Summer wanes more and more every day. All the landers make it known, speaking of how much cooler it gets every night. How the sun is gone, replaced by twilight, and then by full night earlier at the end of each day. Throughout Pormont, The Dunnstadds, and Brisshal, the crops grow riper, many are ready for harvest. Golden fields of wheat, the colorful forests made more vibrant by fruit, and pens of grass and livestock that are nearing their capacity. Winter is fast approaching, and with it, many of the rural Landers are struggling to keep up with all the work that needs done before the first snows. Any help will be appreciated, and rewarded with whatever the peasants can scrounge up. Ahead lies a long path of labor for any Traveler with the heart to help, or the greed to earn favor or gold in doing so.
Each village and community is plagued with its own problems. More hands than they have are needed in solving these issues. They need all the help they can get. There are Flyers in distant Inns and on the sides of posts throughout the lands advertising some of these problems. Others will need more interpersonal searching to find. They range from big to small, heavy to light, serious to benign. No matter how tiny an issue may seem, solving each will strengthen these communities against the rise of Winter, and better ensure the survival of all the Landers within. Whatever your motivations, I am sure they can be accommodated.
How This Works
Stifling the Storm is NOT a DM Challenge, but rather what I will call a Collaborative Quest. Players do not need to sign up here. Instead, you will forge out into Rural communities of the land and find something - anything - to do that could be considered helping them. Think of this post as a Quest prompt for your own personal threads. Players will work together and complete threads relevant to helping these Villages out, which will fill the Progress Bar listed in this post. Once the bar is full, the next Chapter will begin.
Below, you will find a list of relevant Villages, and some of the things that they need help with, as well as where they are located. These are example leads and story-related issues that will need resolved. Players are encouraged to get creative and come up with their own issues to solve as well.
Lübeck
Western Brisshal, Astorea
A town nestled downstream from the great Lake in the northwest of the country, surrounded by a makeshift wall, and dotted by orchards and local beaver ranches.
- Lübeck sits just a dozen miles away from Rivercrest, a known green-skin stronghold, and as such, suffers constantly from the warring clans coming by to demand tribute.
- In the surrounding woods, something seems to be driving all the small game and rodents of the forest inward toward the city, where they get into regular fights with the house cats and dogs of the townsfolk over even the smallest scraps of food.
- Outside, young teenagers can be seen in the night leaving out the southern road of the village, and heading straight for a white tree. When asked about it, none of them can seem to recall anything of the sort.
Vikform
Pormont, Falderen
Rolling golden fields from one horizon to the other, it's impossible to think of the area of Vikform as anything else. The wheat is growing tall, and the people in the village aren't getting any younger.
- All the youngsters have decided to find wealth and fame in the adventurer's guild, or trying to get in good with the powerful noble class by moving away to population centers like Stokbon. The shrinking and aging folk of this village just don't have the strength to cut and collect all of the bushels in the surrounding fields. They beg for any help at all. To be shown or given a more efficient way to harvest the food that is so vital to feed the rest of the country.
- A nearby windmill was abandoned when a family inherited land out by Finweald. That is not unusual - but the daily visits from the mass of ravens who surround and caw wildly are. They perch on every surface they can, painting the windmill black with their wings, and terrifying the locals. Something must be going on over there.
Spyre
Redchron, Astorea
Built on the caprock of a towering Plateau, Spyre is a uniformly bland town that gets most of its wealth from mining into the mountain below and around them.
- In one of the main coal mines of the town, someone or something started a raging fire. It makes the rest of the mineshafts unbearably hot, and filled with smoke. Threatening the other miners with Asphyxiation, and burning away the precious coal. There has to be someway to stop this fire, or atleast, isolate it from the rest of the mines.
- Wings beat, and screeching calls sing out across the sky. Wyverns have hatched their eggs, and they have learned to fly for themselves. What could this mean? What should we do?
- Water is hard to come by when you're this high up, so Spyre is dotted with Wells that have long ropes and a bucket attached. The problem comes when a children's pets get so thirsty, that they try to take these buckets down into the Wells themselves. With no thumbs to pull the rope, they get stuck down there and start bawling loudly!
Hovelis
Eastern Brisshal, Falderen
An outpost turned Village, this is a community where homes are no less than a hundred meters apart, and the landscape is peppered with watchtowers set up by the old elves, and surrounded by towering trees of every shape and color.
- Ruffians ambush lone passerbys on the road, stealing food or gold from at them at the threat of violence. They're not particularly well armed, and some of the locals would preferred that they not be killed just because they're idiots.
- A young woman who lives alone reports strange grunting and howling coming from her neighbor at night. What the hell is going on over there?
- A travelling Archer has set up here for a few weeks, claiming to look for the best shot in the land. He has set up six targets, each marked with a certain amount of points. And offers a monetary reward, as well as eternal friendship, to anyone who can best him in a contest of accuracy and speed.
Aurora
High March, Astorea
One of the many forgotten, and uncharted villages of the area, Aurora is a lonely location that almost no one knows exists. They survive by the grace of hunting monsters in the area, and retrieving rare gemstones and artifacts from the shadow of Titanius.
- A man with frizzled hair and mismatching clothes sits alone by a massive rock, where he keeps staring sullenly down the side of the canyon and into the dark depths below. He begs anyone he sees to please help him, and take him down there in order to rescue friends of his that have been trapped behind rubble for some days now. He says that he can no longer hear their muffled pleas for help when he goes down there.
- A small Caenis boy has two eyes that are whited out by cataracts, or so the village claims. When he approached, it is said that he can see the Phantoms that haunt people. The regrets of their past. And with his help, he can cross you to the other side, help you defeat one of your own. So long as you help him defeat one that was left behind by him.
- There are a string of rocks that block the main path back to the center of Astorean Civilization. If this Village is ever going to survive, they need those obstacles removed, and a clear road cut out for them, and free of any monsters.
Rosetta
Providence, Falderen
Nestled high on a remote mountaintop, the village of Rosetta was named after its distant founder. An outpost of freedom, one may find it difficult to find people who like any sort of authority, or will ever personally request your help.
- A group of Archaeologists have gathered parts of a Blackstone with etching of an ancient language written all over it. While normally capable to handle themselves, they are busy carrying and taking care of the stone, and need protection crossing one of the dangerous Longfall bridges headed back to Stonepikes.
- A group of families have been in a heated quarrel regarding where one's land ends, and the other begins. It has since escalated, with the daughter of one family going missing, and an elder uncle having rocks thrown at him when he visited the market square. If this community is to survive Winter, they can not be at each other's throats like this.
- Trolls have been seen walking in the nearby valleys. Typically, they're not dangerous, but they are hungry bastards, and wasteful. Leaving a lot of their own kills and food half eaten and rotting. The villagers want them to move on, to leave resources for the rest of them. If approached, these trolls come off as very sentimental. Usually crying and bawling for a particular location, or a keepsake of theirs that they have lost. Maybe a trade can be made? Or a threat.
What Do I Do?
This is where you come in. You will visit these Villages, and attend to the issues listed above, as well as any of your own creation. Depending on what you do, how well you do it, and how many situations are handled, the future of Reaping Season will alter and adapt to the consequences of these actions. Each thread will contribute to the Progress Bar below. To increase the Progress Bar, once you've finished a thread, you will submit in a comment below this post with a brief summary of who was participating and what was done. I will then go and rate it, my rating will be added to the Progress. All Threads have a minimum rating of 10 though will often go much higher than that. You may, at any point, come to me directly either through the site PMs system, or Messaging @Vesuvyan on Discord to request any Reaping Season thread be DM Spice'd or have mechanics added to your threads.
Discussion, including Questions, LFGing or suggestions will be centralized in This Discord Thread.
Good luck, and have a Happy Reaping Season.
❰ 775 / 1000 ❱
What is Reaping Season?
Glad you asked! Reaping season is a multichapter content-quest that will span most of the upcoming Autumn season. This story will revolve around the Frontiers of Falderen, Astorea, and the fringes of Tertoria and the Tangleweaves, where the law isn't as strong, and the more dangerous parts of a world of Fantasy come creeping in. Specifically, Players will follow these regions through the start of harvest season, to the first snowfall. Over the course of the Season, players will participate in Collabrative Quests, Dungeon Delving, Boss Fights, and Puzzle solving which will fit into the falling story beats (in no specific order):
- Assist Villages with the harvest and personal complications. (Stifling The Storm)
- Investigate and Scout out sightings of Demi-human creatures.
- Root out Banditry and Robbery along the highways and roads.
- Help an Elderly man run an understaffed, over-visited Tavern
- Prepare Villages for defense against oncoming raids.
- Fend off hungry Wyverns.
- Build contraptions and equipment for a Siege.
- Clear out nearby ruins to retrieve information or relics.
- Prove thyself to Orcish Champions
- Delve into the Caverns to put a stop to the bleeding once and for all.
- ...And much much more!
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