There is a well-regarded WFRP 2e book Renegade Crowns (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/752466.Renegade_Crowns), which details a method for GMs to semi-randomly (the book outright encourages not being a dice roll absolutist) generate a region of “The Border Princes”, a stand-in for the Renaissance/Age of Sail (TL 4) era Balkans, complete with severe political instability and general not-quite-civilization. The book also details methods for generating “Princes”, the (extremely) petty rulers of the region’s various micro-realms.
I thought this would be neat to try out and maybe convert the results to GURPS DF. Here are the results, you do not have to assume it is set in the Warhammer Fantasy verse (I’ve mostly converted the fine details to Dungeon Fantasy). (Please note DF firearms are available but rare in this setting, see The Musketeer article in Pyramid 3/36 page 17-21.) Welcome to The Dreadwaters March!
Geography
(The map of the region is given below.)
The most common terrain in the March is scrubland plains, grimly sporting small tough bushes that are too small for timber, too hard to clear for arable farming and poor fodder for farming animals. The largely flat land is hard to defend without high walls. Very few people live out in the scrubland, and the monsters lurking in it often raid other terrain for food. Any rolls for foraging and hunting in the scrublands during an outdoors journey (usually Survival or Naturalist skills) suffers a -2 penalty due to bad conditions. The other terrain in the region that may be less desirable is the barren plains, a desert at the eastern stretch of the March where the soil is somewhat poisonous (although two coal mines make the terrain more populous than it would be otherwise). Rolls to live off the land in the barren plains get a -6 penalty. Earl Rolo Cash, much to his frustration, claims a good portion of the northern scrub plains as his realm, with only a slice of the swamp’s edge to support his prized strongholds and the one town in the region.
At the center of the March is a very large swamp which becomes more and more unlivable the further from the center you get, giving the region its ominous name. Despite the terrible conditions, a good portion of the region’s population have established footholds there, mostly thanks to the swamp’s unusual natural resources, frantic imports, magical assistance and economic connections. The majority of the swamp has been claimed by Captain Chloe Lavigne and her bandit mafia, which is a mixed blessing. Foraging in the swampland suffers a -4 penalty. Also, any HT rolls to resist disease, infection and other bodily afflictions are penalized -2 while in the swamp. Random encounters in the swamp may simply be HT rolls to avoid disease instead of monsters.
The southern parts of the March are more diverse and pleasant than the rest of the region, and are half claimed by the Gildemeister Alex Starstorm. In addition to long stretches of forested hills and mountains (with scrub hills at their edges), the south also boasts a standout fertile valley and a massive lake of still freshwater which the wizard lord’s realm gets their excellent economic power from. (With no rivers in The Dreadwaters March, most of the region has to either tap an underground aquifer or purify swamp water.) The forests hide many nasty monsters, but are a valuable source of timber. Naturally, the greenest part of the March is the smallest. Foraging in the forested mountains and the scrub hills suffers a -2 penalty. The fertile valley gives a +5 bonus to foraging. The large lake pool gives a +4 bonus, with an automatic critical success for trying to find water.
Ancient Ruins
Within the region, there are seven different significant ruins that were built in the past and now serve as the source of various menaces and treasures. Adventurers might see them as “dungeons” ready to raid. Other movers and shakers in the region have taken an interest in the ruins.
Ruin Number One is less than one hundred years old, built in the forested mountains (the south-western area of The Dreadwaters March), and is a strange hybrid outpost/fortress of indeterminate origin. The very isolated settlement slowly declined as natural resources were not enough to support the population, who did not have the skills necessary to maintain the place. Sealed within its walls, to everyone’s blissful ignorance, is a terrifying plague that may get released when the ruins are disturbed. The disease may come from the corpse of some weird creature or from a bizarre magical artefact that got buried within the ruins.
Ruin Number Two is a two-centuries-old Dwarven outpost located at the tip of the scrubland swamp, less than 5 miles from the town. This place, too, fell from a slow natural decay as the Dwarves found the swamp too harsh an environment to keep watch over, leading them to die of a plague that could still threaten the region to this day as the disease spread and mutated within the swamp fauna that caught it off the corpses over the years. Thankfully, no-one has explored the ruins and disturbed the infected dire animals that now make their home in the remnants of the outpost. Yet…
Ruin Number Three is a recently built settlement in the middle of the swamp, so recently it was founded by native humans and it was abandoned thanks to a hardy species of swamp snail that the settlers were relying upon as food dying out from over-hunting. Currently, the ghost town is host to a virulent strain of disease that the local animals are suffering from.
Ruin Number Four is a fortress that was founded by foreign invaders 300 years ago. It can be found on the edge of the scrubland hills, just by the beginning of the forest. It fell into ruins originally due to a plague wiping out the soldiers garrisoned in the fort. Today, the ruined keep is lousy with dangerous mutated cannibal people with twisted magics and cruel cultural practices, but they rarely ever venture out from the inner bailey of the ruins. They sometimes kidnap people and steal things from the nearby village and homestead.
Ruin Number Five is located in the forested mountains. Another dwarven construction built 150 years ago, it was meant to serve as a fortress that maintained and deployed special secret weapons. The military barracks manning the fort were all killed by a wild magic surge that an army engineer-wizard failed to contain. The great war golem the fort kept in storage, however, is still active within and ready to crush, kill and destroy once it receives new orders…
Ruin Number Six was built and abandoned recently, located in the healthy part of the swamp, near a village protected by a formidable witch. It is an outpost of native humans that was wrecked and murdered by military attack less than 100 years ago. The survivors of the slaughter that ruined the outpost have managed to secretly rally within the ruin, having grown mad and vicious in the intervening years since the fall. They now lurk and plot, growing deadlier and more sinister, no doubt corrupted by demons or elder things.
Ruin Number Seven is a bizarre mystery of the scrubland swamp (located along the road between a homestead with a marketplace and a homestead with a chokepoint), apparently some kind of tomb or town (maybe both?) overrun by some terrible natural disaster 100 years ago. No-one knows who or what built this place or what really happened, nor are they aware that the ruin hides a terrible unnatural weapon lying still within.
The Princes and Their Realms
In the Dreadwaters March region, “Prince” is the generic term for the ruler of a realm. These “realms” tend to be half a county in size at best, as the remote terrain and low population naturally constrain the economic and military power of any would-be administration. Certainly, landed knights of an actual kingdom would find the realms grimly poor and somewhat claustrophobic. This creates a pressure-cooker political environment where most powerful people have hardscrabble and perilous reigns with intensely personal stakes.
NOTE: the relevant Rank and/or Status of a Prince is covered by the Very Wealthy Advantage. Technically, their precarious political situation should be more nuanced, but this is Dungeon Fantasy and GMs should simply assume that the position of Prince gets them the Advantage plus special exemptions from the social penalties related to openly carrying weapons and wearing heavy armor in town. (In theory, you could use the More Wealth! Rules from DF Companion 2 page 49 if you really want). Most Princes have courtiers to roll skills such as Administration, Market Analysis, Housekeeping, Finance and Politics for them.
(Full character sheets for each ruler is given in the gallery below.)
Captain Chloe Lavigne
[F, 30 YOA]
Bandit Queen of the Swamp, 250-points
Captain Lavigne rules the second-biggest realm (272 square miles), a stretch of dubious swampland that includes Ruins Six and Seven. She started her first days in the region (after fleeing her old homeland due to outstanding warrants on her head for violent robbery) as the leader of an outlaw band and eventually escalated to stealing the claim to territory rulership through bloody force. Now, Chloe Lavigne calls herself Captain and maintains her power by violence, bribery and cunning. Her cunning is made most apparent when one looks at her court; none of her 4 courtiers (the bailiff, the castellan-steward, the chamberlain, and the justiciar-marshal) are criminals but professional bureaucrats with actual experience in administration instead. Her subordinate highwaymen do not mind, she keeps them well paid and unbothered by administrative duties, giving them the much more fun work of “tax collecting” and killing for the so-called state.
Captain Lavigne’s driving motivation is making money. She’ll be the first to tell you this; she is notoriously blunt and upfront about even her worst ways, no small talk or pleasantries. And her worst ways are awful, indeed. She overeats without much refinement and drinks to excess, her discipline mostly spent on scheduling her hangovers and blackouts to times where she is not needed to attend to important matters of the state. (Her realm includes a master beer brewer and two great vintners, and plenty of their products make it to The Captain’s personal stock.) The lives and feelings of others mean nothing to her. By her reckoning, nothing can change her or stand in her way.
She may have met the true test of her vicious greed in the form of the Gildemeister Alex Starstorm, who she declared war upon in an attempt to take over his wealthy turf. The war has been going for a year now, stalemated by the wizard lord’s excellent self-preservation instincts and superior military resources. Her relationship with the Earl Rolo Cash is only technically better – the Earl demands vengeance upon the bandit queen for insulting him 2 years ago. Captain Lavigne does not remember the insult nor the declaration of incoming payback – her sociopathic mind pays little attention to the mercenary in the north. That might just be her downfall…
She speaks with an accent that your players would call “French” but the PCs would simply identify as “foreign kingdom”. Her hard living and the stresses of ruling have made her tanned skin unpleasantly rough, her blonde hair is unkempt, and her brown eyes are narrow and predatory. The nasty branding on her face marks her as a violent criminal and former prisoner of Her Majesty’s Maximum Security Oubliette. In formal settings, PCs should roll Savoir-Faire skill instead of Streetwise or Carousing to influence her (when she’s off-duty, the opposite applies). She also reacts well to Merchant and Diplomacy but Fast-Talk and Intimidation will not impress her much.
Earl Rolo Cash
[M, 35 YOA]
The Killer in the North, 225-points
Earl Cash is the ruler of what is technically the largest realm in The Dreadwaters March (312 square miles), but that is only impressive so long as you don’t actually walk around it, because the realm is almost completely flat scrubland with only Ruin Two, an underground dungeon and the largest town to break up the bleakness. Earl Cash was born in The March and took up a career as a mercenary, until his ambitions inspired him to organize his significant fighting company into a “nation” by getting settlements to accept his protection and the chain of command. His upstart self-proclaimed title speaks to his goal of ruling a proper nation – a kingdom or an empire rather than the “principality” he rules now. His courtiers number 10, with 4 of those positions being sinecures he used to buy support when he was feeling insecure of his rulership. His tax collector, viceroy, groomsmen, marshal and justiciar are all old comrades of the Earl from his mercenary days, trusted comrades who have seen battle alongside him. The rest are miscellaneous bureaucrats and political animals who had enough juice to make it to the inner circle.
On a personal level, the Earl is a grasping social climber with a superiority complex, albeit one with a strong personal code of loyalty and commitment to keeping his word once given. His signature on a contract is rock solid and his men know he will fight and die alongside them without hesitation. His catchphrase “BANG!” has more than worn out its welcome amongst his subordinates, but they don’t bother to complain. Like many sensible people, he has a strong distrust and dislike for demons and elder things, and he suspects foul worshippers of such monsters secretly lurk within The March’s settlements.
What no-one but him knows is that he murdered his father back when he was 18, mostly out of resentment that his father did not recognize his greatness. Very few people know that he is the younger brother of the Gildemeister Alex Starstorm, who he bitterly avoids and never mentions unprompted. The bandit queen south of his borders is a target of his hate, and the Earl plans to avenge his honor for her disrespect with an assassination attempt.
Earl Rolo Cash is as grizzled as you’d expect a professional fighting veteran to look, even with his desire to appear stylish and urbane. His blonde hair is all too often unwashed and his grey eyes are too hard to fit in with the upper class he envies. His freckles fail to make him seem younger. His body is an impressive display of fitness and combat prowess. Appealing to his pride and pretense with Savoir-Faire or fawning Public Speaking works best socially. Diplomacy’s attempt at reason and compromise will bounce right off his hubris, and Intimidation is too thuggish and low-brow to sway a man with his blood-soaked history and aspirations to culture and privilege.
Gildemeister Alex Starstorm
[M, 40 YOA]
Wizard Lord in a Bad Mood, 225-points
A native son of The Dreadwaters March (and, privately, the older brother of Earl Cash), Gildemeister Alex Starstorm is a relatively uncommon sight in the region; a properly educated wizard. This has preserved his reign and realm despite his many troubles and personal problems – the superstitious and wary people of The March are extremely reluctant to annoy someone wielding such strange and deadly power. It will make a great difference in the ongoing war of defense against Captain Lavigne. His realm is the smallest of the three Princes (208 square miles), but it is the richest (thanks to actually good terrain with plenty of natural resources) and it has a fertile valley, a large freshwater lake, and the mysterious Ruin Four within its borders. Around the northern edges of the realm, Gildemeister Starstorm has fortified settlements with strongholds and chokepoints, anticipating violent invasion from Captain Lavigne. He has six courtiers to assist him in ruling the principality, all of them civil servants and all of them beaten down and put-upon by Starstorm’s pain-in-the-you-know-where personality.
His father never really appreciated or encouraged Starstorm’s magical talents, which led him to change his name and forsake his family for greener pastures – but he eventually found that his attempt at building a Wizards’ Guild came to nothing and so he claimed a rulership as a consolation prize. Along the way, his fellow magi and personal coven became potential rivals and soft targets for ill-gotten sources of occult lore. He systematically betrayed them all, often getting them run out of the March or killed, all so he could sleep soundly at night and purloin their research. Nowadays, The Gildemeister’s ambition has faded and he merely wishes to survive the usual dangers of life in the March. He runs from danger except for when his wild anger management issues compel him to rage and rant. It is a common sight to see The Gildemeister react to most frustrations with screaming foul-mouthed abuse to anyone in the area (his anger is especially stoked by a certain number that reminds him of his father and his betrayal of his old wizard pals). Even when calm, Starstorm constantly insults other people. His experiences with the arcane have only strengthened the sensible and common hatred for demons and elder things that most people have.
Alex Starstorm has found his reign over the rich patch of the March is threatened by the bandit queen of the swamp, whom he sees as nothing special, declaring war on him for the wealth found in his principality. He tries not to think or interact with his younger brother Rolo Cash, who had the favoritism of his father growing up despite his mediocrity and willful ignorance, much to Starstorm’s bitterness.
Gildemeister Alex Starstorm has blond hair and brown eyes, with a well-shaved face. His pale skin speaks to a lifetime spent in scholarly isolation and careful avoidance. Only the harsh conditions of the March keep him in shape and finely honed for escaping would-be killers. Alex deliberately tries to keep his appearance unimpressive and non-distinctive, a task helped by his extensive grasp of illusion magic. He never smiles. As a yellow-belly, Intimidation shuts down his abuse and gets the most of him, although you should keep your bullying subtle and private to avoid provoking him to the point of lashing out. Fast-Talk and Acting won’t bamboozle the sharp-minded wizard – but Writing might be worth a shot, since intellectual pursuits are impoverished in The March and the Gildemeister misses such enlightened conversations.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Three Hundred and Thirty-Three 