Five Shires Gazetteer Alternate Edition
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1 Five Shires Gazetteer Alternate Edition Editor: John Biles Primary Author: John Biles Vaults of Pandius and Wizard's Community Mystara Materials and Concepts Used in this Gazetteer Creators: DM@Wizard's Community--Mystara (Write-ups on the High Heroes) Marco Dalmonte (Suggested list of Shires Immortals) Håvard (Shadowdeep name and Races of the Shadowdeep) Thorfinn Tait (Map of the Five Shires as of 1000 AC, which I then added to) Andrew Theisen (Various ideas involving Halflings, Blackflame, and Glaurants, Regions of the Shadowdeep) Beau Yarbrough (Hin Master Prestige Class) Table of Contents DM's Guide to the Five Shires - 2 Welcome to the Five Shires, Alternate Edition - 2 History as the Immortals Know It - 4 A DM's Shires Almanac - 9 The Sacred Mysteries - 15 Halflings, Heroes, and Highwayhin - 16 A DM's Guide to the Five Shires - 29 Highshire - 29 Eastshire - 32 Seashire - 34 Heartshire - 38 Southshire - 40 Shireton - 42 Shire-Related Locations Outside the Shires - 43 Adventures - 43 Player's Guide to the Five Shires - 56 What Everyone Knows About the Shires - 56 History as the Hin Know it - 59 Peoples of the Shires - 64 Clan Life - 65 Shire Government, Law, and Justice - 67 Rules and Miscellanea - 69 Hin Master Prestige Class - 74 2 Welcome to the Five Shires, Alternate Edition Why an Alternate Firstly, agricultural countries Thus, as the Five Shires undergo a boom/bust cycle which periodically becomes full of too Edition? is driven by population growth many people for everyone to have and the limits of the ability of the six meals a day, the inhabitants The standard version of the Five land to sustain such growth. It become progressively more Shires is a fine enough place to begins with a small population suspicious, protective of their come from, but it suffers the farming only the best lands. As relatives over strangers, problem of not giving adventurers the population grows, they spread quarrelsome, sneaky, and even much to do. The folk of the Five out to begin farming more violent. The population pressure Shires are largely happy and marginal lands. Eventually, all the must be relieved either by content with little internal conflict land is taken, and further expansion or by civil war which and not even much external population growth is only possible cuts the population down to size. conflict. Its inhabitants live quiet, if you either conquer more land. happy fulfilled lives unless This can lead either to bursts of This interlocks with a third cycle, something invades, and even that colonization and expansion or else the cycle of growth and shrinkage doesn't happen all that often. to bloody war as everyone begins of the population of the region of killing each other to take control the Shadowdeep located under the In other words, it's a great place to of the best land. Five Shires. Manipulated by the live, but not a place for Deep Glaurants, the humanoids adventurers. Even the magical Secondly, this interlocks with the and other creatures which dwell paradise of Alfheim has some nature of halflings (postulated for below the land periodically erupt conflicts, problems, and dangerous this supplement). When food is upwards, seeking to seize the places to form a basis for readily available, halflings eat like Crucibles of Blackflame and to adventures. The Five Shires pigs and are happy and content rule the land for themselves. deserves the same. and good natured. They become a While the monsters outstripping peaceful folk, able to fight if their resources follows a cycle Thus, this edition seeks to make survival is necessary, but inclined similar to that of the Halflings, the Five Shires a place to have to strongly lawful and good their cycle is timed differently, adventurers, as well as a place for behaviours. However, when and thus has different results, bored adventurers to take their starvation sets in, they become depending on its intersection with leave of to make trouble increasingly sneaky, cranky, and the Halfling psychological and elsewhere. quarrelsome, as their survival agricultural cycles. instincts begin to override their good natures. Halfling It is of course in the nature of The Twin Driving adventurers tend to be a lot things that all three cycles are now Dynamics of the sneakier and dangerous and theft- starting to peak simultaneously in Alternate Five Shires inclined than normal halflings in the year 1000 AC, when the player part because they don't have time characters step onto the scene... The history of the Alternate Five for meals six times a day. Or the Shires is driven by several money to pay for it. Until they interlocking cycles. steal it. 3 The Final Goal of a Five own limits on population, which is improve production.) This would why its inhabitants periodically bring about the most changes in Shires Campaign invade the Shires.) There are the Shires, and may not be to those within the shires currently everyone's taste in a fantasy game. The Five Shires are, in a sense, advocating this path. It is probably the easiest (at least doomed to repeat themselves in an in some ways) to bring to pass, endless cycle of growth, The second major possibility is though the solution most likely to prosperity, overcrowding, and perhaps the hardest, the lead to external conflict with new slaughter, unless they break out of transformation of the Shires into a trade rivals. It would also horrify this cycle. The ultimate goal of a magical land like that of the Elves, some halflings who are very fond Five Shires campaign would be to tapping into the power of the of their traditional ways, despite end this repetition and open up Blackflame. It is hardest because the problems inherent in them. new vistas which would enable the the Halflings, with good reason, Shires to overcome the limits of an are not fond of Wizards and The final possibility is the agricultural lifestyle in a restricted Sorcerors, associating them with conquest of new surface lands and area. This product proposes Glantri and Alphatia. However, it the planting of colonies. This is a several possible methods by which would be possible to combine the task well suited for wandering player characters could bring this powers of the clan Crucibles with heroic adventurers (as players tend to pass. And, of course, players the naturally occurring fonts of to be) who now want to found being what they are, they no doubt Blackflame found in the caverns their own dominion. Fort Doom is will think of six other solutions, below to massively increase the ripe for conquest by heroes; other then someone will fumble a land's fertility while restraining land expansion would have to go crucial roll during the one they that of the halflings themselves further afield, though. The Five choose and everything will go to somewhat. This would be a huge Shires is increasingly hemmed in hell, requiring death-defying project, requiring the cooperation by civilized lands, making this a improvisation to avert ecological of many Masters, Clerics, Druids, potentially difficult task, unless apocalypse. Wizards, Sorcerors, etc, etc, but one can convince enough halflings would greatly lengthen the cycles to move to Norwold or the Savage Or maybe that's just how my plans and moderate their effects. A few Coast or Davania. But then, fail when I'm playing. within the shires look to this path, players specialize in making the but tend to keep it quiet for fear of impossible happen. A fair number The first major possibility is being lynched. of Shire folk support this solution. expansion into the Shadowdeep. Especially if it's other people who In the past, the halflings have The third major possibility may or will have to do the leaving. tended to try to expand on the may not be to the tastes of DMs surface, which has sometimes and players in a game such as this. And, of course, the players will no worked and sometimes not. While A commercial and/or industrial doubt come up with solutions of halflings do like living semi- revolution would enable the their own to the problem, once underground, they have long Halflings to become traders and they understand it. No solution forgotten how to live in caverns. manufacturers, buying raw should be easy, but in the end, it's Properly instructed and with the materials, processing them, and the player's job to outsmart the major underground menaces turning them into manufactured DM, and the DM's job to take it defeated, there is room for them to goods on a larger scale, then using gracefully. massively expand into the the profits to import enough food Shadowdeep, relieving population to feed a hungry Halfling pressures, if only for a time. population. (And to continue to (After all, the Shadowdeep has its 4 History as the Immortals Know It Around 1300 BC, the Serpent- undead or put to work as slaves. then pass on quietly. Furthermore, Men, created so long ago by the But when Taymor was destroyed their few children oft proved too now long imprisoned Carnifex, by a massive earthquake in 1750 adventuresome for their own engaged in their final round of BC, with the help of their good, growing up bored in a safe empire building, led by the Lord Immortal patrons, the Gentle Folk land and seeking excitement they of the Golden Throne, possessor had escaped slavery and purified proved unable to survive. And of an ancient artifact created by a the forests and hills of the Shires, increasingly, the land was full of now dead Immortal of Conquest.