Xish New Users' Guide

I just realized I should probably recap what this setting is all about instead of just linking to older posts about it, especially since my thinking has developed and some things have changed since I wrote those. I also need to some sort of quick 1-2 page document that I can send players if I ever get a chance to run this thing again. So here I am, killing two birds with one stone.

THE SETTING

Earth, millennia from now. The sun hangs dim and red in the sky and most land has been swallowed by the oceans. Only a single large landmass remains: the continent of Xish. Technology and social structures have devolved to recall Dark Ages Europe, not that anyone living now would know what that is. Sorcery and all manner of strange creatures have returned to the land.

A handful of centuries prior to when the campaign takes place, the High Kingdom of Xish ruled over the continent and brought a measure of stability and security to the land. Now, that kingdom exists in name only: many of its great population centres have fallen to attack or starvation, and the ones that remain subsist effectively as independent city-states. Many of the great roadways have been lost to the ever-enroaching wilderness. Outside of the few pockets of a dwindling civilization, Xish is wild, dangerous, and littered with the ruins of a bygone era.

Within those pockets, the prevailing mood is one of doom. Mankind is on the way out, and everyone knows it. Some seek solace from this fact in decadence, mindless violence, or the pursuit of arcane power; other embrace it, by turning to one of the numerous apocalyptic death cults that have popped up in recent years. Some of these cults worship alien entities that have increasingly come to be regarded as gods; they are, at least, the closest thing the world now has.

CREATING A CHARACTER

Follow all rules and guidelines in the Labyrinth Lord core book, except for the following changes, additions, and clarifications.

 

STATS

Roll 3d6 for each, in the order listed on the character sheet. If the column you rolled contains no single score of at least 13 and/or contains two scores of 5 or less, you may (but don't have to) roll a new one. Anything else is a character that must be played for at least one full session, after which (assuming they don't die) you can choose to retire them, keeping in mind that your new character will not be "caught up on" any XP or treasure gained by the retired character. 

 

RACE AND CLASS

Remember: in Labyrinth Lord fighters, clerics, magic-users and thieves are all assumed to be human. Non-humans don't get a separate class: you're a halfling, not a halfling thief. Note that the non-humans do have certain minimum stat requirements.

Humans are either Xishan (pick a city-state to hail from, or you be from some minor village, or just an unattached wandering weirdo) or Skreelan (a nomadic barbarian from the island of Skreel, where the fearsome goat-man tribes also live). Skreelans can't be magic-users but this is otherwise just a flavour thing.

Clerics pick from the gods detailed in "Religion," below. They are not necessarily associated with any of that gods' cults; the only thing that unites all clerics is that they have been singled out for "the gift" by one being or another, generally for unknown reasons.

Magic-users cannot be lawful.

Dwarves and halflings are artificial humanoids, bred in vats by means of strange alchemical procedures. For centuries mankind has employed them as slave races: dwarves for mining and building, halflings for domestic tasks. Occasionally a master will free one or more of their dwarves or halflings, but even then they're likely to be kidnapped and enslaved by someone else if they're not careful. More often, they simply escape and pose as freed. There are a number of secret "freeholds," comprised of a few hundred to a thousand escaped dwarves and halflings, throughout Xish - more these days than ever before, now that the High Kingdom doesn't exist as a real entity and the individual city-states don't really have the resources to systematically hunt for and recapture freeholds like the old High Kings used to do.

Elves are enigmatic beings that spawn in the infamous Howling Wood, in northeastern Xish, and occasionally stumble out with only vague and jumbled memories of what goes on in there. They have a natural affinity for magic, and do not require a spell book. Instead, elves possess bizarre compartmentalized minds: the spells they have learned are stored, in full, in some alien and normally inert corner of their memory, to which they bring conscious attention in order to memorize spells as magic-users memorize them from their books.

Their presence is grudgingly accepted in Xishan society (in Skreel, both barbarians and goat-men will attack them on sight), thanks to a healthy respect for the Howling Wood's status as a A Place That Nobody In Their Right Mind Would Want to Fuck With. Some elves settle down, most take up lives as wanderers, adventurers, and thrill-seekers. Their motives and drives are obscure, most of all to themselves. All Elves are Chaotic.

RELIGION

Most Xishans are functionally agnostic, but retain a healthy respect and fear for the beings others call gods. Worship of these beings is growing increasingly popular, however. Various cults are associated with each, and all are quite public these days; no one feels the need to hide cult membership from anyone. The most popular cults are those that tie their interpretation of the god's will to a theme of apocalyptic hopelessness.

The Skreelan barbarian tribes mostly worship old gods, with names and identities that would be at least vaguely familiar to a student of comparative mythology in our own time. Some point to the fact that there are no clerics of these gods (i.e. their worship never grants spells) as proof that they do not, in fact, exist, or at least that they have no power. Most Skreelans deny this, obviously, but as a result some tribes have turned to the worship of the very real Bone Jackson, god of the goat-men (see below).

(This is where a list of gods will go, but I'm working on fine-tuning the descriptions and adding a few new ones. When it's done, it'll get its own post, but in the meantime you can read my first write-up).

ALIGNMENT

Law represents a belief that humankind holds a privileged place in the cosmos and/or that civilization is necessary and that it's a bad thing that it's currently going to shit.

Chaos represents embracing the decline of humanity and recognizing how utterly inconsequential it is in the grand scheme of things. Certain beings are also Chaotic by nature; an elf or a goat-man wouldn't necessarily express its world view in the above terms, but just by existing it is a living manifestation of the infinitesimal importance of human beings in the cosmos. Magic is a Chaotic phenomenon in this sense, hence the restriction on lawful magic-users.

Neutral generally means you don't incline either way. Animals and beings with very low intelligence, unless naturally Chaotic, are neutral by default. Neutral magic-users are understood as struggling to maintain some sense of being disaffected by the irreducibly alien nature of the power they wield.

I'm still undecided as to how spells and items that affect specific alignments will work on this scheme. Most likely I'll just drop them entirely.

LANGUAGES

 

Whether you can read or write in the languages you know is a function of INT score, as per the table on the LL core book, pg. 7.

When it comes to picking bonus languages for high INT, use the following list. Languages that are known automatically (i.e. don't require the use of a bonus slot) by a particular races/class are indicated as such. Note that there are no alignment languages.

• Low Xishan is spoken, in various dialects, throughout the continent, the de facto lingua franca. Automatically known by all characters.
• Skreelan is the shared language of the barbarian tribes of Skreel, and has much in common with the brutal language of the goat-men (60% chance to make oneself understood to a goat-man who doesn't already know Skreelan). Automatically known by Skreelan humans.
• Vatspeak is not so much a full-blown language as something between a very complex dialect of Low Xishan and a "trade tongue," developed over centuries amongst dwarves and halflings, who know it automatically. Note that it still costs a full bonus slot for other races to know.
• High Xishan is the original of which Low Xishan is a distant and corrupted version; it's like the different between Old and modern English (i.e. without actually knowing the language there's no chance to do more than pick out what may or may not be some common words). Once spoken in all of the High Kingdom, it is now known mainly to scholars and a handful of nobles (mostly those whose families have lived in the old capital for a long time). It is exclusively a written language at this point, the specifics of pronunciation and such having been lost to time.
• Goat-man is the language of the goat-men of Skreel. 60% chance a Skreelan speaker can get the gist. Unlike Skreelan, it has no written component. 
• (I'll need a few more, but that's all I've got for now. This might also get its own post).

Phew! That's a bit long and unwieldy for a player doc, I might have to cut it down a bit. Hopefully it at least works as a blog post!