I didn’t add this to the official
Kickstarter promises at http://bit.ly/13TrueWays, but one
thing I’m dying to do in the 13True Ways
book for 13th Age is a map
of the carved and magical back of a Koru behemoth.
Koru behemoths were a wonderful
suggestion from Keith Baker when Jonathan and Keith and I started doing initial
concepting on 13th Age. Yes,
Keith was involved in the earliest days of 13th
Age, and he contributed greatly to notions including the Elf Queen’s position
as ruler of three cultures, the Crusader’s role as the champion of the dark
gods, and the icon who became the Prince of Shadows. Keith’s biggest
contribution coincidentally shares his initials.
From the 13th
Age book: The Koru behemoths are a
widely scattered population of twelve to twenty enormous eight-legged creatures
from the dawn of the world. They look something like a cross between an
elephant and a turtle, but each behemoth has grown in different ways and
reshaped its shell carapace to suit itself, so no two look alike. The behemoths
are so large that it’s difficult to form an accurate opinion of what an entire
behemoth looks like since you can only see one angle at a time.
These town-or-city-sized beasts migrate
counter-clockwise around the fringes of the Dragon Empire. On our map you can
run your finger over the approximate path the behemoths follow as they curve
around the Empire. Nothing, not even the Diabolist, the Three, or the Archmage messes
with a Koru behemoth.
Therefore the behemoths’ great
shelled backs make splendid homes for nomads, barbarians, monsters, and magicians.
Magical rituals allow some groups to create permanent homes on the behemoths,
less successful settlers only last a season or half a circle. Jonathan and I
make a few suggestions for what might be on behemoths’ backs in the 13th Age book but it’s
another area where we don’t want to say too much. We think it’s more fun for
GMs to come up with their own behemoth societies and plotlines instead of
picking and choosing from our ideas. We’ve seen some great examples already,
including a traveling city of thieves in a game run by Martin Killmann, as he
wrote up in early playtest feedback:
“When I read about the
Koru Behemoth, I came up with an entire city on one - I call it Red Lantern
City. It's on the back of a giant turtle. During the day, when the turtle is
moving, the city is asleep, but it awakes at night, when the turtle rests.
“As a moving target,
nobody can claim authority over it, and so it became a self-organizing city run
by the guild council, primarily the Wizard Guild (public engineering and
services) and Thieves' Guild (law enforcement). It's pretty crammed, but public
transportation is offered by flying carpets.
“Main sources of
income are narcotics, prostitution and gambling, which are offered to any city
that the Behemoth passes. It's also a haven for bohemians and exiled artists.”
Ah, exiled artists. Warms my
bohemian heart, it does. If the Kickstarter goes through and we get to work
with Lee Moyer and Aaron McConnell on art again, I’m going to turn Lee’s skills
in bizarre-mapping and Aaron’s talents in draw-anything to illustrate the back
of a Koru behemoth. I may still decide NOT to illustrate the behemoth itself,
maybe that should be left to the
imagination. But a behemoth-back would show off a truly unusual champion-tier
environment, something that GMs will be able to borrow pieces of as visuals for
their own campaign even if they don’t want to play the full map.
We’ll have the same philosophy
about the maps of the overworld and forests in the book. The point will be to
provide maps that can inspire daydreams as well as games, maps that give you
the feeling that you could find your way around in this fantasy world while
still being surprised.
And in a perfect world, although
Keith’s not involved with this incarnation of the Koru, he’ll have another take
on them in a project of his own . . . . soon.
