There are many opportunities for adventuring in the Vales setting, and here are a few of them.
Opportunities For Adventure
The Vales is a low magic, swords & sorcery setting. So there are no demi-humans, no roving bands of orcs, or liches summoning undead from beneath every rock. What there is, though, are plenty of opportunities for very real human monsters to fight.
The area of the Vales where I am starting out is in Roatean Vale. There is a growing threat of war with the neighboring Vale, which means players might find themselves beset by a roving warband that is on a raid. They might also find themselves accused of being spies by warbands from Roatean Vale itself, too.
Another opportunity is playing the thief. Even though they are not large cities, the Holds themselves have plenty of opportunities to "interact" with both the local underworld and law enforcement communities.
As the players move out into the haunted forests beyond Tirbreth Hold and into the mountain walls themselves, the players will find dungeons and ruins to explore. The players can even follow the grave robbing path and dare the various catacombs within the Vales, and the dangers they hold.
Of course, if the players want to just become monster killers, there are always opportunities in the dark forests and mountains beyond the Vales. The land is full of legends and myths about the Forest–and the monsters that are said to live there.
Places For Adventure
With those themes in mind, the best place to start any characters is in the town of Tirbreth Hold. There are great places within and around the Hold to have adventures. In fact you could probably have an entire campaign there… Places would include the seedier districts for thieves and other less-than-reputable characters, or maybe around the Righteous Way for those that want to get involved in the brewing religious war between the Temples of the Wolf and the Raven. And if the characters want to be soldiers, they can enlist in any of the local warbands or the town garrison–soldiers are always being asked to do fun and exciting things!
As the characters venture out beyond Tirbreth Hold, the obvious draw is the Fulmhor Forest. It broods in the hills as the Vale slopes up to the mountain walls… It has a dark and disturbing reputation, and only the foolhardy venture far off the established paths to the villages within–or even at all.
And the mountain walls! The arms of the Anamathair Mountain and their mountain walls frame all of the Vales, and it looms high above the valley below. In those walls and mountain arms, many of the beasts of legend and myths of treasure can be found, for those brave and strong enough to find them.
In the other directions, the plains of Roatean Vale hold plenty of adventure as well. From the exploration of ruins from past eras, to the battles of roaring warbands, to simply surviving the land itself and its weather, the plains and moors of the Vales are great places to see and adventure in.
More To Come
All of this and more I plan to flesh out and put up for everyone to play with. I will be starting with the information I wrote up for the Gygax ’75 Challenge, and then going from there. I am cleaning up and improving what I wrote, but I will be posting that soon. Like my other settings, I will be putting the information up in its own section on the site, and I hope to get it all written and posted by the end of May.
Just more opportunities for adventuring with Blades & Black Magic!
Marko ∞
