Player guide
This is the player handout information for the current game using the Eagle Pass world. The rules currently being used for the game is the Errant RPG.1
You have no home, job, friends, family, or prospects. What you do have are a particular set of skills (the kind that make respectable folks avoid you), a handful of coppers, and a suitably blithe disregard for your own life. Out here, beyond civilization, lies danger: monsters and magic and ancient ruins pregnant with treasure. Death is likely, but what do you have to live for anyway? At least out here is the chance to be lucky, a chance to be rich and renowned.
This old-timey fantasy campaign focuses on dungeon delving in search of secrets, riches, and wondrous items of great power. The game world starts with only a sketched out background, to slowly get more detail as we play.
The rules
Here’s the basic rules we’ll play by.
Errant RPG. We’re going to use the Errant RPG rules (a no-art edition of the rules is freely available; the with-art version is inexpensive and the hardcopy is available in a handsome, nice-quality trade-paperback digest-sized book direct from the publisher). As we go we may compile a set of house rules, but to start with we’ll pretty much play rules-as-written.
We’re going to follow the creation workflow in the book starting on page 54, but with some small amendments.
Note. You will most definitely want a copy of the character sheet to fill out and note-paper (or computer) for note-taking. The book-keeping in the game is straightforward, but actively keeping track of your stuff is an important part of the game so we’ll try to stick to that.
Archetypes. There are four archetypes available for play: the Violent (fighty types), the Deviant (sneaky types), the Occult (arcane types), the Zealot (religious types). I’d like to suggest that nobody pick an archetype that someone else is using (to start with). Occult and Zealot are magic-using archetypes and magic in Errant is much more free-form than in traditional D&D, so you will contribute to building the magic you can use (and/or the deity you worship).
Humans only, all ancestries available. All PCs are human people; humans in the game are much more variable by physical characteristics than in our own reality (taller, shorter, bigger, smaller, skin and hair pigments, etc). Humans also have full access to all four “ancestries” – these are no longer species traits: you can choose whether your ancestry makes you Tough, Arcane, Cunning, or Adaptable.
The answer to the question “who is human and who isn’t” in the world is this: any magic that humans cast that identifies “humans” or “people” (like a spell that “detects humans” or “charms a person”) only works on humans. If that magic affects you, then you are human.
Roll your attributes, then distribute them. You still roll 4D4 for each attribute, but you can roll 4D4 four times and then assign the results to the attributes as you want.
Keepsake & Failed Profession. You can choose to roll for these, pick an entry from the appropriate table that interests you, or make up one all on your own, as you wish.
Languages. Nearly all people speak the Common tongue, so you do, too. Depending on your idea about your background, you might also speak another language (see below); only those with the fortune of some education are literate, but you can choose that based on your background.
Questions? I’m happy to answer any questions you may have!
The world
Your home base is the walled, mountain city of Eagle Pass. It is the eastern-most settlement in The Empire. Two hundred years ago, under the ministrations of the mad Padishah Emperor Darius the Just, the Empire was working to extend a strong position from Eagle Pass. Then Darius was … removed from power. In the resulting disarray, the Empire suddenly had to contend with solidifying its military positions on borders not in the east. Now, things east of Eagle Pass are a mostly lawless wilderness: an opportunity for adventure, fame, and glory. There still remain a few hardy villages and farms in the woods and hills near to Eagle Pass, homesteaded by generations of Imperial citizens, too stubborn to leave their patch. Their trade, and even trade from native barbarian tribes-folk, has kept the modest market in Eagle Pass a going concern.
Astrology. The world is a ball floating in the celestial ether surrounded by other floating bodies of various sizes and powers and their movements relative to one another are quite predictable. There is one Sun. There is one Moon. There are two other nearby worlds that are visible to the naked eye on clear nights. There are an uncountable number of stars in the sky which must be other Suns that are far, far away.
Calendar and time. The year has four seasons (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) and a special Sacred Time between Winter and Spring each year.
Each season has three months. Each month has three weeks, of ten days. Each day has four watches (morning, day, evening, night). Each watch has three toki of 2 hours.
Years, months, and toki are all named after a cycle of animals (Rat, Ox, Tiger, Hare, Dragon, Serpent, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Boar). Days and weeks are counted ordinally.
Eras are a period of years that begin with the assumption of a new Emperor, who names the Era. Each era begins the cycle of years anew from Year of the Rat. The current emperor is Javad the Righteous, the current Era, Restful Winter.
Languages. Language in the Empire is divided into four groupings. All citizens of the Empire speak Common: those with any kind of education speak it well; those without any kind of education learn enough to get by. Most people of menial birth will have a Local dialect as their mother-tongue, and it’s often fairly impenetrable to anyone else: expect everyone in a region to have some familiarity with Local (and the poorer their birth, the better they are with it). Most people of an elevated background will know Classical, the courtly language in the Empire.
The writing system in the Empire comes in two forms: a phonetic syllabary that was designed for Common and works reasonably well for Classical as well. All things written for basically-educated persons use this script, and it can be thought of as “the Common script”. There is also an ideographic writing system that is language independent but is most naturally used with the Classical language – those who can read the Classical script could easily read it aloud in Common or Local, if they have good facility with those languages.
New Gods and Old Gods. There are two kinds of Gods: those that are New, who are less powerful and more scrutable of motive; those that are Old, who are more powerful and much less understandable. New Gods come into being via the apotheosis of those with a connection to the divine realm (called “Ascending”). All people can ascend, and so can some other creatures (for example, Dragons). Zealots can perform miracles through a compact with a God, who can be New or Old.
Arcane magic. The universe is stitched together with hidden, occult correspondences that are predictable and exploitable by those who understand the secret knowledge. This knowledge is elliptical and hard to consciously comprehend, and although some people can do this, they must use a grimoire, or special token, to act as a focus for this understanding sufficient to let them cast a spell (cause a surprising effect that draws upon the occult correspondences in the world): each spell requires its own little grimoire to act as a focus.
Where we start
Play begins before the ruined curtain wall of the old Stonehell prison.
What is this place? During the reign of Darius the Just, he established this most notorious of penal colonies on the very edge of his domain. Those sent to Stonehell would never emerge again: it was intentionally, and practically, a life sentence. The project was simple – inmates of the Prison worked to dig and build the depths of the prison itself; those who worked were fed; inmates that resisted this regime were not.
When Darius fell, the guards and officials at Stonehell were quietly recalled and the prison itself left to its own devices. Since that time, it has served as a hideout for countless bands of bandits and brigands. It has served as a laboratory for wizards who needed solitude to conduct their bizarre experiments. Practitioners of grim religions have sought sanctuary within its halls to avoid the prying eyes of the forces of the light. Roving bands of beasts have found shelter within its chambers, their numbers swelling with the passage of time.
The years have done little to quell the rumours about what has become of Stonehell. Tales of cannibal kingdoms inhabited by pale-skinned ghuls who’ve carved a fortune of jewels from the earth compete with yarns about obscene magical experiments stalking its trackless halls.
Bands of fearless errants regularly attempt to plumb the depths of Stonehell. Those who return sometimes do so laden with riches; most do not return at all.
What’s nearby? A few leagues away from your spot, you made camp in the forests on the slopes of these mountains. If you stay mostly to the old imperial road that lead up to the prison, you can get there in less than a watch; if you go through the forests, it will take longer (at least a full “travel turn”, assuming you don’t get lost).
A full day’s travel away lies the village of Pine Top. There you can find access to replenishment and a surprisingly well-equipped inn.
Three day’s travel away along the road (down into the valley around Pine Top and then back up into the mountains) is the walled-city of Eagle Pass that guards the mountain pass; on the other side of Eagle Pass, the road goes through the pass and down into the more civilised lands of the Empire itself.