Sometime after The Undertow Session Twenty-Six it occurred to that The Lone Keep, base of operations for the vile Void Elf cult, would have to land somewhere. Mikansia had cut loose tal mother, Makirta, whose anguish had kept the asteroid afloat. I had two choices: have it hit the ocean and make a tidal wave that would wipe out practically everything in the world, or hit the ground and make a cloud of dust that was almost certain to start a mini Ice Age.
I opted for the Ice Age.
I also had another motive: another one of the continents, Armo, I knew almost nothing about. I knew there was a huge continent sized forest on it, along with roden, great wolves, and orcs. And that was it. I had drawn up the geography. That was all I had done with the place. What better way to get to know a place than drop a frickin' asteroid on it? That's how getting to know a place works, right? I mean, I certainly don't see any issues with it.
But my more practical brain took over. I was still neck-deep in The Undertow with Lena, and was already hot to do Suihkulahde, Anneli's sequel game. There literally wasn't time to run anything in Armo! I mean, I didn't like it, but Armo would have to wait.
And then came the argument.
No matter how good of a GM you are (and I fancy myself competent) you are eventually going to screw up. No ifs, ands, or buts, about that fact. And my time came. I was talking with Will and Lena (who are in the Death is a Patient Master game too) about doing a one-shot of Trophy Dark, and I lost my temper. Wasn't Will and Lena's fault! They were doing what they normally did. I just had had a bad time of it that day and decided that the most mature thing I could do was to take it out on them. My temper can flare up very quickly, so it took some time to sort out why I was mad and what could be done about it and whatnot. When the dust settled I was told they didn't want to do one-shots, but to have time to develop characters.
And that's when I remembered poor Armo.
Will, of course, wanted minotaurs. I cussed him out for wanting an entirely new stock and promised it to him in the same breath. "Fuck you Will, of course," or something or other was what I said. I think. We discussed what we wanted from the campaign, and what came out of it was the following: in a four way final battle the falling Lone Keep landed, killing almost all of the four armies. What was left of the four races would band together to figure out what the heck had done such a calamitous blow to their races and war.
Lena settled on doing an orc PC rather quickly, much to my happiness. I've never had an orc PC before, so I'm excited for the new ground! We'd discussed doing a dryad race, but Will got in with his request first and it's taxing enough to just draw up one race for now Will's playing a minotaur that somehow got handed the leadership over the wolven packs. That's not going to blow up in his face. First I gotta burn up the stock, which is currently in development and will take less time than I thought. Thank God I have the Monster Burner! Luke and Thor really need to reprint this thing, because it's a gem. Expect lots of rants about what I perceive to be the incompleteness of Burning Wheel Gold Revised.
We decided that the first act would be an intrigue dungeon crawl, with lots of sub-factions trying to reignite the temporarily held war. The PCs would be two of the joint expedition sent in to examine The Lone Keep. Lots of intrigue, along with a Keep that Lena had been expecting to show up in much greater detail in The Undertow. Expectations are high there, so I better not screw it up. Y'all will be hearing more about the burning process for the minotaurs, who actually fit into Heranyt far better than I ever could have hoped. This is why you say yes and, GMs: sometimes the fusion of player and GM can be much better than you ever could have hoped.
As far as what themes I'm expecting to do in this campaign, adaptation is definitely at the top of the list. The Lone Keep was a nasty place, filled with horrors I'd only half fleshed out. There's nothing like changing your priorities like seeing eldritch horrors. There's also the fact that the dead can walk in the waking world, thanks to a few things in the Keep, so dead isn't dead quite... yet. Imagine trying to recoup your race with the previous rulers sitting around, having opinions. Death is frequently a mercy for the living.
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