Beneath Parenix Manor: My #dungeon23 Project

During the waning days of the High Regency, the ignoble but wealthy Alastairn family purchased themselves land and title and built Parenix Manor atop Mornrax Hill. There in the wilderness — the only civilization being the Bridgeroad Inn a few miles away — they set their laborers to work.

Five generations of Alastairn rules at Parenix, each one more cruel and eccentric than the last. Mornrax Hill was no natural mound, but cairn to some forgotten dynasty of pagan kings. The Alastairn delved deeper and deeper each generation, finding older and older chambers from kingdoms, civilizations and races long forgotten.

A century ago, long after the High Regency fractured into the Warring Thrones and eventually collapsed into the Seven City States, the last scion of the Alastairn succumbed to greed, perversion and blasphemy and the windows of Parenix Manor went dark but for occasional ghost light.

Only the tales told around the lonely hearth of the Bridgeroad Inn — miraculously still active even in this decrepit age — remember Parenix Manor and hint at the wealth and secrets of the Alastairn family that might lie below Mornrax Hill.

40 Years of Fantasists

Today is, according to Jon Peterson, the 40th anniversary of the release of the first iteration of the Dungeons and Dragons game. Much has been said of the impact of D&D on both individuals and on whole industries. One could go on forever trying to gauge the total impact of D&D on American popular culture, and some have tried, or recounting the roller-coaster ride of its rise from obscure past time to 1980s sensation/scapegoat and back again, with a few stops at both nerd obsession and geek chic. All of that history is interesting and important and many writers have recounted the power of D&D on popular culture before and will do so again.

 

What I am interested in is something a little different. As ide from inspiring a generation or two of authors, game designers, filmmakers and others, the arrival of D&D also created a whole generation of fantasists. A fantasist differs from those aforementioned types in that  a fantasist, by definition, does not necessarily make a living creating fantasies. Of the approximately 20 million people who have played D&D, every one was or is a fantasist. Every one has created a fantasy world or just a piece of it. Every one has helped craft a unique universe, populated by unique characters undertaking unique adventures. While there are of course many published worlds and even more commercial modules for the game that provide players a shared experience, each iteration of such a module, each group’s version of such a world, is still a unique creation. Even though they are clones, they are not the same.

 

What does it mean to have empowered 20 million daydreamers with the tools to create whole worlds? In some cases it has meant commercial success, but for most the rewards have been more subtle. The act of creation is one that has many benefits for the creator. Because D&D players are fantasists, and fantasists are creators, that population of gamers has enjoyed those benefits even if they don’t translate to a career as a best selling novelist or a high octane action star. And anecdotally, we know that being around creative people is fun and makes us happy, so the rest of the non-gaming world has benefited, too.

 

On a personal note, the existence of D&D gave me system by which to organize my creativity. before I discovered D&D at age 10 in 1985, my brothers and I played fantasy games we made up ourselves (usually involving hitting one another with sticks). I played by myself, having riotous adventures in the barn when I thought no one was looking (and my mother was watching via the horse foaling cameras we had installed). I wrote stores about heroes  with shining “sords” and dragons whose eyes “glew” before I had ever read a book myself (what I would not give to have a copy of that notebook today). It was D&D, though, that allowed me to take all of those fantasies and wrangle them into a way that not only were they ordered for myself, but they could be shared with others. D&D gave me a venue. It also gave me the greatest friendships I have ever had and still have, but that is another post entirely.

 

So to all the gamers out there, from the most famous to the most common, I say: happy anniversary and Game On.

The Circle Of Protection Service

I was unsure whether to include this in this blog, as it is just a write-up for a super-hero table top RPG I run. But as I am trying to get as many words written as possible, and this is going to devour much of my creative energy for the next couple of weeks, I figured, why not? Besides, gaming in general and TTRPGs in particular have defined my creative life for, well, most of my creative life. I tend to run games the same way I write — an idea, an outline maybe and then just go! — and I tend to treat my pre-game writing as seriously (or not, as the case may be) as my fiction. And, utlimately, there’s only like 2 of you so what’s the harm in boring you with some gaming related nonsense?

 

After the text itself, I will make a few comments, so if you make it through, stick around.

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During the Great War, the Circle of Protection — a loose alliance of super-beings — brought their incredible talents to bear against the rising evil of Osiron Empire and its saboteurs, secret agents and super villains allies. In their bright primary colors and their two fisted attitudes, the Circle of Protection enamoured the people of Erebar and the world over.

 

After the war, the Ereban-Dukemian-Hin Alliance (later to be called the Mutual Economic Defense and Interest Alliance (MEDIA) as other member states joined) agreed to expand the Circle of Protection program to include a “mundane” support network of military and civilian specialists. Over the course of the next ten years, that support staff became more and more prominent. The Circle Of Protection Service (COPS) was no long a super-hero team backed up by normal agents, but an expansive governmental agency (much of it clandestine) with a small super-heroic action team.

 

The directorship of COPS was granted to a military intelligence officer from the Great War, one Colonel Abernathy Paladin. Colonel Paladin was responsible for bringing the super-heroic members of the original CoP team in-line with MEDIA’s (and especially Erebar’s) interests and policies, or push them out. In addition, Col. Paladin made great strides in the growing cold war between MEDIA and the Elven Empire over the acquisition of newfound super-weapons (and super-people) in the post-War era. By allowing just enough of these secret operations to leak to the public (successful ones, of course) Paladin ensured strong public support for what was quickly becoming a super-spy international paramilitary organization.

 

Over the years, COPS has split its focus between the machinations of the Elven Empire and the emergence of independent super-beings (both hero and villain). Too often, these aspects cross and intertwine because of the Elven Empire’s aggressive policy of capture, containment and recruitment of super-powered individuals. In response, Col. Paladin instituted a controversial policy (among the Ereban and MEDIA governments, anyway) of undermining the very concept of the independent “super hero” and bolster the idea of the COPS as a super-response force. In this, their most useful and successful tool is the super-hero known as Bulkhead.

 

Bulkhead, monstrous in appearance but loyal and good in heart, emerged in the days prior to the Great War and joined the side of the angels as a member of the original Circle of Protection. After the war ended, Bulkhead stayed on and lent his immense power to the new COPS organization. Unsubtle in every way, Bulkhead is released against monsters that emerge from ancient mystical sites, horrors of science gone awry and other larger and louder than life threats. While all eyes (and cameras) are on Bulkhead, the rest of the COPS special team does its work (dirty or otherwise). Aside from his great power, the other advantage Col. Paladin saw in using Bulkhead as the public face of COPS super-heroics is his alienness. No square jawed, perfect haired hero with a shining emblem on his chest, Bulkhead is forever an Other, no matter how much good he does.

 

The recent increase in Eleven activity in non-MEDIA member states, especially the [African continent] countries as well as the rise in instances of individuals expressing or developing superpowered or mystical abilities has put COPS in a prominent position and made Col. Paladin one of the most powerful men in Erebar. With the apparent threats ever increasing, Paladin goes to more and more extreme lengths to combat those threats, using the twin tools of the COPS secret agents and its super-powered action team.

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I am guessing that you have a weird feeling of dissonance, that there are both familiar things in there and unfamiliar, connected in ways that don’t quite line up (unless, of course, you have played in a D&D campaign that have moved into a modern era dominated by super heroes). I thought I might explain a little bit. Obviosly, a great deal of the inspiration for this (and the previous events of the campaign) is American super hero comics, especially the various titles that take modern looks at the historical comic book eras. However, because this campaign and world were born out of a long series of D&D adventures, the inspiration and base mythology upon which the super heroic universe is built is different. In our world, the comic book heroes are based on folktales and myths common to Western civilization (or the near East and East, but poorly translated). Robin Hood, King Arthur, Thor, Zeus and Uncle Sam all serve as basis for American super-heroes. While I have intentionally held on to the tropes and themes of our worlds of comics, I have tried to replace those real world influences with ones from our D&D campaign world — the gods, heroes and adventures we created over the course of nearly a decade. Of course, because we were playing Dungeons and Dragons, itself a product of the mishmash of Western mythology and folklore and the pulp fantasies of the mid 20th century, there is certainly a lot of overlap. The goal, in many cases, is to try and find where we can bury the real world trope in its equivalent D&D campaign world trope.

 

It would take far too long to discuss all the details of that overlap. Suffice it to say, we have found a good balance where we are informed by our influences and are able to creatively merge them in telling each other a story about super-powered people beating up other super-powered people. It probably seems a vain pursuit to the non-gamer, but I suppose to the non-writer, crafting a world and the people within that world, and their stories, seems equally vain.