Alfdaín Ascendant

Calidar’s upcoming Series 3 project focuses on the elves. Barring unforeseen production changes, the author is pleased to announce the participation of Thorfinn Tait, master cartographer, and of Jeff Easley tentatively for the cover art. Joseph Garcia will provide internal illustration (b/w inks) and Janet Deaver-Pack line and text editing. Calidar gamebooks are intended for use with mainstream RPGs. As established in the two previous series, the new project will include:

• A Gazetteer: 132 pages color, PDF format or printed (hardcover or softcover). This book is already written and most of its maps are in their final states as of mid-May 2021.
• A Players’ Guide: About 24-28 pages, color, PDF format or softcover
• An Adventure Book: 24-68 pages, color, PDF format or softcover. Final page count will depend on stretch goals during the crowdfunding event. The more backers, the greater the adventure for the same price.
• Two Conversion Booklets: About 24 pages each, color, PDF format or softcover. They provide all game stats from the previous three titles specifically for use with Labyrinth Lord^tm and Osric^tm.

Click here for the preview page on Kickstarter, and select the "Remind Me" button near the upper right corner. The launch date will be June 9, at 09:00 am CST.  

The Cal3 Gazetteer

The Queen’s Gift: As with previous releases, this campaign book’s opening chapter is a novelette running 18 pages. It is the third episode of the Star Phoenix adventures, a skyship exploring the Great Caldera. The story is told in the style of the Voyage of the Princess Ark originally published in Dragon Magazine in the 1990s. The Queen’s Gift features a mysterious living skyship.

History: The Gazetteer’s main body goes on to unveil the history of the elves, covering events in their ancestral moon, Alorea, and in the Confederacy of Alfdaín on Calidar itself, a former colony of Alorea. The history tells of a bitter rivalry between the old elven empire and the younger, independent nation.

Geography: This chapter focuses on Alfdaín, describing the lay of the land, the people, the economy, and the region’s climates. More than 12 full-page maps are featured, including a monumental 9-page atlas based on Thorfinn Tait’s topographical artwork and an overview of Undersea, the world of the sea elves, along with a map of the marine floor.

Riddle of the Woods: A sinister event, care of the old empire’s nefarious machinations, corrupted some of the forests covering Alfdaín. The evil plot lies behind this magical plague, threatening to overtake the whole of the confederacy. Each tainted region’s effects receive a detailed description.

The Law and the Sword: Alfdaín features an alliance of three sovereign realms. Who holds the power in each dominion, how they interact with each other, what armed forces they possess, how the traditional clans work, and what laws are in effect comes through in these pages.

Behind the Curtains: Discover the guilds, brotherhoods, and secret societies in Alorea and Alfdaín. They are the tools behind Alorean schemes and Alfdaín’s survival. Whether player characters will tangle with them is less a question of when but rather how, and on whose behalf.

Elves of Calidar: The looks of five elven races, their motivations, styles, and game-related abilities receive meticulous treatments. The Sherandol are forest elves. Staunch defenders of freedom, they favor traditional clans. They dominate in much of Alfdaín. Their allies, the Elëan, favor mountains, relying on their wings to travel quickly. The Meruín dwell on the coasts and below the sea. Their troubles come from a mysterious menace in the marine depths against which they dispatched the Knights of the Rising Tide. The Tolarin are dark-skinned shadow dwellers, strong in magic. The Sòldor, as pale as their Tolarin allies are dark, bear a martial demeanor. They build great cities and, on Alorea, form an arrogant and merciless ruling class.

City of Mythuin: The capital city of Alfdaín is featured here, with district-by-district descriptions, as well as significant work on the sewers and other areas below ground. Time/location-sensitive random encounters, mini-adventures, and four pages of maps provide all details needed to grasp the city’s layout and its hidden dynamics.

Work in Progress

Alorea: The old, off-world empire receives its own chapter. Its rulers command all on this moon. A magnificent two-page map shows the moon’s climate zones, biomes, topography, roads, major cities, and their inhabitants’ attitudes toward the Alorean dictatorship.

A Cast of Many: All the key personalities of Alfdaín and a few outer-world figures are described here, along with rules-agnostic game stats. This who’s-who catalog weaves a tangled web of clan intrigues, realm politics, and the schemes of secret societies.

Beasties in the Wilds: One does not have a worthy campaign setting without a few more fun monsters to amuse, annoy, or scare players with. On the menu: the abyssal dread and its ixthyan minions dead set on giving nightmares to the Knights of the Rising Tide, plus a smattering of colorful critters such as the forest elderkin, the lurker below, the seamera, and the sturmgänger.

All Hands on Deck: The final section gives an overview of the various skyships involved in this setting, along with their game stats. Five more pages of deck plans describe an elven flying vessel featured in the opening chapter, The Queen’s Gift, including profile and cutaway side views.

Upcoming Event

            Alfdaín Ascendant’s Kickstarter event should take place in 2021’s late spring or early summer. Keep an ear to the ground for news on DTRPG and in other places. For more up-to-date information on this project, revisit this blog or the World of Calidar’s chat groups on Facebook or Mewe.

PG3 Players’ Guide: This handbook will become available for fulfillment simultaneously with its core Gazetteer. Part of it is already written. Pg3 focuses on helping players roll up characters. It also provides new character classes and a travel guide revealing to players what they should know about the campaign setting. The page count isn’t yet established, so it may run longer than estimated here.

CA3 Adventures in Alfdain: (Work title only). Writing will begin after the crowdfunding session ends. Stretch goals directly impact its final page count, starting at 24. The previous series’ adventure book ended up with 68 pages, entirely for the benefit of those pledges that offered this booklet as a reward. Ca3 may include several short adventures or one single one. Final contents remain to be determined.

CAL3a and b: These two booklets will be completed after Ca3. Game stat conversions and interpretations of concepts put forth in Series 3 books are given here for the Labyrinth Lord^tm and Osric^tm game mechanics. The page count is likely 24 pages or more. One or both of these booklets are included as PDF rewards for the applicable pledges.

Other Rewards: Major maps and deck plans may also be available in digital form as backers’ rewards. Depending on pledge levels, these maps include one, some, or all of the following: the complete Atlas of Alfdaín, the lunar map of Alorea, street and sewer maps of Mythuín, as well as deck maps and side views of the elven skyship featured in The Queen’s Gift story.

 

Update

So far, the project is doing great!

It almost funded in less than 24 hours, with 28 more days to go!