As I wrote earlier I’ve been reading Brian
Sanderson’s
The way of Kings. It’s
the first book in the
Stormlight Archives
an epic fantasy that looks as if it may rival Jordan’s
Wheel of Time series. One of the things I noted while reading was
about how so many fantasy series have a built in area for D&D adventures.
For example, Tolkien’s “Mordor”, Jordan’s “The Blight”, Martin's "Beyond the Wall" . Even the Legend of the
Five Rings RPG has “The Shadowlands’. In the
Way of Kings, we have “The Shattered Plains”. Sanderson’s
adventuring wasteland has a few interesting aspects that make it particularly
ripe for use, at least in part, for a Keep on the Borderlands style campaign.
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| A staple of Fantasy, the unexplored borderland. Art from the Game of Thrones wiki |
The Shattered Plains are essentially ground
zero for some sort of apocalyptic event in the World of Roshar’s (the name of
the planet) ancient history. From what I’ve read thus far and have been able to
determine (I’ve read about half the book now) this was once a battle ground
used to keep an evil known as the Voidbringers at bay. The way I have envisioned
the topography of the Shattered Plains in my mind is as follows. Imagine a large
patch of mud that had dried out leaving it cracked creating small islands of
mud divided from each other by miniature crevices. Then zoom in and imagine
that each one of those crevices are like the deep canyons. Each little mud flat
is a rocky plateau. Most of the plateaus are crossable by someone who is
capable of pole-vaulting across (in the book Alethi scouts do this), or in the
case of the barbarian Parshendi people who have a unnatural ability to leap across
them with their own legs. Typically, the Alethi Military use bridges they use
either permanent or portable ones they use to cross.
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| Art taken from Brian Sanderson's The Way of Kings showing a stylized map of the Shattered Plains |
In the present day the Shattered Plains is
still a war zone. This time between the Alethi and the Parshendi. The while the
two sides fight each other, the true battles tend to be over the birthing pods
left behind on random plateaus by monsters known as Chasmfiends. When a
birthing pod is discovered on a plateau, each side races to claim the gem stone
that grows in it. The Chasmfiends themselves also have enormous gems inside
them. They however, tend to fight back. For example, “[The King] ripped free
the beast’s gemheart – the enormous gemstone that grew within all Chasmfiends.
It was lumpy and uncut, but it was a pure emerald and as big as a man’s head.
It was the largest gemheart Adolin had ever seen, and even the small ones were
worth a fortune” (Sanderson, 210). In terms of stealing this for a D&D
campaign, the hunting of Chasmfiends or their birthing pods could be reason
enough for adventurers to brave the dangers of your campaign worlds own
borderland area. Additionally, you now have built in adversaries who are also
competing for these precious gems. These adversaries could be rival adventurers
to barbarian natives, or perhaps other creatures who feed on the gems to gain
magical powers or just requires the sustenance provided.
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| A Chasmfiend - Art taken from Brian Sanderson's The Way of Kings |
Another example of how the Shattered plains
can be used is the canyons that divide the plateaus. The plateaus while relatively
large are still limited in space. Some plateaus are larger than others and some
have features that make them treacherous to fight on. As a result, many
warriors fall off and land at the bottom dead taking whatever valuable they had
with them. Often the need to harvest the gemheart and leave quickly precludes the
chance to recover these bodies (if at all) until later. To complicate matters dangerous
and violent thunderstorms assault the land on a semi regular basis. This causes
the canyons to fill with torrents of rushing water that scatters these bodies
to distant places in the network of canyons. Unlucky work crews are occasionally
sent on canyon duty to recover whatever salvage they can. One account in the
book describes it like this; “It was like barrow robbing, only without the
barrows…They carried sacks, and would spend hours walking around, looking for
the corpses of the fallen, searching for anything of value. Spheres [equivalent
to gold pieces], breastplates, caps, weapons” (Sanderson, 391).
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| Chasm Duty - Artist unknown |
Brian Sanderson’s The Way of Kings offers many great ideas that can be stolen for use
in a D&D campaign. In particular, the dangerous race to steal gemhearts and
salvaging valuables from dark and haunted canyons that are something in between
a dungeon and the depths of Underdark in a more traditional D&D campaign.
It lends a new sense of danger and exploration that could boost the fun and excitement
of your campaign. The Way of Kings offers even more to steal and I hope to
write about some of the other things I think would be perfect for use in most
D&D campaigns including monsters, and magical weapons and armor like Shardblades
and Shardplate.
