Creating an Otherworld Realm

One of my Legends of Alba groups has just started their second foray into one of the realms of The Otherworld. I’ve been refining my process for creating these realms since their first one, so I’ve recently had the opportunity to put the latest version to use. I quite like where it has ended up, so thought I’d share it here, and walk through the process to create a brand new realm in this very post!

Here is the Otherworld Creation process I’m following.  Let’s get started!

Step 1. Name and Describe the Realm

Results: Hope, Decay*, Whispering, River

OK this is quite interesting. I like having hope and decay both in there, those are quite contrasting ideas. Is this place the River of Whispering Hope? Maybe the Whispering River of Decay? I think I’m going to go with The Whispering River of Hope. Though it runs through a dying land, those souls who have lost hope might seek the river to hear a whisper of the truth, so their journey may continue.

* I originally rolled Roots for the nature element, but chose to re-roll this result because the realm I’ve just created for my players is called The Heath of Hateful Roots. I'd like to have something with a different natural element. It’s totally fine to re-roll or ignore results from these tables in pursuit of a spark of inspiration.

Step 2: Create Locations

Results: The Reaper’s Table, Mossy Stairs, Afflicted Tunnel, Infested Tower, Speaker’s Court, Pristine Barracks

The Reaper’s Table - how sinister! A place for a gathering or a feast? A rotten banquet laid out on this table would certainly emphasise the decay aspect! Perhaps the Reaper is willing to impart information to anyone who joins them in their disgusting feast.

The Mossy Stairs - I’d change the name to The Green Stair, but keep the fact that they are covered in moss. That suggests they are very old and seldom trod, so it’d be a challenge to climb them and claim the treasure that lies at the top.

Afflicted Tunnel - Probably a dangerous place, maybe the source of the affliction is a real problem in this realm?

Infested Tower - Another dangerous one I'd say! Is the owner of the tower still around? Maybe they are stuck inside, or they could even be the cause of the infestation.

Speaker’s Court - A source of power in the realm. What sort of proclamations does this Speaker make? Being known as a Speaker contrasts nicely with the river being said to whisper.

Pristine Barracks - This is a decaying land, so the presence of an order of warriors at a pristine barracks is interesting. Why are they pristine? Is it a mark of strict discipline? Are they magically so? Or perhaps they’ve never actually seen combat… I think these are good candidates for a wildcard faction, so whether they're enemies or allies would be up to the characters.

Step 3: Populate the Realm

Results:

• Beast - jaded goose
• Fuath - lizard, loch, laughter, strangling roots
• Sith - merry princess, stardust, must marry a mortal

Jaded Goose - I normally think of geese as being noisy and aggressive, so the idea of a fed up, sulking goose plays against this expectation. A couple of things to think about though - like why are they so jaded? And is this one goose or a flock?

The Loch Lizard - Fuaths make great adversaries because they are driven by hatred, so they can be manipulated by the characters, or fought without inviting too much of a moral quandary. This giant reptile has scales like sodden bark, and claws that are gnarled and twisted like tree roots. It lives in a loch, perhaps a corrupted offshoot of the River that runs through this realm. If it hears so much of a hint of merriment it attacks the source, choking the life of it with its strangling root claws.

The Merry Princess - I’ll admit I had to have a little think about this one. ‘The merry princess’ gives a clear description of a character but sounds lame as a title. I googled the etymology of merry, which led me to the old English word ‘myrige’, which sounded like it could be a name. So this character is instead known as Princess Myrige, The Unburdened Heart. Her skin is as the night sky glittering with starlight, and she seeks a mortal spouse.

4) Create Magic Items

Results: Vagabond’s, barbed, bow, wisdom

Mashing these around I came up with: 

The Barbed Bow  - arrows fired from this bow sprout barbed vines to entangle their target; and

Vagabond’s Wisdom - bottle of strong, magic liquor, consume it to get drunk but you are guaranteed to find your way to a warm bed tonight.

I made another round of rolls to get a third item:

Results: Thief’s, whispering, flute, sight. 

That led me to:

The Flute of Whispering Insight - appears to make no sound, no matter how hard you blow. But play it somewhere you’ve never been before to have it whisper a truth about your surroundings that only you can hear.

5) Make Connections

This is the “Draw the rest of the f***ing owl” step of the process where everything magically fits together. I like to start by writing a heading for the realm. Then the locations beneath it. Then I can start placing inhabitants and magic items in the locations based on a combination of idea fragments, intuition and (if all else fails) randomness. So I get something like this:

The Whispering River of Hope

• The Speaker’s Court
• Jaded Goose - why not have a goose in charge?
• The Pristine Barracks
• The Tunnel of the Afflicted
• Princess Myrige, The Unburdened Heart - maybe the afflicted are sort of a cult that worships her?
• The Infested Tower
• The Loch Lizard - this is a tower on an island in the middle of the loch
• The Barbed Bow - the barbs sort of tie in with the Lizard's strangling roots
• The Green Stair
• The Flute of Whispering Insight - not sure what this is doing here but I'll think of something
• The Reaper’s Table
• Vagabond’s Wisdom - it's liquor, so goes with the feast

From here it gets a bit harder to walk through the process. I jump around between locations, characters, factions, zoom in and out to consider locales and the realm as a whole. The aim is to get to the point where the realm ‘emerges’. I should be able to picture it clearly when I think about it. Everywhere should at the very least have something interesting going on for the player characters to get involved with. You should feel free to make changes to your results, discard results or generate extra ones to help you reach something you can imagine more clearly.

Here's where it got to when I decided to call it done.

The Whispering River of Hope

A wide, deep river runs through a stinking bog. Folk cower in waterlogged shanties, half-sunken amongst rotten trees and spongy moss. The river itself is clear and pure, and said to whisper truths that inspire hope in those who need it most.

The Speaker’s Court

Once a power in this realm, the old goose has gone deaf. Many years have passed since she last heard the river. Much of her time is given to silent sulking, indifferent to the tawdry depths of scandal and intrigue into which her once-proud court has sunk.

• Her Eloquence The Speaker, jaded giant goose, wants to be left alone.
• Vapid goose courtiers, want to know what everyone else is up to.

The Immaculate Barracks

A fortress of white stone. Knights in white plate mail practise archery and swordplay. They await orders from The Speaker. They have been waiting for some time.

• The Immaculate Knight-Captain Arnol, forgetful, wants the best for his Knights
• Immaculate Knights, constantly fussing over their weapons and armour, want to be in a real fight
• Erudite squires, not enough to do, convinced this will change when they finally become knights

The Tunnel of the Afflicted

The Afflicted are those blessed by Princess Myrige, whose beautiful laughter issues from the bowels of her dank tunnel city. Her subjects are immortal beyond the bounds of flesh, their rotting bodies host to myriad invertebrate life and mycelia.

• Princess Myrige, The Unburdened Heart. Her skin is as the night sky glittering with starlight. Light hearted, laughs easily and often. Refused her coronation and never looked back, wants to bless as many as she can so others can share in her freedom.
• The Afflicted. Content in their loyal service, tenacious in their search for a mortal spouse for their beloved Princess.

The Infested Tower

Long ago the island sanctum of a forgotten druid was swallowed by the loch that once protected it. Now it is the lair of The Loch Lizard, infested with its filth. The vile Fuath offers The Barbed Bow to whoever puts an end to the Princesses insufferable mirth.

• The Loch Lizard, Strangleclaw. Scales of sodden bark, claws gnarled and twisted like tree roots. Hates the sound of laughter.
• The Lizard’s Filth, reeking mud clumps, vaguely sentient, hungry for mortal flesh.
• The Barbed Bow - arrows fired from this bow sprout barbed vines that entangle the target.

The Green Stair

These stone steps once led to the seat of coronation, where the Kings and Queens of the realm were crowned. Forgotten by most and engulfed by moss, the seat at its peak lies empty, a strange flute is all that remains of the crown jewels.

• Engulfing moss - deadly hazard to anyone climbing the stair
• The Flute of Whispering Insight - appears to make no sound, no matter how hard you blow. Play it somewhere you’ve never been before to have it whisper a truth about your surroundings that only you can hear.

The Reapers’ Table

A spoiled banquet moulders on a great rectangular table. There are some empty seats, the rest filled by Reapers. Stymied by the longevity of The Afflicted, they recoup what they can from the souls of the bog folk. They offer a bottle of Vagabond’s Wisdom if their gratitude is earned.

• Reapers, tall crow-headed soul collectors. Having grown tired of one another, the only thing they love more than their rancid grub is sharing it with good company. 
• Vagabond’s Wisdom - strong, magic liquor, consume to get drunk but you are guaranteed to find your way to a warm bed tonight.

Map Locations

In this post I wrote about some strengths of Elden Ring’s map. Since then I’ve started a new Legends of Alba campaign (bringing us up to 3!), so I had a chance to revisit what goes into the hex map. This new game, like the others, is being run as a D&D 5E game. But the map doesn’t know that. So my hope is that this can inform the ref’s advice for creating a map for running their own games, as part of the Legends of Alba game rules.

For this post I’m just going to write about the types of locations that go on the map.

Legends

Pretty important in a game named Legends of Alba, these are the source of The Legends. When the players have a random encounter while travelling, the closest Legend Hex determines what this is. So if the players are closest to the Kelpie’s hex, they might encounter a rough river crossing with a white horse drinking there. The horse kneels, inviting them onto its back…

Settlements

1 Capital, a fortress city where the Kingdom monarch reigns. 2-3 Strongholds, hill forts of the Great Clans. And 2-3 Smallholdings, humbler homes to minor Clans. Settlements are places for the Characters to seek hospitality, local information and lore, and trade. They are also political hotbeds as there is always drama between and within the Clans - there’s plenty of opportunity here for the players to get involved to start making and breaking alliances to their advantage.

5E Selkie Species

I ran a 5E one-shot for some new players recently in the Legends of Alba setting. My partner was playing in the game and has been keen to play as a selkie character for a while, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to put together some rules for a selkie species. I've tinkered with them a little since our game and wanted to share it here for anyone else who fancies playing as a Selkie in D&D 5E!

Selkie by James Browne

Selkie

Selkies are Fey shapeshifters, each possessing a seal skin that allows them to transform between seal and human form. They are the children of the Goddess Mitha, Mother of The Sea, whose song calms the most violent tempest. It is this song, the song of the summer tides, that imbues the spirits of Selkies with the light and magic of The Feywild. With a song in their soul, it is no surprise that so many Selkies exhibit an open joy in movement, moving through the steps of their long lives (commonly over 400 years) as though through the steps of a dance.

In their seal skin, their seal form grants them speed and grace in the water, as well as the ability to withstand and navigate the cold darkness of the deep sea, where submarine caverns hide the Fey Crossings to The Land Beneath The Waves. So a selkie’s seal skin is their greatest treasure: It is their connection not only to nature, to the wild seas and their Goddess, but to their ancestral Feywild home.

Though their hearts belong to the Sea, Selkies are often drawn towards the land. When a Selkie removes their seal skin, they are indistinguishable from humans. They can therefore be found in coastal communities throughout the multiverse, living among the short-lived folk till the ebb of the tide calls them home at last.

Selkie Traits

Creature Type: Fey Size: Medium (about 4-6 feet tall) Speed: 30 feet As a Selkie, you have these special traits. Darkvision. You have Darkvision with a range of 60 feet. Seal Form. You possess a seal skin. Once per round, you can don or remove your seal skin for free to shift between Seal and Human Form. The following traits apply to you in Seal Form: Speed: 10 feet, swim 40 feet Armor Class: 11 + Dexterity modifier (natural armor). Hold Breath: You can hold your breath for 10 minutes. Damage Resistance: Cold. Bite: Melee Weapon Attack (Strength), 5 feet, D6 piercing damage. In addition:

• You lose the benefit of worn or carried equipment, which merges with you into your seal form.
• You can’t cast spells, but shifting does not interfere with spells you’ve already cast.

Wild Nature. Your deep connection to the Feywild grants you proficiency in one of the following skills of your choice: Athletics, Acrobatics, Insight, Nature, Performance, Survival.

Elden Ring Has a Good Map

I’m not normally a big fan of exploration in computer games. So why am I still having a blast exploring the open world of Elden Ring? A big part of it is down to the map and specifically how the map is populated.

Progression in Elden Ring is gated by challenging Legacy Dungeons. Each of these are unique and packed with visual storytelling, setting the tone for a memorable Boss battle at the end. This is the content that the game is pushing you towards, and for good reason: These sections should seem very familiar to anyone who’s played the Dark Souls games. FromSoftware has a proven track record of getting this stuff right.

But unlike Dark Souls, Elden Ring is open world. Often there is nothing whatsoever preventing you from galloping between Legacy Dungeons. You don’t need to explore the open world, so why bother?

Because the Legacy Dungeons are very difficult and, unless you’re a very skilled player, you’ll need all the help you can get. This is where the exploration element reveals itself as core to the Elden Ring experience. By exploring, your character will become more powerful, you’ll get better gear and that will help you in the Legacy Dungeons. As you explore, you’ll also start to recognise ‘types’ of location, each of which serves a purpose. All of this together elevates the exploration from being a grind or worse, a pointless activity, to being something that sparks imagination and curiosity.

Limgrave

Let’s look at what sorts of locations you can find in Elden Ring:

Legacy Dungeons are usually huge castles in a prominent location. They’re large and challenging areas culminating in a significant Boss fight. These are your road-block Boss areas discussed above. Certain very powerful Bosses yield a Great Rune on defeat, a fragment of the titular Elden Ring whose power can be unlocked at Divine Towers.

Divine Towers are drawn as star-shaped towers on the map. They have strong connections to The Two Fingers - a major religious presence in the game. Each tower is linked to a Boss whose Great Rune can be unlocked at these locations to gain access to their unique weapons, armour or spells.

Minor Erdtrees show as large stylised trees on the map. They’re lesser versions of the Great Erdtree, that one gold tree that’s so big that you can usually see it if you can see the sky. Each Minor Erdtree is guarded by a stalwart Erdtree Avatar, a mini-boss made of roots. Defeating this guardian grants you a Crystal Tear: Items which you can combine in your Flask of Wondrous Physik to give your character a powerful buff.

Catacombs are not marked on the map but are normally found near Minor Erdtrees, signposted by a statue bearing the message “Guide and gatekeeper for those returning to the roots”. Following the direction indicated by these statues leads to a Catacomb - so maybe the statues are placed there to help lost souls find their way to the afterlife. The Catacombs themselves are tricksy mini-dungeons: Traps and ambushes abound. Usually you have to find a lever hidden within the dungeon to open the door to the boss. These areas are rich in Grave Gloveworts, an upgrade material for your Spirit Ashes (helpful allies you can summon during Boss fights)

Caves/Tunnels have their entrances marked as glowing pits on the map. Usually they present as mines, many of the enemies here are just working away and not hostile unless you go right up to them and start fighting them. These also usually have a mini-boss at the end. These are the best places to find Smithing Stones, the upgrade materials for your Weapons.

Wandering Mausoleums are bizarre huge tombs that walk around on four stone pillar-like legs. They are not marked on the map but you know when they are near when you hear their dolorous bell ringing. You can also hear them stomping around if you’re close enough. You can knock these over to duplicate Remembrances, providing some good utility in giving you a second chance with a powerful single-use item. They also serve the important role of reminding you that the world of Elden Ring is weird AF.

Evergaols are marked on the map by concentric circles. They are stone-floored circles which can be activated to transport your Character to a sort of pocket dimension where you fight a Boss who is imprisoned there. You’ll be rewarded with runes to help you level up, and a potentially useful item.

Ruins hint at a forgotten past and are usually populated by enemies. They often conceal a basement with a helpful item.

Churches enforce the presence of Marika, the missing ruler of The Lands Between. They are a good place to look for NPCs and grant the rare Sacred Tears, which help your character regain health.

Rises are wizard’s towers, though more often than not the owner is absent. They will usually present a puzzle such as “find 3 sacred beasts” (which in Elden Ring are, of course, turtles) to grant access. Your reward is a memory stone, which allows spellcasters to memorise more spells.

Forts are usually intact, well guarded strongholds. A direct approach will normally be met with a hail of fire or arrows from unseen assailants. So caution and knowledge of the layout is advised. You’ll normally face one or more difficult 'commander' type enemies, such as Knights, with a weapon or other useful item as your reward.

Villages tend to be places where something awful has happened. You are invariably much too late to save anyone but you can learn something about what happened (and when a place is named “Frenzied Flame Village” that can be a big motivator), meet NPCs and find items here.

Shacks are humble dwellings dotted around the world. Sometimes they are shelters for NPCs, they are also likely to contain spells or upgrade materials. These are fairly minor, sometimes almost incidental, locations but I think go a long way towards making the world like real people lived here.

That’s not even an exhaustive list of all the types, but hopefully more than enough to convey the strength of Elden Ring’s open world and why I love to explore it. Everywhere has a purpose, everywhere has a story. Exploration in Elden Ring is never a waste of time.

Characters in Legends of Alba

Waaaay back in July I wrote about some rules ideas for the game, and finished up by saying that the next step was to have a look at building some characters. So in the 3+ months since that post I've been working on the Character creation process for the game and am delighted to be writing today that I have some thing to share:

Here is a sort of preview, WIP, very non-final draft for Character Creation!

A few caveats:

• In the Homelands section, the Kingdoms of Alba are all named, but 'The Storm Isles' is the only available option just now.
• In the Heritage section, I want to include more options here as I quite like these. For those select few who know what this means, I've not forgotten The Lizard Legion. There's no way this game is getting finished without the option for you to play as a lizard person if you want.

Even just getting to this point, it's been an interesting, challenging and fun process. My initial idea for making characters was to have you roll for your Clan and that would be it (so the clans would be similar to Backgrounds in Troika or Failed Careers in Electric Bastionland). But I wanted Alba itself to have a stronger presence, even when making your character. So your character's homeland has become the most significant decision or roll you'll make in the Character creation process, and that feels right to me.

art by André Houot, via The Lost Treasure Chest

As for the Clans themselves I'm quite happy with where they're at. I enjoyed writing the mottos and bringing a little bit of Westeros energy to them. And I think they achieve another aim that I had for this process, which was for it to serve a dual role as a referee resource as well. For instance, if you're the person running the game, and you wanted to introduce an NPC who happened to be from the Seawolf clan, you could have a quick look and see that the Seawolf equipment list includes charcoal and chalk hair dye, so a noticeable detail about this NPC might be their jet black hair with white streaks through it.

Perhaps my favourite discovery from this has been the Truths mechanic. Truths are exactly what they sound like: True statements about your Character. If one or more of your Character's Truths would be beneficial when making a Check, you can re-roll the Check. Depending on the Truth and the situation, the Truth might mean you don't even need to make a Check.

Having decided on that, I revisited how Fire might work. Fire is not that easy to get. So when it is used it should be big, it should be impactful, it should be your Character realising their full potential. So: When your Character has to make a Check, you can burn Fire to automatically succeed on the Check. Guidance for the referee will be to offer the player the chance to describe the best possible outcome, if they wish.

There's more I'd love to get into but I'm already way over the time I have for writing this post, so I'll round off with a sample Character I rolled up last night using this Character Creator. The notes at the bottom are my initial thoughts on what this character would be like, using the results from the Character Creator as prompts. I found these ideas came pretty naturally but I've had my head in this stuff for a while now, so it might be useful to include some guidance for new players on fleshing out their character in this way.

Meantime I've come up with a character that I'd be excited to play, which is a good starting point at least!

*******

Name: Ada Wavesplitter

Homeland: The Storm Isles (Survived the worst winter by staying ahead of the storm)

Heritage: Ùruisg

Service: Messenger

Talents: STR +2 | SKL +5 | SNS -1 | SLF +0

Clan Wavesplitter: To the surface, the best

Oath of Renown:

* Gains Fire when her actions improve the reputation of The Wavesplitters.

* Broken if she wilfully denies or conceals her belonging to The Wavesplitters.

Truths:

* A seasoned sailor

* Makes weather predictions, usually accurate

* Gets restless if she stays in one place too long

* Sees things others miss

* Knows how to conserve stamina

Equipment

* Hook-heeled hatchet

* Round studded shield

* Horsehoe chestbrand

* Companion moss

* Hooded crow (can repeat one short phrase)

Notes:

As a messenger and a sailor, Ada has spent a lot of time traveling aboard the ships of The Wavesplitter fleet, delivering important messages between clans. 'Skill' is her best Talent, and she conserves her energies well, so she prides herself on her speed and reliability as a messenger. She takes her work seriously, keenly aware of how it reflects on her clan. And of course, she can be heard proudly talking up The Wavesplitters whenever she can, as sworn in her oath.

I don’t think there would be one particular ship or crew she always sails with, her work is so ad-hoc that she has to be flexible, finding passage with whoever suits the job. Her secondary Talent is 'Strength', so she’d probably prove quite useful at sea. And while her ‘Self’ Talent has no bonus (so she's not particularly charismatic) she would have to have learned how to get along with others quickly. I’d role-play her as a positive, can-do sort of person, with a grin that comes easily to her face as long as she's traveling.

The Heritages - intentionally - give only a very general idea of appearance, aiming for just enough to give a distinct silhouette but still allow players maximum freedom of expression here. For Ada's appearance, I can see her having square pupils and slightly curved horns that arc backwards from her short, tufty, golden-brown hair. She has light speckled fur on her back and forearms, gradating to darker coarser fur that entirely covers her legs.

For her “worst Winter” event, I imagine a sudden storm left her stranded with a small crew on a remote isle as the full terror and darkness of that Winter closed in. It was too dangerous to stay, so there was no choice but sail on in the terrible weather from island to island till at last the roiling seas had calmed and they could return home. Her 'Senses' are her worst Talent, so she’s normally quite oblivious to the world around her, but this experience left her with a keen intuition for changes in weather patterns, and she often casts an anxious eye to the sky if dark clouds roll in.

She has a lot of time to do herself between sea voyages, during which she talks to the moss (fixed onto her leather shoulder strap) like an old friend. I do like the weirdness of the companion moss a lot! It's also a nice contrast as a companion for Ada (moss typically grows on things that stay still for a long time, but she HATES to stay in any one place for too long...) 

*******

That's all for now, until next time!

Tabletop Scotland 2024

I went to Tabletop Scotland at the weekend and it was awesome! This was my first time attending and I was blown away by how much there was to see, and the positive atmosphere and enthusiasm that seemed to energise the whole event. I felt like I could have happily drifted around the makers’ stalls talking to the artists, writers, designers and crafters there about their cool stuff indefinitely.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the abundance of indie RPGs on show. It was hard not to have ideas sparking off in my head about games I JUST CAN’T WAIT to run, harder still not to just spend ALL OF THE MONEY on weird little books and new games. I did spend more than I planned but have zero regrets and wanted to highlight a few standout faves:

"Odd Jobs" by Macguffin & Company

Macguffin & Co. was the first stall I stopped at and although I didn’t realise it at the time I’m 90% sure the person I spoke to was Jonathan Sims, whose voice I’ve listened to for hours on the excellent audio drama The Magnus Archives. He made a great pitch for their book Odd Jobs, which is a collection of RPG Micro Settings. These are intended for running short campaigns and are system agnostic, which is not something I’ve seen much of. I was really impressed by the diversity and imagination in the settings themselves, and looking forward to running one of these as a break from my regular games.

"For Small Creatures Such as We" by Blackwell Games

I was keen to check out Blackwell Games after seeing Anna Blackwell speaking about Fantasy & Folklore in games at one of the panel discussions. When I got to their stall there was a copy of For Small Creatures Such as We, open at this page:

One does not simply walk away from space otter.

Sold! This is a solo/co-op sci-fi game where you play the Captain of a spaceship and travel around the galaxy doing jobs to get paid and have adventures. There’s a big emphasis on customising your ship and hiring your alien crew as well, so my partner and I are really excited to play this one together and see where it leads us.

"Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland" by Handiwork Games

My favourite discovery from the convention. I’d not even heard of Handiwork Games and it turns out they are based in Falkirk, which is actually where we were staying over the Tabletop weekend! I was hooked by the mixed media cover-art (which reminded me a bit of Dave Mckean’s Dust Covers), and reeled in by the title. This is a game in which you play witches in the mesolithic era, travelling through true wilderness between primitive settlements, helping the communities there and banishing dark spirits. It’s a rules-lite, story-focussed game and the vibe is very much in the same wheelhouse as my version of Hags in Legends of Alba. It’s exactly what I want to see in a game about witches: Exploring a vision of the witch as a healer, a sage, a wise woman with a strong voice in the community. I couldn’t wait to get this one home to start reading, and cracked it open on the tram back into Edinburgh from the venue. Aside from the game itself there are also really interesting stories about its artwork, and the inspiration for its setting. This book really is something special.

That’s by no means an exhaustive list of the games I fell in love with at Tabletop Scotland, and not even close to a list about everything I enjoyed at the convention, but it is all I have time to say with this post. I’m already excited for next year’s event and who knows? Maybe I’ll have something to run or show off for Legends of Alba by then! 

Till next time!

Inspiration: The Northman

I watched The Northman recently. It was fantastic, and I've been thinking about it a lot. Before I say anything more about it: Spoilers ahead. With that out the way, here’s 10 things I remember from the film:

• An active volcano
• Longships on a rough sea, returning with treasure
• Mystic seers in firelit barrows
• Warriors empowered by beast spirit rituals
• Björk as a Hag!
• Death-shinty?!
• A sword that can only be drawn at night or at The Gates of Hel
• A battle for that same sword with a SKELETON THAT COMES TO LIFE
• Bloody vengeance!
• A valkyrie riding into the gates of Valhalla

Powerful stuff! And nothing in that list would feel out of place in Legends of Alba. Watching the opening, which shows longships approaching a coastal hill fort, felt just like seeing through my mind’s eye when I’ve been thinking about the game. It was an exciting moment, because so much of it is still only in my head, I’m always glad to discover things that already exist that I can point to and say, “it looks like this”:

Hrafnsey, from The Northman

So it was inspiring for game design reasons, but I also loved how it went about telling its story. Norse mythology feels like pretty well-trodden ground (maybe more so in games than films) and often you’ll get straight-up retellings of the Norse myths, maybe even characters from those myths will feature to add authenticity. The Northman isn’t an original story either (I understand it’s based on the legend that inspired Hamlet). Where I think the film shines narratively, is in taking the values and beliefs behind the tales it draws from, and telling its story with those ideas at its foundation.

It’s a revenge tale. There’s catharsis and you’re encouraged to feel it alongside Prince Amleth (the protagonist) as he reaps bloody vengeance. But it also doesn’t shy away from the hollow non-life of a character like that. He cannot truly live until his tragedy is avenged. But what life remains for him after that?

Along the way, there is the suggestion of an answer to that question, a path opens up that could lead Amleth to a resolution, if not to happiness. He meets his equal in Olga, whose sorcery(!) proves a match to his might. She gets an awesome line which I am probably going to misquote but it’s something like “You can wound a man’s body. I can break his mind”. She’s a great character and together they make an excellent team. They go on to forge a relationship based on companionship, respect and trust. It was an unexpected but welcome thing to see in a film like this.

But this is also a story about VIKINGS seeking a warrior’s DEATH in BATTLE! And it makes a point of glorifying this belief, as those who held it might have. Amleth’s visions - of being carried off on horseback by a magnificently fierce-looking Valkyrie, to where he is awaited in Valhalla - look incredible. But the film also (I think) shows the stubborn and wounded-masculine side of this fantasy. Towards the end he and Olga, now pregnant with their unborn twins, are bound for escape. A future together in Orkney. A fresh start. But Amleth, still not done with the old vengeance, dives off the boat and swims ashore to face the final showdown. He chooses to secure a good death at the cost of a good life. It’s tragic, it’s vainglorious, it’s idiotic.

I’m spending a lot of time just now poring over old myths and folklore, along with anything I can find on Scotland’s pre-Christian history. It’s tempting to look back on the beliefs of that time as being more virtuous than those of today. This was Before Capitalism, after all. But thinking about the ideas in The Northman, it seems just as likely that there were equally stupid and toxic beliefs back in ancient times too. Good to keep perspective I think.

So that’s The Northman. What an absolutely smashing film from two years ago.

That’s all for just now, till next time!