Nepu-Nepu - Campaign Diary: Archipelago Adventures - Pt. 36

Unfortunately I missed an article last <del>week</del> month due to a variety of reasons. I got sick. I was passing kidney stones. I had writers block. I was lacking some creative umph to get me going. I wasn’t sure what to write about. I like mechanics, I write about mechanics because I think rules are fun… which is a weird statement for me as I’m sure a few of my players would probably call me Chaotic Evil.

Writing story is always a challenge for me. I write stories by the barest of outlines and then creating what I need on the spot from everything I am exposed too. Need a dungeon? Hey, I remember that one random dungeon I saw in an old adventure, I’ll just use that. Doing all that prep work when my players may never see something? That just feels like busy work.

If I need a cool, bespoke monster? Well, there is a close-ish monster in the Monster Manual, and if I just up the to-hit and throw an extra die of damage and give it Power Word Kill, that should work quite well against the level 1 party. I’m probably joking, but now I have ideas.

So where does that leave us for our archipelago adventure? We aren’t done, but a lot of the crunchy mechanics in our RPG sandwich is already spread across the bread. The crunchy tortillas are spread across the velvety tortilla soup. The crunchy candy outershell is already applied to the not-great chocolate insides… I promise I’m almost done with the forced metaphors.

I have the crunch. It’s good, I’m pretty happy with what we have so far. Now, it is the time to focus on the story, which is where it brings us today. Today, we are working on the story dammit! Well… we were, but we have something to do first. AND THEN, we will work on the story. Pinky-promise. Unless I get kidney stones again, those fucking suck.

Name Change

I think its time we finally renamed Nepu-Nepu to something a bit more… well… less made up. Now, here comes the problem. I want this island to have flavor and a name is a great way to do that… but if you go too deep into flavor it starts coming across… how do I put this…. racist. It comes across really, really racist. Adventures already have the problem of creating the idea that a group of people need saving by outsiders who may not even be the same race or even from the same world.

If I call this island Ching-Chong that is a very specific flavor and it is coming across about as racist as possible, and really… Americans don’t need my help with coming across as more racist.

So, what are you to do when you want to create something with some flavor without going overboard? I always go to google translate and feed it key words that I think describes something and use names either directly from there or massage the letters a bit until it creates a word I like. What do I mean by that? Well let’s take the Yuan-ti as an example.

In my home world of Talia, my Yuan-ti are similar to what is written in the monster manual, but their flavor and goals are adjusted.

Names: Polish names that are short
Examples: Iza Roksana, Sonia, Ilona, Jaro, Iwo, Kazik, Zula

Flavor: The outward appearance of interest and hanging on the words of powerful adventurers, especially ones they are thinking they might have to seduce. They are internally rolling their eyes. Make big shows of donating or being charitable, but always ensure they gain something from such actions. The only charitable actions they might ever do in their life is to further the brood and their Król.

Goals: To infiltrate and deceive. Not interested in true relationships but rather the impersonation of that. The pureblood-yuan-ti are used as merchants to other kingdoms and used to gather intel, slaves, powerful magic items, and wealth to be sent to the Król (king in polish).

Now, let’s take that over to the island of Nepu-Nepu.

Flavor

We are dealing with an archipelago that is fairly tropical. My biggest inspiration is the Philippines and many of them speak Samoan, so what I am then going to do is pull up google translate and throw a bunch of different words into it. I am looking to find a word that brings to mind the idea of archipelagos, the flavor of this island and what, at least to me, feels like a welcoming place for adventurers.

I tried several words, but I landed on: Iron with the translated word coming out as u’amea. I like it. It feels right, and with the word Iron as the basis, it gives me a good idea for this city. It has iron walls and is highly defensible, so when the hobgoblins come and capture the citizens it makes it even more impressive!

So, our home island will henceforth be known as U’amea. How does that affect flavor? Well, we already established they have great walls of iron… which is a pretty impressive feat as they are on the ocean and that would require a lot of expense to keep them from rusting. Which we can use for our city. They have a lot of wealth and an easy access to iron to build those gates. Because they have easy access to iron, they have a lot of miners, and as they are a port city they will of course have a lot of sailors/fishermen.

Government

Our government here will be comprised of leaders. Because when I put into google translate the word “leader” it gave me the samoan word “taitai” and when I filtered it through google translate a few more times, it turns out taitai means leaders. So I took that as inspiration that the government will be leaders, plural. So the government will be ruled by multiple people and it will fall on their shoulders to oversee U’amea.

We will have these council of people be our quest-givers and will eventually get them fleshed out even more for our party.

Outsiders Perspective

How do we define U’amea? If we were to walk the streets, what could we expect? I think with the idea that they have iron walls, we can expect a certain level of soot hanging in the air and buildings to be made of great material… though probably not iron as most individuals would find that needlessly expensive to maintain. The richest might have a singular iron wall they keep in their homes, probably in the main foyer. On this iron wall they can carve in runes of protection for their family, as well as provide a sort of history about the family. Could be fun to play with that. Maybe the richest of the rich would even have a magic-user come by and add illusions to their iron wall, or have them cast a type of antipathy/sympathy spell to attract visitors to specific portions of the iron wall if they want to emphasize a great victory. Wizards are pretty handy.

As the temperature of this location is hot, there should be lots of big windows overlooking the ocean. This allows the residents to get lots of cool air from the ocean and keep their homes pretty comfortable. Also, on the top of buildings are patios of sorts where you can relax, get a tan or have a picnic.

Because of the close proximity of the ocean and a ready supply of iron, lots of artisans will combine the ocean, like pearls or fish scales or coral, and iron to create works of art. In the city, at the docks can be a massive statue combining iron and coral to create a monument to the city itself.

Inhabitant’s Perspective

After a few other aesthetics, lets think of the people. How do they treat outsiders? Well, they have a hatred for hobgoblins and goblinoids in general. Hard to like creatures that keep on raiding your friends on the other islands. And the folk are proud. They have a massive iron wall, no one else does and they don’t get attacked by raiders. They are safe behind their wall, and probably rub this in the face of other inhabitants of the archipelago… probably not to be mean, but by accident or carelessness. Easy to say something rude and not realize the implications.

The majority of the populace can be separated between working on the land as a farmer, miner or crafter and those who work the ocean as a fisher, pearl diver or sailor. Which means most people here aren’t going to be very wealthy, but there will be an upper class, and middle class, that think quite highly of themselves. As rich folk are tended to be portrayed, they are smug about their station in life and while some may be well intentioned, many are interested in making more money.

Which brings us to a story beat. What better way to get through iron walls than if you have someone on the inside. One of the best ways to infiltrate through walls is to have someone open the gate for you. One of our merchants was promised a lot of money to provide access to the city, to provide access to potential slaves. I bet the merchant even has an evil name like Matai Leage or Caleb or something else incredibly evil. This can be something that the party uncovers, and can provide more details for them, though it is optional if they are interested in following that quest. Not everyone cares to figure out the political intrigue stuff.

Also, Matai will be an honorific title as Matai means master in Samoan. Boom, more flavor. I’m so good at translating words! … Sure hope there isn’t a negative connotation of master.

U’amea

Alright, we finally have some ground to work on for our adventure, and we are going to start building our adventure from the beginning and see how we can create an exciting adventure. Hope you’re ready, cause I’m ready to write this all up and maybe in a year or two, release this as a full-fledged adventure for everyone.