Up From Hell

Zasto Filistian, wizard of Seapath, returns from a trip to Hell, emerging from a sewer well. His mind struggles to contain the lost spell of immortality, the object of his quest. His imps offer him a special book in which to transcribe the spell (and a towel).

The city of Seapath is one of the five cities of Yria. It is perhaps the most accessible city, especially for the low-minded and adventure-ready. It is sprawled across a mountain pass leading to the western seas and you can see it in all its glory on the cover of Black Pudding #5. Note the angry assault by Url'Armagog, one of the Children of the Worm Witch, his slumber disturbed from the depths of Lake Drowning.

Ah, Yria.

You know how every Dungeon Master worth their salt has a world of their own? It's true. Mine started the day I learned about the existence of D&D. I spent my first few years as a gamer gaming alone. I spent countless hours in my room making D&D characters, writing elaborate histories, drawing them, making ornate character sheets for them, and running them through solo adventures. Eventually I compiled all my notes and ideas into a three ring binder labeled "Midaka", my campaign world.

This morphed over time. Much of the juvenility of Midaka was left by the side of the road on my journey into proper adult elfgamehood. But much of the DNA is still there, along with all the other stuff I've added over the many years.

Sometime around the mid-2000s I had an explosion of ideas that lead to the Pan-Gea comic book and the creation of Yria - my fantasy RPG "campaign setting".

Sometime soon, perhaps in 2022, I hope to create an iteration of the setting for proper use in fantasy TTRPGs. A reference work, a user's manual, a tome of inspiration (or two). Working title has been "Doomslakers B/X" for a while, but I'm not sure what will stick. What makes the most sense is to just call it Yria. Not a D&D Gazetteer style work full of epic levels of detail, but more of a art-before-function work of inspirational material very lightly sketching out a fantasy world. The imagery will do most of the talking. Random tables will fill in most of the detail. The actual prose bits will be more akin to what you see in X1: Isle of Dread... short and high level, more a collection of descriptors than a fleshed out narrative.

But we'll see how it goes.