Here is my first-ever depiction of the city of Bahar Dar, situated on a wide plain ringed by the high hills of the corridor. The city, created pre-campaign, was designed as a bustling human-dominated counterpoint to the idyllic, pastoral Commonwealth of Stoneborough.The above picture is actually patterned after the Tolkienian city of Gondolin, about which Tolkein wrote extensively in the fantastic Silmarillion. Obviously, Tolkien is a major influence in all the writing. In particular, many of the early drawings from the Big Red Book mirror Tolkien's.
In creating Bahar Dar, I also have a page, at right, which designates the highest-level local NPCs. All of the loosely defined characters in this document became a part of the story, with varying degrees of significance. In order, they are the following characters:
Bab el-Mandeb, Dorg Durg, Rufinius Frumentius, Debra Nagast, Prester John, Graham Athanasius, Governor Kyot Czarno, Hugh de Godfrey, Kaleb Sedek, Rainer Herzeloyde, Theoderic, Bertrand Scharfenberg, Yekuno Grazal, Leila Bela, Simone Sigioli, and Diantha Noldo.
None of the NPC-class characters in the lower tier were ever rolled up or named. Still, there are some interesting story possibilities there which could yet be developed. At the bottom of the page, you can see the sets of rolled numbers that I used to generate all of the characters above.
The creation of Bahar Dar, and the characters who inhabit it, was among the final aspects of pre-campaign writing.
man Prester John & Rainer Herzeloyde got some big stats. each one has 18 17 16 16..
ReplyDeletegreat idea to build inhabitants of a place around a set of prestige classes — creates automagic flavor & personality for each npc.
I don't think the numbers are necessarily in order. We'll have to see when I go back to look at each NPC (with accompanying artwork).
ReplyDeleteThat was definitely the idea behind the prestige class choices - you pegged it!