This morning I’m taking a break from banging on about Skyraiders, to pop back and look at part of Grogzilla.

• Grogzilla on ZineQuest 2 on Kickstarter

The Six Travellers is a culture write up for Mythras by the Design Mechanism. It revolves around a group of Travellers, who are searching for lost roads and trade routes. Unlike nomads, they rely upon a network of established  Sanctuaries within city-states with whom they have treaties and established settlements of their own which wax and wane in size depending on the number of wagon trains who are gathered there.

Let’s hear it from one of the members of the culture itself.

The Six Traveller Voice

We are looking. Looking for the Ways, the trade routes that were lost to our ancestors when the world went into the Fall when the Ignorance came out of the shadows.

We are led by our gods who are the Six.

• Gura the Chief who leads us down the Way of Lions
• Heresta the Healer who knows the Lavender Way.
• Julio the Baker, who owns the bountiful Stone the Cow.
• Iljoy the Magician, Master/Mistress (who can tell) of Mysteries.
• Gregora the Sword Master who fights with skill and precision against ignorance.
• Yulpa the Sunchaser who rides faster than the Eastern Wind.

They guide our great covered wagons as they roll across the land, from city to city trading and bringing messengers and passengers as well as goods. You are a rider who has yet to settle down and ride with your family in a wagon. As well as protecting your kin from raiders, you must also investigate reports and rumours of sightings of the Way Stones. These magical stones fell from the heavens after the Fall. Gifts from the gods to help us find the way. Perhaps you will find a Great Way Stone and become one of the heroic Waymasters and Waymistresses, heroes of our people who rule us from the great gatherings of the trains at the yearly camps, and who call us every five years to the great camp at our city of Nexus.

Yulpa the Sunchaser, Mistress of the East Wind

A write up of Yulpa the Sunchaser was an early stretch goal of this campaign that funded. Yulpa is a horse warrior/whisper that most members of the culture are members of purely out of practicality. She’s a good starting point for player characters, hence her inclusion in Grogzilla. The whole Six Traveller culture is loosely formed, so it is easy to drop into an existing game setting. The player characters never need to know its there until they encounter some brightly coloured magically coloured non-player characters who ride around in groups on horses or one of their wagon trains.

So where is this all leading? Well somewhere nasty and unpleasant, probably around Halloween on Kickstarter. Gentlepeople and Wildthings of all ages, may I present…

The Isle of the Dead

In the Kingdom of Tura when monarchs die, they make the final journey to the Isle of the Dead. It is an arduous journey that only royalty may make. The corpse is prepared by the priesthood of Shem and then is taken overland to a secret port, where a boatman takes the body to the Isle and from there it passes through the Door to Eternity into parts unknown.

Only the Brotherhood of Shem knows that something has gone wrong with the delivery of the last King.  Now they must get a group of foreigners together to find out what has happened. Perhaps these chosen ones will get the opportunity to peak through the Door of Eternity and see what is on the other side?

In this adventure, the characters are those foreigners that the Brotherhood gets in, and their outsider status gives them a unique opportunity to learn about the local culture and unravel the mystery. As well as the adventure itself, it will have a full write up the Six Traveller cults, an “What my Wagon Chief told me” Q&A as a quick in-character primer. Overall the Six Travellers are a pre-made set of deities with a culture that is tailor-made as for travelling adventurers.

So the articles in Grogzilla are a way of getting a sneak peek and some immediately gameable content, before the Isle of the Dead kickstarts in Oct/Nov of this year.

If you were wondering what inspired me, it was this rather brooding piece of music by Rachmaninoff which has the painting by Arnold Böcklin which inspired it embedded in the youtube video (see below). This vista had my jaw on the floor thinking “that looks like a good adventure location, I wonder what is going on there?”