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With Nasoj's power broken, would lutins still have a reason to try to infiltrate Metamor Valley? What other creatures could a patrol group expect to tangle with, and in what vicinity could they be found?
(The giant spiders aren't just a format example. They aren't official. Yet. ;) )
Yay! Let's check the D&D Creature's manual! :P
Seriously now, besides the lutins and bandits, I doubt there will be anything nearly as organized as those two examples.
Like the Giant Spiders (or so I think), most creatures would simply roam the lands without any kind of objective except for attacking anyone who dares to penetrate their "territory", or a similar reason (they may be hungry as well :P).
There's nothing wrong with that anyway, it's just that there are less chances of facing a somewhat planed ambush from whatever may roam the place, or stumble into any kind of camp.
Since I haven't contributed with any name, I will just shut up now ._.
Well lutins are alway going to be a flavor of metamor, even if we have in our archives the recorded deaths of more lutins than actually seem to exist. We'll just assume they randomly spawn from some location or other for now. Anyway, even without Nasoj behind them, Lilith still is, and furthermore, some of them are just rather violent or desperate tribes looking for more land or riches or whatnot. Bandits of course will also be an issue, even from inside MK itself. Stealth is the only of to use this so far, but others could easily do so as well, though due to the nature of MK's curse, blending in for these 'bandits' would be extremely difficult and sort of a bad idea. Either they'd have to hide somewhere IN the curse range where they'll be easy to find and then identify by vague description such as 'tiger-man' or 'guy that looks like a boar', or OUT of the curse ranch where they'd just stand out like a jar of peanut butter in a room full of sugar packets. Their only chance would be to hide constantly out of sight and survive entirely off of stolen goods cause the moment they appear in society they run a huge risk of being identified. Human bandits of course have fewer problems because of this, though they may need to watch out for the curse. As for other things to watch out for, there will always be the occasional person who wandered into curse territory somehow or possibly some caravan to escort and natural hazards, flavor a la rickkter or michael. Any other enemies would probably require an actual introduction.
I quote myself, "Human bandits of course have fewer problems because of this, though they may need to watch out for the curse." :P The 'may' need to watch out refers to both those who were cursed as humans AND those who are wiley enough to avoid staying long enough to avoid the curse.
I would like to submit my Vegicid Imps as random monsters once I'm done with them. (Little draconic plant/earth things from To Steal a Soul, remember? "He he he…") Currently they are under control by one of my villains. But after said villain is defeated, the idea is a new batch sprouts in spring and runs fee without a master. Not sure if I will write about them more after my MK arc is done, but would be cool if someone else wants to cameo them.
They are fun things that are a change of pace from the normal lutin hordes. They essentially lie underground with vines sprouting up, looking like normal plants until an unsuspecting warrior draws near. Then their roots congeal the earth around them, compacting it into small bipedal draconic bodies and they leap out of the ground. Fighters that don't know magic would have a good deal of trouble injuring them as their only weakness is their walnut-like seed buried inside their heads. Being plants, they are very weak against fire and ice spells. They also tend to explode violently when hit by fireballs. ;)
Blast… been meaning to write up a wiki article for them… Will some day!
Aren't there going to be Lomish incursions into Metamor's territory in the future? That might provide the scouts up north some cannon fodder for small ambushes. Maybe for the chars in the reg army (I'm assuming the mages are under either the reg. army or with the scouts). Or am I lurking in the forums way too much? :p.
The lutins being the chaotic people they are - are likely to keep raiding into the valley just in smaller groups and not as far into the valley. And there is a problem with raiders going into the southern end of the valley and raiding places in the valley close to the border.
Actually I think Virmir may have hit on a really good solution. If we ever run short on random enemies, and now that lutins have been humanized and disbanded to the point where they won't show up as much AND it's now sorta morally wrong to just go killing them for no reason, monster infestation would work really well. Some random mage accidently (or on purpose) creates a monster horde that spawns itself and in general goes nuts. Now the whole point of the keep is to keep us amused. Some people claim it's to protect this shatterer of worlds or to keep the north out of the south, but they're wrong. :P However these are still important themes of this verse. The former doesn't really come into play much, so it's more the latter I'm refering to. If lutins no longer the threat against the south they were, then MKers are no longer protecting the rest of the world by their sacrifice, and are rather just located in a bad place with lots of monsters. No sane person would want to live there, and MK would once more start being ostracized by everyone else. Now arguably, none of our characters are really all that sane, but that doesn't help our case against the world all that much. So while random hordes of monsters WOULD solve our problem of bored warriors, it would probably give a severe blow to MK's reputation with the world.
Hmm, let's see what we've got:
Lutins
Giants - Rare, but dangerous. And dumb, but not 'stupid', they can be fox sly.
Northern Humans - Make Lutins look charming. These are human clans akin to Vikings or Norse of yore, raiders and reavers when they go out from their isolated villages but soft-hearted caramel chews when they get back home.
Spies - These can come from pretty much anywhere. Nasojassa, Caralore, Lom, or southern kingdoms. They can come for various reasons as well, from the subtle gatherer of intelligence to the nefarious plotters of chaos. Have some care when dealing with the latter, but the former you can have plenty of fun with. They try to stay under the radar of Metamor, but occasionally their intelligence gathering raises the wrong eyebrow of curiosity.
Summoned Nasties - As mentioned above, one-off escaped summons or a small infestation of repeating summons that requires the destruction of the summoner or summoning location.
Giant Spiders - Ehhh, no? I have never seen them mentioned, and it would be far too cold for your conventional spider. Perhaps a magical summoning or some critter herded out of the frozen north for whatever reason. They've never been listed as native to the valley, so let's not introduce them at this late date.
Drunkards and Sadists - Just like any other society, Metamor has its unsavory side. Grayflank once touched upon this, but excessively so IMO. Played carefully you can have all the bad guys you could ever hope to deal with right at your doorstep.
So, as you can see, there is a never-ending source of conflict characters you can think up. So long as they're not disruptive to the kingdom as a whole they should be just fine (kingdom-affecting baddies tend to gain kingdom-weight response, and thus affect the threads of many existing plots). A thug holding sway over a small town, however, can easily surf under the notice of the Major Plots and still make for a very sterling piece of fiction.
Aaaaaand, then, there are the many, many other places where you can write of within the world of Metamor Keep that are not in that one tiny valley. A Metamor agent spying within Nasojassa, for example, or Lom perhaps? These kingdoms have never been touched other than by the overall brush of general political ethic and theme so the canvas is primed awaiting only detail paint.
Giant Spiders - Ehhh, no? I have never seen them mentioned, and it would be far too cold for your conventional spider.
Giant spiders exist in the world of MK, but not in the Northlands — they are creatures of Elderwood, in the Outer Midlands. Keepers may run into them when Lilith starts stirring up her forces, but they aren't native to the Giantdowns.
In terms of Giantdowns critters, Lilith also has draconians, moon dogs and dire wolves in her service. These creatures could make raids out of the Murk on Metamor-allied humans in the Northern territories.
Northern Humans - Make Lutins look charming. These are human clans akin to Vikings or Norse of yore, raiders and reavers when they go out from their isolated villages but soft-hearted caramel chews when they get back home.
Not all of them will direct their aggression at the Keepers, however; some of them may consider the Keepers allies against Nasoj. The biggest threat on this front may come from Arabarb; Baron Grenier has taken over, and pretty much runs the country single-handedly now that Nasoj's grip on the Northlands has weakened. Grenier's not stupid enough to risk open war with the Keepers if he can avoid it, but acts of piracy on the Sea of Stars and raiders against Keeper-allied caravans both seem eminently likely. Grenier doesn't want the Keepers getting comfortable enough up north to launch an attack on him — though I suspect Misha will push for one anyway. :)
I think you mean Baron Calephas of Arabarb.
Isn't Grenier lord of some city south of Metamor?
Dominus vobiscum
I have a plan to put an end to Baron Calephas sometime in CR 708. Once I finish Last Tale of Yajakali, I'll go into more detail with some of my ideas for the next few years in the MK storyline.
Dominus vobiscum
