Dicey Stories

Tric and Heppa meet Alric’s parents, a papermaker and a falconer.

Our character art by Del Borovic and the map we refer to (by me!) can be found here.

Our music is sampled from Return to Wesnoth by Matthias Westlund (aka West), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, part of The Battle for Wesnoth Project. Visit them at wesnoth.org.

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The team deals with Mariah’s sudden collapse.

Our music is from Purple Planet Music. Visit them at purple-planet.com.

Need context? Jump to the start of the series!

Tric and Heppa arrive in Weldyn, the capital of Wesnoth, but not without a minor magical mishap first.

The Battle for Wesnoth video game is a tactical turn-based strategy game that also involves some resource management. Each unit needs to be paid its level in gold every turn. The standard day/night cycle has six parts: dawn, morning, afternoon, dusk, first watch, and second watch. This is the source of my payment schedule for mercenaries in Rhodri’s caravan. The day/night cycle also provides bonuses or penalties to units based on their alignment. The four alignments are chaotic, neutral, lawful, and liminal. Most elvish units are neutral (getting no bonuses), and most Dunefolk units are liminal (getting bonuses at dawn and dusk). So you may sometimes hear us reference those things. I don’t hew closely to it in my adversary stat blocks, but sometimes it results in a setback here or a boost there.

This arc contains major spoilers for the Battle for Wesnoth campaign The South Guard, and of course spoilers for Eastern Invasion. There are also references to the Rise of Wesnoth and Heir to the Throne.

Our character art by Del Borovic and the map we refer to (by me!) can be found here.

Our music is sampled from Return to Wesnoth by Matthias Westlund (aka West), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, part of The Battle for Wesnoth Project. Visit them at wesnoth.org.

Need context? Jump to the start of the series!

Mariah, Cleve, and Corazon assault Morgan’s network node and encounter some unexpected phenomena.

Network Nodes are an adaptation from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. In the video game, it’s the first building which boosts science output. In our setting, with miasma cutting off long range communications, cable must be physically laid. Similar to old telegraph repeater stations, our Network Node is a data relay, ensuring communication can flow over a physical cable.

The Morgan Autonomous Security-Trons, however, aren’t from anything in particular. Because of the miasma, there wouldn’t be human guards, nor remote operation. So the robots have to manage a variety of situations with limited artificial intelligence. And yet, somehow Morgan Robotics still found enough power to compute debt on the fly.

Our music is from Purple Planet Music. Visit them at purple-planet.com.

Need context? Jump to the start of the series!

Following the ambush, Tric and Heppa get to know Knots and the Beard a bit better.

Our character art by Del Borovic and the map we refer to (by me!) can be found here.

Our music is sampled from Return to Wesnoth by Matthias Westlund (aka West), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, part of The Battle for Wesnoth Project. Visit them at wesnoth.org.

Need context? Jump to the start of the series!

Cleve guides Mariah and Corazon through the wilderness to Morgan’s network node.

Our music is from Purple Planet Music. Visit them at purple-planet.com.

Need context? Jump to the start of the series!

Tric and Heppa deal with ambush clean-up.

Once again, units from the video game informed NPCs in this arc. Tomos was a perfect vehicle for leaking more information on Kachen. He is very much based on the basic human Mage. The nagas at the ambush were based on the basic Naga Fighter, except for Zlek, the Naga Myrmidon. Even the environmental hazard of the Mudcrawler was from a video game unit. The fun part of Knots and the Beard for me was getting to show off Genesys talents that my players would never take. However, they are the rare characters in this campaign not drawn from a Wesnoth unit. As far as I know, there are no dual-sword wielders or axe-and-shield fighters among the human units.

Our character art by Del Borovic and the map we refer to (by me!) can be found here.

Our music is sampled from Return to Wesnoth by Matthias Westlund (aka West), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, part of The Battle for Wesnoth Project. Visit them at wesnoth.org.

Need context? Jump to the start of the series!

Mariah, Cleve, and Corazon spend some time in Data Haven resting and preparing for their data recovery job.

Data Haven is an original location, heavily inspired by my experiences in hackerspaces and machine shops in the United States. I adapted that kind of freewheeling creative culture into a contained environment. They’ve got basic needs like food and housing covered (for now), so what do they get up to?

Roze develops perhaps the most unique voice of the contingent. They embody the “information wants to be free” ethos of Data Haven. Yet they are tempered with the years of living underground, cut off from the world.

Dr. Marina Citali also starts to develop. I wasn’t ready to directly introduce Deirdre Skye yet, but Marina offers us insight into the Stepdaughters of Chiron. And like Corazon (or rather, “Hypercor”), she was born on Chiron, so she sometimes challenges the PCs’ “planetfaller” expectations.

Our music is from Purple Planet Music. Visit them at purple-planet.com.

Need context? Jump to the start of the series!

With some help from their new friends, Tric and Heppa ambush the ambushers.

Our character art by Del Borovic and the map we refer to (by me!) can be found here.

Our music is sampled from Return to Wesnoth by Matthias Westlund (aka West), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, part of The Battle for Wesnoth Project. Visit them at wesnoth.org.

Need context? Jump to the start of the series!

Roze offers Cleve, Mariah, and Corazon a job, but Dr. Citali has her own ideas on what it should include.

In this arc, we see several characters and creatures adapted from the video games. From Civilization: Beyond Earth, we have the Wolf Beetle, the Siege Worm, and the ever present Miasma. From the original Alpha Centauri, I also lifted Xenofungus (which is perhaps related to Miasma).

I only took character inspiration from Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. During our Session Zero, I asked the players for ideas on NPCs aboard Unity that their PCs knew. For most of those, I matched player NPC descriptions with existing leader profiles from the game. Cleve’s NPCs are Sinder Roze and the Santiago family, represented by Corazon. Mariah’s are Dr. Deirdre Skye and the “killer HR” of Nwabudike Morgan. You also heard mention of Professor Prokhor Zakharov from The University and Captain John Garland, who led the Unity expedition.

Aside: In this episode, we make a reference to an upside down battlestation. That was the setting of several arcs of our StarCraft: FRAWD Investigators campaign, starting with A Very Special Mission.

Our music is from Purple Planet Music. Visit them at purple-planet.com.

Need context? Jump to the start of the series!