Originally posted for Patreon in May of 2022.

Campfire Story

Devils of The Old World

By Dawn Rucker

I think we all heard tells of the place that was and the creatures that roamed the wilds. But you know one such monster was said to eat thousands of people every day.

It tunneled through the ground like a Dirt Trog. It could see in the dark and even better during the day. Some were so fast they were a blur as they ran past, and their howl was deafening.

So, if it was so loud, how did it catch anyone? Why couldn’t they hear it coming? Why didn’t they hide?

That was the worst part… its eyes. They say if you looked at it, you were hypnotized and just went straight in. People would even fight to be first.

They left their tracks all over the world, and if you could learn to avoid them, you might survive them. They went by many names but the main ones were called waysubs and wayrales. Now, we have a lot of dangerous beasts to deal with but I’m glad there ain’t no wayrales here. Of course, it’s a big world, and maybe we just don’t know yet what followed us from there. Can’t never tell.

Digital Events

You can find us streaming on Twitch:

• Tuesdays @ 6:30 PM – Crypt Monkey Paints with Dawn
• Wednesdays @ 7:30 PM – Crypt Monkey Paints AND World Building with Dawn & Ty
• Sundays @ 3:00 PM – Enby Crafty with Kora

All times at in US Central Time.

Recently Completed

Considering that this is the first newsletter, it’s probably not surprising that this is something that has been recently completed! No, I promise I’m not mailing it in, I’ll talk about another recently completed item below. However, I did want to take the opportunity to mention this “completed” item as a W.I.P.

Just as we work to include Crowd Forgers in spit-balling ideas that may make its way into The Plain, I want your input here too! This is, after all, your newsletter, so if there is anything you’d like to see added here let us know. Maybe we’re missing some insights into the development and writing process you’d enjoy, please, don’t hesitate to give us your feedback. And that’s why I have this “completed” item marked as a W.I.P., it’s likely to change in the future.

OK, something a little more fun! Dawn has finished another Campfire Story. I think we hinted at this one during a recent stream but I’m not sure. We expect this kind of campfire story to pop up from time to time, that is to say, we expect there to be many campfire stories about the legendary character known simply as Mark.

As one of the most famous personalities of Kethar, Mark is sure to popup in regaling tails often. Occasionally, he may even be accompanied by his loyal and brave, yet un-named, companions.

The Campfire Story Dawn has written includes a fearsome monster near a frightened, seaside town. I can’t tell you how it ends, but it’s lucky for the town that Mark was at hand to lend his services.

It’s possible we’ll release this Campfire Story to Agdal Farmers and Placement Advisors this month or next but in any case, I expect you’ll read it soon!

In The Works

Arrow Blinks and the Kern Clan of Far Eagle Valley are taking up some of my time right now. We have a Topic Discussion Event planned for the end of the month with Placement Advisors concerning this subject, and I do have a healthy number of notes built up on this topic. So, we are working to get some of the background ready ahead of this meeting to provide Placement Advisors with sufficient context.

This is a fairly robust subject as well. As we develop items of interest first for the stories, for the most part, our initial development may just be a few paragraphs on most subjects. We’ve actually taken to calling these “cards” for the time being, because they don’t need a lot of information to make them useful for introducing the subject in a story.

Later, when we beginning developing specifically for the game setting, you’ll notice that we’ll continue development on things that were “completed” for use in the stories. That development phase will be bigger because, of course, we’ll be applying stats to things that were simply described before.

Then there are subjects like Arrow Blinks and the Kern Clan. These subjects are much larger even as we simply mean to describe them, and with good reason.

Arrow Blinks, as creatures of Kethar go, are super feature rich! This is why the incredibly rare, reptilian flyer is so valuable, it does a lot of things that are very useful to humans. So, it stands to reason that the people involved in the trade of this creature will need some serious explanation as well. Enter the Kern Clan, a family that has controlled the only known nesting grounds of Arrow Blinks on the Meera Dalal continent for centuries.

Luckily most of our subjects will take very little development to be useful, at least to begin with. But we certainly have a few, like Arrow Blinks and the Kern Clan, that simply demand a little more attention.

I’m honestly not sure at this point when any of this material on these subjects will be released, but I imagine we’ll be able to share some in the coming months.

In The Pipeline

Part of what I believe this first newsletter should do is set a baseline. Not only for what to expect in the newsletter itself, but also to draw an understanding of our long-term goals and process. With that in mind, I’m going to talk about an exciting project that won’t actually be complete anytime soon, the map of Meera Dalal. While we’re starting with a short story book as the first big project around The Plain, our immediate goal thereafter is a RPG setting.

Now, I certainly don’t want to take away from the importance of a map when writing stories. It begins functioning as an important tool for the author. Drawing those lines makes it easier to place your scene in a specific place in the world and describe that moment with more breath of detail, more realism, and more life. If the map is included in your content, it supports your vision of that world when the reader is asked to enter

it. I also think it helps make that world more real in your reader’s mind. So, yeah, it’s super important to our writing process and post-publishing.

Where this map is concerned though, where my head is when I point at a spot on the map for Dawn to move something, well gaming is where I’m aiming. (Yeah, I know, dumb rhyme. Hehe)

All the important things that I mentioned above concerning maps for writers and readers are also true from game masters and role players. However, gamers have additional uses for a game map. Not only does it help drawn them into the world, it assists them with making decisions.

As with a story, the map gives them a home for their minds to imagine in. But a map in gaming also becomes the tool it was meant to be IRL, a guide in the ultimate question: “Where do we go next?”

We are taking care with the map to cover both of these purposes, so this will be a living project for some time to come. When we release a version of the map, keep in mind it’s a new version and you will likely see entire mountain ranges slide from one are to another then maybe even disappear. My thoughts on this part of the project is that it should, by the end, resemble something like the Game of Thrones map on HBO; every time you see the map you are eyeing it for changes in the landscape.