered a safe place away from major crime, unless you are Muslim.  Three years ago there were 7 incidents of hate crimes against Muslims.  21 the next year, and in the year of the attacks, 42.  It seems that people are emboldened by their fellows.  It is like it is okay to hate Islam in Quebec.  Historically, Quebec took the idea that it was apart from the rest of Canada, and the things that Canada did were not their concerns.  They did not see any of the World Wars as a concern for them, three hundred years away from France, abandonned, they did not see a connection to them either.  They were more insular than the States.  Minorities Are very small in Quebec outside of Montreal and where the English live, and the North.  The North where the natives live.  

Small towns in the rest of Canada are no better.  There are hot heads in every community.  In small towns they in small numbers.  In bigger centers they are in small numbers too, relative to the size of the whole but overall, they can add up to large numbers.  If they are 1% of all insular populations, then that would mean that their would be almost half as many in Quebec City as there are Muslims.  Moreover, what about those that just have racist views—insular groups have a lot of those, because of lack of exposure.  My own sister might would have been classified as a racist in her twenties, until she became exposed to the people she was racist towards.  The difference between an insular community vs a inclusive.  

The solution is clearly education.  Maybe if you are convicted of a hate crime, you need to spend a week in a classroom with ten of your friends with ten of your hated group talking and playing sports, sharing their meals and learning their ways.  I say ten of your friends, because it would mean that your social group would be included.  Understanding.  Seeing the similarities and not the differences.  There are always more similarities than diffences.

New Setting for D&D in Caranus

Recently, I was approached by two people who thought they would like to play D&D, after mentioning my new campaign with my coworkers.  I bet I could just put a notice out and have a new party read to go in a heartbeat.  Wait, I bet it would be about half a heart beat, the woman who works nights at my Tim Hortons hangout is a gamer.  That is just three right there, almost enough for another game.  So maybe I should start preparing another town for a setting? 

Anyone else interested, message me.

It would be on the more heavily populated side of the continent.  Closer to a large city, near two or three.  A city on an Oxbow late, in severe decline, three hundred years on the great river, the river moved fifty years ago and most of the population moved a short time later.  The villages that have formed there are all walled, because the city itself is filled with monsters.  Bands of roving humanoids and looters looking to find lost treasures.  The local villagers need their looters protected, they are looting the city's stone for better walls and building material.  There are forests around too and there is a marsh in the oxbow lake.  There are also two other cities.  The new city that moved to where the river went to and a city that is the Capitol of the region.  

The abandonned city has a lot of adventure ideas, but the new town growing up in the shadow of the old city and the big city does too.  The old city would have had a population of 150k at its height, and the big city has a population of 75k. The new city has 10k people. 

Off to the rising sun is a large mountain chain called the Spine, because it is a large barrier to east west travel that extends thousands of kilometers in each direction.  There are two common languages in the area, the human lingua franca and the trade tongue, but there are many enclaves of other races in the area, Elves: forest, mountain, river and yellow.  There are Gnomes, mountain and hill.  Dwarves: empire, mountain, hill and lowland.  Hobbits: hill, meadow, and urban.

Forest Elves are like Wild Elves, River Elves are a version of Aquatic Elves, Mountain Elves are Grey Elves and are known for their stone work, but more artistic than sturdy, yellow Elves are elves that live in the plains and are more nomadic with expertise with animals and hides.  Empire Dwarves are mountain dwarves from the Dwarven Empire, the focus is more on mercantile pursuits intelligence instead of strength,  Lowland dwarves are urban in nature, like the Empire Dwarves, but more farming and trade including sailing– wisdom instead of strength; dexterity and constitution one in all three.  Humans will mate with anything so there is a half version of everything with humans.  

The area is older.  Continuous civilized habitation for over ten thousand years, many of them buried outside of the range of the river.  The river winds and curls through the land cleaning the cities out and removing all signs of civilization regularly.  The oldest river city is only five hundred years and that is because they dig canals to keep it all connected to the river.  Then there are the floods, the land is all very low so every year the river floods its banks and sometimes the floods are bigger and a city on the river will become an island or a city of canals.  The floods keep the land fertile but they are a hinderance and often send in other undesirables.  Some cities find them self in the river's way.  

To be clear: the mountains are visible on the horizon on a clear day, 500kms away.  The river meanders and is about 25-50 km across, so the river is like a huge empire; it is the source of a lot of wealth, but it will just roll right over you and it won't even notice.  The lowlands here stretch 150km to the east and a thousand km to the west.  The river moved fifty years ago, it moved three hundred kilometers to the west, the city to the south is nearly a hundred kilometers away and the small new city is to the north, twenty kilometers, but as the river flows, it is hundreds of kilometers distant.

The nature of this area would be that towns would be built of stone or that they would be built on stilts.  The flood plain is so massive and wide that when it floods it would really flood.  It would mostly flood from the North when the Rainy season is on full and that would be the six months of the winter and spring.  As the summer starts the rainy season migrates toward the poles.  Additional flooding would come from the mountains when the winter snows melt.  The nature of the pulse of water would be that the further south the pulse goes, the bigger the flood.  Since the mountains would melt first in the North and last in the South.  And since the winter is when the rainy season is in the North equatorial regions.  

For the Great River region, for the 24 year calendar, the winter years and one and a half years on either side  receive the most rainfall and the southern tropics receive most rain in the summer years.  Based on Earth, 250mm and 200mm per month is reasonable at these times.  Which means that hear, that would amount to a year with 3600mm of rain on average and in the dry period of only 1200mm for the winter in the South tropical it would drop down to desert like rainfall.  Based on the Nile on earth, the Flood hits a max in the south in June and the delta in September.  Roughly 1000km so 250-300 km a month. But I am going to say 500, because volume and that is a month, or 6000km in a year.  Also the Amazon 2/3 of the water is lost to transpiration.  So calculations. Volume of water leaving the tropics per second in the six years of winter and spring with 1.5 year delay is 71million cubic meters per second.  The same in the summer months of the tropics, but the area is greater.  So add a river discharge increase for five years at the subtropical point of an additional 71M m^3 per year.  It gets worse, the mountains are a rain barrier, they scoop rain in the winter years in rain and snow depending equal to the tropics.  So.  The temperate areas get a winter pulse of 71M m^3 per year for six years and less as it drops, no transpiration but smaller area.  Further north it accumulates as snow and that really sucks.  Adding 600M m^3 in one year.  Further South it gets worse as the winters lengthen.  The net effect is that the river is huge.  HUGE. And it would flood regularly in the six Spring years and in the six Summer years and the water would only be low in the six Autumn years.  Human calendar that would mean that floods most often occur in Plantmead, but could happen any time in the three months on either side.  During those years.  Along the river, rice is planted twice, once in Novamead, and Mid Quadromead and Early Quadromead and Reapmead.  When the floods recede they can start root vegetables that take off when the second rice is harvested.  If it snows those are harvested then or a month before the flood season.  

The Great River matures early and the elevation is roughly sea level for most of its length.  The flood plain widens the further it goes.  The river is deep, often hundreds of meters deep.  Where it widens it is merely fifty to a hundred meters deep.  The river is aerially ten thousand kilometers long, but effectively three times that when not flooded.  Meaning it takes five years for the rain to pass to the delta from the equatorial areas and lasts for twelve years.  The tropical regions it takes four years to reach the delta from where the rain enters the river, and effectively lasts for twelve years, starting where the equatorial leaves, overlapping for six years.  Which means the high water tropical waters are the first six years after the solstice.  Delayed by a year for every fifth of the journey.  

The region that I am placing this setting would be half way up the river.  So, the 24 year callendar starting with the solstice, would have already had equatorial water for the last three years and for another nine years.  The tropical rains last for eight years starting three years before the summer solstice, they take two years to reach the setting area so, that means high water is starting the eighth year until the sixteenth year.  The overlapping time is the eighth and ninth years, corresponding to the end of spring.  The winter thaw in the area would start the fifth year and end the eleventh year adding most to the river in the seventh and eighth year.  So, the years of heavy floods would be the seventh through ninth year, with light flooding in the sixth and tenth.  The years with low flood risk would be 17-21 years.  The 21st year the rivers would be at its lowest, in this area.  Further north a little earlier, and to the south later.  The pulse of water would get worse the further the river passed and the winter period would extend too making it worse—also more of the precipitation would fall as snow and so, the river would be much worse, the floods greater.  At the delta, the winter thaw might occur earlier.  I would have to do a spread sheet.

The Elves:  Mountain Elves. Where Mountain Dwarves prefer to mine and construct magnificent large halls in side the mountains, the Grey Elves nurture the rock and prune it to their desired shapes.  The sculpt the mountain to their desired form and chisel the rock perfection.  The mountain dwarf uses a pick where the Grey Elf uses a fine chisel.  Instead of +2 dexterity, they get +2 intelligence and +1 dexterity.  They all have proficiency in stone Masonry and a free cantrip.  Additionally they are able to work stone with their barehanded with a a free cantrip that softens the stone just under their hands until they release the stone.  They are exceptionally long lived and do not consider an elf an adult until after 200, when they are expected to have built a house that suits their taste from the mountain of their home.  Grey elves live in the surface of the mountain, another difference from their Dwarven neighbours.

Yellow Elves do not build permanent structures.  Anything that they build, they can unbuilt it and move it when they leave the area.  They breed animals as their lasting legacy, but not for food, these elves are vegetarian gatherers and range widely with their herds.  They receive the standard elf improvements, but additionally a movement of 40 and natural stealth in grasslands.  They receive animal husbandry for free and they can use all elf weapons while mounted, longbow, scimitar and lance.  Lastly they add their proficiency bonus to their AC, when wearing light armour, while mounted.  

Empire Dwarves add +1 intelligence and can learn any artisan trade.  And they add double the proficiency bonus in that trade, do to the excellent schools in the empire.  They are also know for the shrewdness in trade and have advantage on persuasion rolls when dealing with their trade.  Many guilds in cities near the mountains do well when they have an Empire Dwarf in control.  

Lowlander Dwarves are the second class citizens of the Dwarven world.  Often called a Half Dwarf, they are true dwarves, they do not get the standard ability traits of other dwarves, +1 in constitution, dexterity and wisdom.  They often wear their beards short.  As a bonus proficiency they get Athletics and can chose any trade and any background.  As sailors they double their proficiency bonus in athletics and perception, but only when sailing.

River.  The river changes its course during the flood events.  The increased volumes of water and the increased velocity erodes the banks faster and during the floods it is more likely to breach the banks and cut the distance to the next loop.  A flood year might undercut the banks by ten times the non flood year.  And every year might see the banks undercut by a kilometer or more.  More as the flow down river.  

The fluctuating nature of the lowlands means that when empires are formed here, they often build their capitols off of the flood plain area.

The river side of the Mountains is covered a rain forest.  In temperate regions this is a temperate rain forest.  The weather close to the mountains is most often cloudy and filled with rain.  The forest is like that of the Pacific North-West and is therefore filled with coniferous trees, until around forty to thirty degrees, as snow fall would wreck broadleaf trees.  The upper passes of the mountains would be glacier filled.  The mountains reach above 10,000m, some would clear 12,000m.  They would be shrouded in clouds and snow year round, even in the tropics.  

The High road is the longest tunnel in the world.  It took millions of dwarves over a thousand years to dig through the chain from the Southern Empire through the mountains.  Myths say that it was done from the south to the north, but in reality it was started in several places through the mountain at the same time.  It took a thousand years for the tunnel to be extended just a hundred kilometers.  The tunnel, is not just a tunnel, it is a corridor with many levels and several roads parallel to each other that join many thousand communities together.  The network goes from one side of the mountain chain to the other in several places.  The "Empire" is too big to have a single ruler, but there are many that claim the title.  But reality is to journey the length of the road would take an entire Dwarven lifetime.  It is the stated goal to one day expand the nation of dwarves from one end to the other, but currently they are  not even inhabiting one percent of the route.

 

D&D setting planes

Plane travel is a part of the magic of D&D, but my setting does not have that capability.  The setting is the Proto World.  Meaning that it is the world.  It is the Prime Material Plane in whole.  There are stars and there are planets around those stars.  There may be civilizations around those stars but they better not come here, because their technology for traveling will not work in the system.  The three Sisters hold absolute power within the setting.  

There are three moons in sky, one is green, one blue, one white.  They hold a separate World of creatures.  

The white moon is the god of good, but the clouds of this world hide a dark secret of fiery pits and lofty peaks.  The fiery pits are filled with horrors and pit fiends devils and demons.  The ice fields are filled with cold loving demons and devils and with them all are managed by angels and devas.

The green moon of the Dark god hides the shadow world filled with forests and wildlife being hunted almost continuously in a cycle of life, this is where the Fae come from. The Ravenloft setting is a good place for this place too.  Fae horrors and Ravenloft horrors too.  

The blue moon of the neutral god holds a world that is filled with deep sea dangers and such horrors as Aboleth and islands with Illithids and their slave races.  

Each of the three Worlds is conected to elementally to each other a nd the main world.  Elementals pass between the worlds freely at places of elemental purity. A pure water spring, a pit of lava, a homogeneous rock face, a violent storm, or things similar.  They can be summoned through lesser versions.  Demons and devils can be summoned as well, but only through greater difficulty, as they need to bypass the guardians in the world.  Angellic guardians can be summoned too and they will also come to hunt the demonic summons.

Demons and devils are just other creatures that are natural to the world albeit more dark and twisted regions, like the deep volcanic Underdark and the towering heights in glaciers too cold.  The Demon Princes are manifestations of the God Drogath or minor creations of thought.  Balrogs are evil creatures  of fire.  Effreeti and other elemental creatures are expressions of the element in its pure form.  

Summoning creatures of power could also attract a Guardian.  Guardians view the continent as an ancestral home, even though they are from a more harsh and cruel alternate plane.  The guardians vie for the chance to prove themselves to be the best on their home plane, the best are accepted into the best schools and they train in a grueling competition, the best graduate and head out to the proving grounds that are on the edge of their society the twenty year journey tests them in ways that their schooling has prepared them for, but still only one in a thousand will survive to the end of the journey, and that means that almost all of the graduates fail, usually only one of the graduates in any ten year period make it to the end.  If they make it to the end, they pass into the world through their ancient portals into this world.  It is not hyperbole to suggest these creatures are the pinnacle of human development and can beat any single foe in one on one tests in any area.  Being truely neutral to politics, they are only interested in threats to creation.  This includes rogue members of their group and Demon Princes and potent undead.  

Drought!

Drought on the ocean.  There are deserts all over the world and many of them are near the ocean.  There is the Atacama desert.  The Arabian desert, the Kalahari desert, the Sahara desert, the Baja desert, and Austrailia; they are all on the ocean.  Most of those are also in the high pressure zone where the air that rose in the tropics drops down and circles back to the tropics or continues north.  The air is dry and it picks up availible moisture and continues on its way.  Often times there is a cold water current just off the coast, this means cold air.  Cold air has low amounts of water and that means that when it heats up, it has a lot of unused water capacity.  The California Current, Peru Current, Canary current, Benguela current— all of the coast of some of those deserts.  But there is more.

The truth is, that there are other factors, like climate change.  Climate change has the air and the water heating up, in the tropics that means more water in those areas, but when the air is dry, it is drier.  Another factor is that we have more people in those areas and they are drawing on e water in those areas.  They are taking from the aquifers and when those waters are gone, they are gone forever.  This is what has happened in Yemen.  There are other areas like East Africa, South Africa, Austrailia, and the American West, all are suffering from severe water shortages.  We are taking the water and we are suffering because of it.

There are solutions.  There is the recent passive water collectors that strip water vapour from the air, technology right out of science fiction, Dune.  This is one way that we can combat the shortage.  Another way is to use the land to make power, through wind turbines and solar panels and to use the energy to purify the ocean water.  Another thing we can do is take the excess water and plant the desert.  Plants transpire water and that water will create rain.  The plants will increase infiltration of the soil by water and this may help to recharge the aquifer.  It will also soak up some Carbon and that may help with the problem.

It is an expensive solution, but all solutions will be now.  The saying that "An ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure", holds true. The reality is that the ounce of prevention was twenty years ago, and these days all we can do is cure—the medicine will be expensive.

This was inspired by the plight of Cape Town, South Africa, but secondarily by Yemen, Australia, and the South-West America.

The Great River of Caranus

The Great river at 30 degrees south.  The Tropical rains of the Winter mix with the Equatorial rains, the mountains scoop more rain out, it is only in the Summer when the the weather is drier in in this area and at the equator is the river slower.


The Great River at about 40 degrees South is fuller for more of the year.  The scale on the y-axis is in 10,000 of cubic meters of water per second.  At this point it is a ten Amazon rivers, so it is deeper and a lot broader and a lot swifter.  The river floods three to five times a long year, mostly in the early and late winter, but also in the late spring.


The Great River at 50 degrees south peaks in the early Spring.  Precipitation in the Winter is mostly snow at this latitude and so there is a peak when it melts in the mountains.  The floods are less frequent, about three years of the cycle, but they are also more severe. The calculations for this water flow do not include the tributaries from the East, but they are drier regions; still they drain a huge area and would bump the summer volumes up a lot, perhaps to the 200 mark.  The 200 mark would be close to the brim of the river, and it would only flood after 250.  Therefore, there would be a large flood in the early spring period and a minor flood in the first summer month.


At the 60 degree mark, the Great River approaches the delta.  The Spring flow from within the continent would boost volumes up to 300 mark, making it over 15 times the size of the Amazon River.  The four years of mid Spring would see the largest flood time and this is due to 8-10 years of winter snows melting.  At the peak it would see more than twice the flow passing through the river.

The Great River flows along a cordillera mountain chain that causes a lot of rain to fall.  The river travels the distance of the chain and drains nearly 40% of the continent.  It is a Mature river, and so it has a wide floodplain and meanders most of the length, with plenty of  oxbow lakes littering its edge.