Kaendor

The Realms, Spirits, and Magic

While working on barbarian wilderness settings, I’ve always been swinging back and forth between trying to create a world that is pure wilderness with civilization being something that is only heard but never seen, and city states trying to keep the encroaching Chaos of the wilderness at bay. I have a tendency to just run with whatever has caught my fancy at the moment and losing sight of the bigger picture. I feel that for the last months, I’ve been focusing far too much on the politics and hierarchies of the big cities and drifting away from an actual wilderness setting. But one aspect in particular I found to have neglected the worst is the magical and mystical element of a true primordial wilderness. To that end, I’ve picked up playing some more Dark Souls 3 again, which is just soaked into all that mythic stuff without being an Epic story of great rulers and grand battles. I’ve been inspired by that game even more so than the first back when it came out, but felt that many of my ideas would need much more transformation before they stop seeming like blatant copies of someone else’s popular work. But now I decided screw at all that! I take from Star Wars and Conan without any shame all the time, and it’s only ripping off if you imitate the form without giving it any of your own context. If anyone looks at any of this and thinks, “hey, that reminds me of Dark Souls“, I’m totally fine with it. After all, Dark Souls has Berserk plastered all over it and everyone thinks that’s awesome.

The Three Realms of Kaendor

The world of Kaendor is ancient beyond reckoning. There must have been a point were time first began, but not even the most ancient spirits remember a time before this one. As far as anyone can tell, the world has been the way it is now forever. If there ever was a time before this one, nothing remains to tell of it.

The world consists of two primary realms, which the mortals call the Wilds and the Underworld. The Wilds consist of all the forests, mountains, and islands that make up the continent of Kaendor and the unknown lands beyond. They are the world of plants and beasts, and the countless spirits and gods of the Wilds. Beneath the surface of the earth lies the Underworld, the realm of fire and demons. Both realms are primordial and eternal, controlled by supernatural forces and the inscrutable wills of spirits and demons. As the two sides of the natural world, they are neither good nor evil, but they are harsh and uncaring, no more concerned with the fates of mortals than those of beasts. And in the hierarchy of beasts and spirits in the Wilds, mortals stand far below the peak.

But at some point, or perhaps at many different points in the vastness of times, mortals discovered that the power of fire, which occasionally rises into the Wilds from the Underworld by pure chance, can be an incredible weapon and tool to deal with the many threats of the forests and the mountains. By learning to weild and control the fire, mortals gained the ability to change their environments , drive off the beasts that prey on them, and push back against the influence of the spirits that control the weather and the land. And as the power of mortals grew, the small and scattered Civilized Lands they controlled became like a third realm in their own right.

Magic and Civilization

Civilization in Kaendor is not an enduring thing. Once control of the land is gained, it must constantly be maintained to keep the Wilds at bay and keep them from reclaiming what was once theirs. Pacts and truces with the spirits of the surrounding Wilds must be honored and renewed, and the temples and priest-kings must perpetuate the rites to maintain the stability of weather and floods required to grow the food that feeds their cities. But inevitably, there are only two possible fates that await every city and civilization. Even with the powers of temples, the constant unpredictable changes of the Wilds can only be slowed but never stopped, and eventually the prosperity of even the mightiest city will start to fade. As populations decline and roads and fields are no longer maintained, the rites that ensure stability weaken in power until they fail completely. At that point, the Wilds will reclaim the land faster and faster, until their is nothing left but abandoned and overgrown stone walls, which in time will also crumble and disappear.

But all too often, people try to escape this inevitable fate, and instead of allowing their civilization to fade, they turn their gaze to the Underworld for powers much greater than simple fire. As ordinary magic draws its powers from the supernatural energies of the Wilds, Sorcery draws on the demonic powers of the Underworld. Not only can sorcery hold back the Wilds even when the power of fire and skills is failing. Sorcerers can create things undreamed of priests, sages, and craftsmen. By using the powers of the Underworld to bend the Wilds to their will, sorcerers believe that they can create civilizations much grander and more prosperous than any that came before them. But there are countless ruined cities overgrown by the forests and crumbling into the sea that stand as proof of their madness. Sorcery may prolong the inevitable end of a declining city, but instead of quietly fading out as the Wilds return, they always end up burning out and leaving nothing but charred cinders. Fire is the main tool of mortals to assert power over the wilds, but if allowed to run free, it will simply consume everything.

The Cult of Heotis

The Fenai of the Dainiva Forest worship three primary deities. Idain, the Lady of the Woods; Livas, the Lord of the Beasts, and Heotis, the Keeper of the Fire. Idain is the goddess of the fields and Livas the god of the herds. Heotis is the goddess of the home. Her role is that of the bringer of fire used for warmth, light, cooking, and smithing, without which mortals would live no different than beasts; but she is also the one who protects the house and the family from its flames. Fire is not good or evil, but it is the demon that is invited into the home, because without it there would be no home. Fire is a blessing, but it also must be respected and feared. Because otherwise it will destroy and kill everything near it.

Wilders

Not all mortals embrace civilization, and there are probably just as many people living simple lives in the forests and mountains, away from the grain fields surrounding the city states. Civilized people call them the Wilders, and look down upon them as savages and heathens. Wilders have found their own way to coexist with the spirits of the Wilds, making pacts with the spirits of the land to live as subjects within their domain and acknowledging their rule through sacrifices. Wilder settlements are small and rely largely on hunting, herding, and foraging, growing no larger than what the domains of the spirits they worship can sustain, and remaining flexible enough to adapt to the changes in their environment.

Wilders usually use fire only as much as they need for warmth and light, and never to clear land. Though most clans are not above torching the villages of the enemies, which they regard as an additional desecration and humiliation of their foes.

Corruption and the Undead

Eventually, the flames of sorcery will consume the bodies of mortals, but long before that they char their souls. The use and regular exposure to sorcery is not kind on the spirits of mortals. At first it leads to slight madness, but over time leads to the creation of ghouls. Ghouls are still more alive than undead, but as the effects of sorcery continue to gnaw on their flesh, they develop a craving for the flesh of the living to sustain their own failing bodies. Ghouls are not only found among the minions and slaves of sorcerers, but also the desperate inhabitants of old ruins and plains of ash that have been consumed by the flames of the Underworld. Ghouls who practice sorcery eventually rely entirely on the energies of the Underworld to sustain their warped existence and turn into wights, though the same fate can also await their closest servants. If the corruption progresses past this point, eventually the dead flesh with crumble into ash, leaving behind only a spirit of demonic power in the form of a wraith.

Sometimes people are killed by the powers of sorcery very quickly, completely destroying their bodies and leaving behind only a charred remnant of their soul in the form of a shade.

Skeletons and zombies in Kaendor are always deliberately created by sorcerers or demons and usually have a charred and burned appearance as their dead bodies are animated by faint spirits of flame.

The History of Planet Kaendor

An early-ish draft

The Age of the Ancients

In the ancient times long before the beginning of history, unknown beings known as the Glass Makers created numerous large structures from a nearly unbreakable, dark green, glass-like material that have been found everywhere across the continent from the mountains of Venlat to the jungles of Kemesh. Nothing is known about the Glass Makers except that someone must have created these ancient ruins at some point in the long distant past.

After the Glass Makers, a civilization appeared across Kaendor that people call the Rock Carvers. The Rock Carvers created many large cities and fortresses, which were build not from bricks or blocks of stone, but appear to have been carved entirely from the solid rock. While many of the ancient stone castles have large sections made from stacked stones, these appear to be repairs and extensions made by later inhabitants of the ruins, as they don’t match the precise angles and smoothness and often lack the sophisticated carved decorations. The ruins left behind by the Rock Carvers leave little information about their civilization, but the size and scale of rooms, doors, and windows makes it likely that they were not too unsimilar in body from the people inhabiting Kaendor today.

The age of the Rock Carvers was followed by the Tower Builders, who build their castles from large, tightly fitted blocks of stones that are dominated by tall square towers. Many shamans tell stories of having talked with the Folk of the Forests, who claim to have build these towers, but it’s not clear if they are referring to themselves or their ancestors. The square towers are found in many places in Senkand and Dainiva, and a few are known to be still standing in Venlat and even the islands of Suiad. While some of them are currently inhabited, most famously Kamir in Senkand, all known towers appear to have been abandoned by their builders for a very long time.

Eventually the Tower Builders came into conflict with the Naga from the south, who expanded their own civilization far into the woodlands of Dainiva. It is said that during this time, the Kaska fled the wrath of the Forest God Livas across the Misty Sea to the Witchfens of Venlat. Nobody knows how long the great empire of the naga lasted, or even if it was a single civilization or numerous unrelated kingdoms But there are old stories of a great winter that lasted for centuries and made the naga flee from their northern cities and retreat to the jungles of Kemesh where they are said to rule to this very day.

When the naga disappeared from the lands north of the Southern Sea, people who had been living deep in the forests mountains of Senkand moved into their deserted cities and created the first civilization of mortals. The Tulean are said to have ruled in Var Sharaz, Kamir, Ven Marhend, Hadakar, and the Gray City for over half a milennium until they too were defeated by the Murya who became the new rulers of Senkand. It is said that some of the Wilder clans high up in the Mountains of the Moon are the last descendants of the Tulean, but most other survivors have blended in with the Murya many generations ago.

The Age of Kings

After the disappearance of the Tulean, Murya culture spread north along the coast to the Fenai, and east over the mountains to the Yao, leading to a new age of great cities appearing throughout the lands of Kaendor that had been nothing but wilderness and home to small scattered clans for countless centuries.

Over 500 years ago, the golden-skinned immortal Kor-Sharazan, claiming to be the youngest of the nine children of the Moon Goddess Ashana, who are the ancestors of all mortals, founded Var-Sharaz on the ruins of an ancient naga city. To this day, it remains the oldest surviving city north of the Southern Sea.

Some 300 years ago, three nameless mystics founded the Sakaya in the Mountains of the Sun, which in the generations since then became the dominant religion of the Yao, though they count many Fenai and Murya among their ranks as well. Far to the north, the fey witch Meiv appeared among the Kuri in Venlat and led many of them to rebuild the ancient ruined city of Halva, becoming their immortal queen. Nobody knows where she came from or how old she really is, but some Kuri privately belief that she’s a daughter of the North Wind who had been banished from her home for unknown deeds.

Far away in distant Kemesh, slaves of the Naga escaped across the Southern Sea and eventually found their way to the islands of Suiad and the old abandoned naga ruins of Kelay, where they became the Suay.

Other cities followed, such as Kerlon, which grew around the ancient mountain temple of the Disciples of Temis; Kamir, under the rule of the powerful Murya sorceress Yenati; and Ven Marhend, the city of the Sorcerer Lords.

Some 40 years ago, the Sorcerer Lords fought a long and terrible war with their neighbors to the north, which ended in a great magical disaster that devastated the land, leaving behind the Gray City on the banks of the River of Ash. Most recently, the Red Sakaya left behind their kin in the Mountains of the Sun for good to seek their fortune north in Dainiva. They breached the walls of Aleya and in the terrible fighting the city was reduced to charred rubble. With the city being left uninhabitable, they continued along the shore of Lake Amara until they reached Kars and managed to take the city without a fight.

This was a mistake

If you can’t be a good example, you can at least be a cautious warning.

I’ve been thinking about how I can get myself into thinking of Planet Kaendor as a wilderness setting instead of always ending up putting all my efforts into the city states, which are supposed to be exceptional special cases in the setting and not the site of much adventure.

And in the process, I realized that the whole geographical layout that I cobbled together years ago is actually really bad.

The idea for the setting is that there are a few small clusters of civilization on the coast of the mainland, beyond of which lies a vast expanse of strange and wondrous forests. And the one thing the setting has in the way of major bad guys are the naga, who used to control much of the world in the ancient past, but are now driven back into the southern jungles where they plot their return.

Breaking down the layout for the overall geography like this immediately show the problem. The big weird forest and the naga jungles are in opposite directions? Delving deeper into the wilderness does not bring the party in closer contact with the naga, it takes them further away from them. And it doesn’t make sense for the naga to do some plotting and scheming in old ruins in the great forests because they would first have to get through the cities to get there.

I think all the way back when I came up with the general map layout, I didn’t really had much thought put into the naga yet, and only decided that I want to have them somewhere. But with the ways the ideas have morphed in the years since then, it has become increasingly impractical for the new concept.

Planet Kaendor House Rules for Basic Fantasy

You know what the world really does not need? Another B/X retroclone. Well, I think it kid of does, but I know that nobody wants to see it. So instead, I am simply going to present my own adjustment to Basic Fantasy. BF has always ranked among my favorite retroclones of choice because it’s very close to the original B/X by Moldvay and Cook while at the same time using the sane rational system to attack rolls and armor class. I know the later is trivial to slap on any iteration of D&D, but I am petty about my hate for a resolution mechanic that is objectively bad and done wrong, so that’s counting a lot to me. BF is also very cleanly laid out and easy to read, and the whole thing is free so you can just hand out pdf copies to anyone you like.

Below is a list of all my modifications to Basic Fantasy that reflects my own impressions of actually having read Howard, Moorcock, Leiber, Moor, and Smith, rather than going by the grimdark Heavy Metal Album cover interpretation of what Sword & Sorcery is really about.

Characters

Roll 3d6 six times to generate six ability scores, but assign the six numbers to whichever attributes you like.
There are no racial modifiers and adjustments. PCs from all peoples just use the character classes as the are.
Characters get the maximum possible hit points at 1st level.
The character classes are warrior (fighter), thief, scholar (magic-user), and wilder (see below). Characters can be warrior/scholar or thief/scholar as by the Basic Fantasy rules for elves. (The XP to gain a level are the same as the XP for both classes combined, and the character gets whatever hit dice, attack bonus, and saving throws are better, as well as all spells and thief skills for the level.)
Maximum level for all PCs and NPCs is 10th level.
The thief skills all use a d20 instead of a d100 (since it’s almost always 5% steps anyway). They also start with considerably higher success chances at 1st level, but increase slower to be again identical to the odds in Basic Fantasy at 10th level.
The wilder class has the XP requirements and attack bonus as a warrior, d6 hit points, the thief skills move silently, climb sheer surfaces, hide in shadows, and hear noise, as well as track, and exceptionally good saving throws. (Based on the B/X halfling class.)
All characters can use any weapons and armor. Scholars can cast spells in light armor, thief/scholars can cast spells in medium armor, and warrior/scholars can cast spells in all armor.
Characters can establish a stronghold at any level. Money is the only limiting factor.

Equipment and Encumbrance

Encumbrance is counted in the number of items a character carries instead of pounds. If the number of items is greater than the character’s Strength score, the character is lightly loaded. If the number is greater than three times the character’s Strength, the character is heavily loaded. (Light armor counts as 2 items, medium armor as 4 items, and heavy armor as 5 items.)
Up to 100 coins count as one item.
Shields provide a +2 bonus to AC instead of +1.
The default metal for weapons is bronze. Special blades made from iron function as silver weapons for the purpose of harming creatures resistant or immune to normal weapons.

Experience

There are no adjustments to XP based on prime requisite ability scores. (Neither 5% nor 10% makes any noticeable dent in the advancement speed and are just a cause of confusion and errors.)
XP for defeating enemies are based on the original numbers from B/X. Characters also get one XP for every gp worth of treasure they bring back from a ruin. (One of the few thing that Basic Fantasy really got wrong.)
~~Reward money for completing tasks in ruins also counts as treasure for calculating XP.~~ Turns out this is not a house rule but a default mechanic of the game.
Magic items also count as treasure for calculating XP.

Combat

Combat is done using the B/X initiative system for group initiative. (The other thing Basic Fantasy really got wrong.)
Poison attacks do not kill instantly. Instead, a poisoned character makes a saving throw against poison every round or takes the indicated amount of damage. Once one of these saving throws succeeds, no damage is taken and the poison ends.
Energy drain works just as it does in B/X. You get hit, you lose one level.

Magic

Spellcasters do not have to announce the spells they cast before initiative is rolled for the round. (A rule that only exist in Cook Expert, but not Moldvay Basic, BECMI, or the Rules Cyclopedia, and really complicates things.) Spellcasters who were hit in the first phase of the round can not cast spells in the second phase, but otherwise act normally.
Spellcasters have separate “preparation slots” and “casting slots” in equal numbers. Spending a casting slot to cast a spell does not remove it from the preparation slot. The same number of spells can be prepared and cast as by default, but spells are not forgotten after casting.
The Scholar spell list combines magic-user and cleric spells, but does not include a range of different spells, such as cure light wounds, continual flame, raise dead, magic missile, fireball, fly, ice storm, and wall of fire, to make magic a more elusive and mystical force.

The Scholar class for Planet Kaendor

As I am falling again deeply into the B/X hole, I have once again found myself having to deal with the question what I want to do about the issue of Clerics. Planet Kaendor is ultimately my own take on Sword & Sorcery, and with the passing of (many) years, I am seeing more and more the meaning and relevance of the typical conventions of this particular style of fantasy. Early on, I was all in for various (A)D&D-isms, like having elves and gnomes, goblins and gnolls, dragons, powerful elemental magic, other planes to visit, and a classical pantheon of gods. That’s all long in the past by now and I’ve fully accepted our Lord and Savior Robert Howard into my heart. And I really find myself enjoying the abstract magic of Moorcock and Smith much more than magic missiles and fireballs.

Finally getting a good picture of what I want gods and spirits to be in my setting (I never had really made a decision on this aspect in all the years), it’s really become clear that clerics don’t have a place on Planet Kaendor. Temples and priests are cool, as are barbarian shamans, but a clear separation of arcane and divine magic just doesn’t make any sense in the context of the supernatural forces that shape the setting. (Which will be the topic of a different post.) My main concern had been how the game would change if you no longer have clerics in the party who can cast healing spells and the players will only rely on healing potions. But when you look at how much healing spells they can actually provide in B/X, it’s really not that much. No spells at all at 1st level, and even well along into a campaign at 7th level, it’s still only two first level spells and one fourth level spell. And you might want to sometime cast other spells than just cure wounds as well. So I think when you’re not too stingy with healing potions as the GM, there should be no real disruption from the lack of clerics.

The most interesting alternative approach to priests that I’ve seen is from the Conan d20 game, which is build on top of a D&D framework. It only has a single full spellcaster class called the scholar. What spells they learn and how they present themselves in public is entirely up to them. Sorcerers and witches are obviously scholars, but so are priests and shamans. They don’t get their magic powers from their gods, but through the same arcane study as everyone else. Priests may claim that they get their magic powers from their gods, and might even believe it, but except for rare cases of divine intervention, it’s all their own doing. That’s an approach I feel is right for Planet Kaendor as well.

The Scholar class is really just the default magic-user with a different spell list. In any other regard, it’s really identical, including hit points, attack chances, saving throws, and number of spell slots. I’ve never been a fan of spell slots as it’s too obviously a game mechanic and not an abstraction to represent a plausible magic system in game terms. But I really don’t want to work out a completely new magic system myself. The most convenient solution for me is the one that was introduced in the 5th edition of D&D. Casters really have two separate sets of “preparation slots” and “casting slots”. You prepare spells as you would always do, but when you cast them they don’t disappear for the rest of the day. You’re still limited in the number of spells you can cast by your casting slots, but you’re not limited to cast a spell only once per day, or forced to prepare it in two slots if you want to be able to cast it more than once. It solves the weirdness of spells being forgotten without actually requiring any modifications to the classes themselves.

Since I want to cap character levels at 10th, the list only goes up to 5th level spells, but of course you could always expand it to 6th level spells as well. It’s mostly spells from Basic Fantasy, which are almost identical to B/X, but I also included a few from OSRIC as well.

1st level spells

Cause Fear
Change Self
Charm Person
Command
Darkness
Detect Magic
Entangle
Hold Portal
Light
Protection from Demons
Read Languages
Remove Fear
Resist Cold
Sleep
Spider Climb
Ventriloquism

2nd level spells

Blindness
Charm Animal
Detect Demons
Detect Invisible
Detect Thoughts
Invisibility
Knock
Locate Object
Mirror Image
Fog cloud
Phantasmal Force
Resist Fire
Silence
Sorcerer Lock
Speak with Animals
Slow Poison
Stinking Cloud
Web

3rd level spells

Clairvoyance
Darkvision
Dispel Magic
Growth of Animals
Haste
Hold Person
Invisibility, 10′ radius
Protection from Demons, 10′ radius
Protection from Normal Missiles
Slow
Speak with Dead
Striking
Suggestion
Water Breathing

4th level spells

Bestow Curse
Charm Monster
Confusion
Growth of Plants
Hallucinatory Terrain
Polymorph Other
Polymorph Self
Remove Curse
Shrink Plants
Sorcerer Eye
Speak with Plants

5th level spells

Animate Dead
Cloudkill
Conjure Elemental
Contact Higher Plane
Dispel Demons
Feeblemind
Hold Monster
Insect Plague
Slay Living
True Seeing

Look at my Works, you Mighty, …

When I wrote my first post outlining the purpose and goal of my latest worldbuilding efforts, I got a lot of replies, including this interesting link from Oliver Simon to a great academic article about the role of the environment in Conan: Exiles. It gave me a couple of great ideas for Planet Kaendor and I made some notes for a new post, and then completely forgot about it for the next six weeks while writing other posts I had already planned. Of my three notes, I only remembered the meaning of the first one, and I had to reread both the entire article and my post that led to it being recommended to me to figure out the second. And I still have no clue what idea the third note was supposed to be about. Don’t be me! Take better notes when you get great ideas for your own work.

The article takes a look at the open world survival game Conan: Exiles as a horrifying analogy of the cruel exploitation within human economic activity. While many of these survival games have the killing of other player characters and the looting of their equipment and resources as a key gameplay element, this game uses the well established and accepted norms of the Hyborian Age to take it to a much more grotesque level. Not only can you loot the possessions of your slain foes, you can also butcher their dismembered corpses for meat and crafting materials. Nonplayer characters can be taken alive and made slaves, that are a hugely important resource for expanding your own base. And some magical powers require human sacrifice to attain. Other people are reduced to “human resources” in the most literal sense. They are commodified as tools to be exploited for your own quest for wealth and power.

Being basically a sociological paper, it’s not an easy read, and the first part is crammed full of attributed quotations of other writers that don’t really add to the topic and mostly seem to be there to pad out the references list at the end to boost academic credibility. But after that it goes into how the environment with its ruined buildings, abandoned weapons and tools, and human remains also tells a story of how economic exploitation build the fallen civilizations as well.

I didn’t expect Marx and Derrida to contribute to my worldbuilding, but I guess stranger things have happened. One passage in particular really got me thinking about how I can give the ruins that fill the environment of Kaendor a more meaningful presence in the actual game instead of being irrelevant pieces of lore in some file.

Faithful to Howard’s original Conan stories, the landscape is one which Derrida would have recognised as being distinctly hauntological; it is a world scarred by its past. This environment is shaped by forces which still have agency but no agent, generating effects which exert great power over the player’s experience of and interaction with their surroundings.

Agency without an agent. Now that’s an expression that really appeals to me. In this case, we have to treat agency as different from the concept of player agency in roleplaying games, which is the ability of players to make choices about the actions of their characters that meaningfully affect the outcome of the developing story of the game. Without an agent, there are no choices that are being made or actions that are being taken. Instead we have the idea here of choices that were made and actions that were taken long ago by the long dead builders of the ruins that led to the creation of the current environment. The choices were made many centuries ago, but their consequences still affect and constrain the options that are open to the player characters in the present. The idea is that the ruins are not simply featureless and inert stones that litter the surroundings, but active entities that challenge and threaten the intruding explorers.

(At this point I want to apologise for falling into academia speech and getting abstractly philosophical. Four years in cultural studies do this to you. It comes automatically and leaves it marks on you forever.)

As a simple example, take an ordinary arrow trap that shots an arrow when someone steps on a certain part of the floor. To quote the endlessly poetically and quotable Darkest Dungeon:

Curious is the trap-maker’s art… his efficacy unwitnessed by his own eyes.

A trap is not simply a feature of the environment, even though many games treat them like that. An actual trap is not simply just there. It is there because someone made a choice and took action to put it there. With an intent to kill. The builder of the trap does not know who will fall victim to it, and the people it injures will most likely have no idea who caused them harm. In a ruined dungeon, the builder will have died centuries before the victims were born. But still, one person exercised agency to cause serious harm to another person. The agent is long gone, but the effects of the agency are present in the present.

It is not just traps. Every artificial obstacle that characters encounter is there because someone put it there with intent. Every constructed tool or weapon they find is in its place because someone made it for a purpose and put it in its present location as a consequence of choices and actions. And this even carries over to much larger scales. Planet Kaendor is conceptualized as a world in which the natural environment is outside of the control of mortals. Whatever they do in their attempts to shape the world that surrounds them will quickly be negated once the wilderness returns. But things look very different when it comes to the marks left behind by unnatural sorcery. A charred wasteland of ash haunted by ghouls attacking careless travelers surrounding a ruined city does not exist randomly. Its existence is the consequence of choices made by a sorcerer long ago. A consequence that directly affects the characters in the present. And the natural world in Kaendor is often directly controlled by spirits, who can exercise their own agency as well. Though being essentially immortal, this does not fall under the agency without agent. They are merely agents with an invisible presence, but I think the overall effect is quite similar.

The key idea that is presented here (indirectly) to worldbuilders is to create environments for adventures that are not simply passive and interchangeable backdrops that maybe have a couple of unusual but random backgrounds in them. Instead, they should give indications that obstacles and useful finds are the result of someone’s deliberate exercising of agency. Bad things don’t exist in the present at random. They exist because someone in the past wanted it or did a careless mistake. There was a purpose behind it and it was someone’s fault. And that someone’s presence should still be felt as a malevolent force seeking the destruction of any intruders, or a shade lingering among the ruins of its crumbled dreams. Of course this might not be a universal requirement for all fantasy environments. But I had written about looking for ways to give ruins and magical places are more active role in my world, and this article provided great insights on how I could be moving closer to that goal.

All the mentions of cannibalism also got me some interesting idea for ghouls, which have been a favorite of mine since I encountered a new take on them in Dragon Age, and have held a very important position in my deliberations about the nature of the supernatural in Kaendor basically from the start. But those deserve an entire post of their own.