C is for Cascades

I missed the April A-Z Blog Challenge this year, so I'm doing my own...in June. This year, I will be posting one post per day discussing my AD&D campaign, for the curious. Since 2020, this is the ONLY campaign I run. Enjoy!

C is for Cascades; i.e. the Cascade mountain range. Other than huge swaths of forest which gives Washington its nickname "The Evergreen State," the Cascades are probably its dominant physical feature.

There ware two mountain ranges in Washington; the Olympics (on the Olympic peninsula) are smaller...I'll talk about them in a later section. The Cascades range from Canada down into Oregon, and pretty effectively divide Washington State into two halves...prior to the mid-1800s, there really wasn't any practical way for crossing the mountains, save by traveling down the Columbia River. Since I run AD&D and my campaign setting spurns dynamite and railroads, this immense partition remains largely impassable, save by undertaking treacherous travel over a handful of mountain passes (the same ones that would, in our own world, become Stevens Pass, Snoqualmie Pass, and White Pass).

Effectively, my campaign is divided into Western and Eastern Washington and rarely do the twain meet.

But, of course, they have. My players have adventured from Chelan and Douglas and Grant counties out to Clallam (on the Peninsula) and are now (currently) in Western Idaho. How did they initially get to the west side of the State? Magic, duh (their ship got swept through a magical gate and crashed on the shoreline). How did they get back to the east side? By adventuring through the wilds of Oregon and crossing the range on the south side of the Columbia (what in our real world would be Interstate-84).

Not easy...but possible for intrepid adventurers of mid-to-high (8th) levels.

But, hey, I'm making it sound harder than it really is...it's not like my players are hex-crawling along the Oregon Trail. The existence of the Cascades gives me a convenient excuse for partitioning my "world" (i.e. the campaign setting) into different sections...sections that are VERY separate/different from each other. The players have yet to adventure in Washington's I-5 corridor (Pierce/King/Snohomish counties), for example...because I haven't detailed those places. Oh, I have some vague ideas regarding warring city-states, but...well, more on that bit later. Point is, I don't really know...and that's okay because there's plenty to do on the east side of the Cascades, regardless of what I know or don't know.

The mountains also provide interesting ideas for adventure scenarios. While mining isn't a huge industry in 21st century Washington, plenty of ore has been pulled out of the Cascades over the years. A quick google search tells me some 2.3 million ounces of gold was mined in Washington up through 1965 with millions more ounces of gold still lurking undiscovered. Minted, that would put a LOT of coins in circulation...treasure, in other words: treasure that could be found, spent, stolen, hoarded, and looted in an endless cycle of adventure. 

Of course, that's nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands of TONS of iron ore that has been mined in the cascades over the years. That makes for a lot of armor and weapons, even at a fractional amount. Copper mining in the Cascades has yielded less than half that amount but, still...tons. 

[I'll note that most silver mined in the Pac Northwest comes out of Idaho, not the Washington Cascades, but since the amount mined is more than a billion ounces, I'm sure there's plenty of silver pieces in circulation outside the "Death Lands"]

And then there are the dwarves.

So...if one actually reads the description of dwarves in the Monster Manual, you'll find there's not a whole lot of cultural information on the species:  "Rocky hills are the favorite abode of these sturdy creatures. Dwarves typically band together in clans which are not mutually exclusive or hostile but are competitive." Aaand...that's about it. They hate goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs. They speak the language of gnomes, goblins, kobolds, and orcs (in addition to their own language), and only 75% of dwarves have any knowledge of the human (Common) tongue. There's some stuff about "mountain dwarves" being slightly taller, but the level range given is the same as that found for "hill dwarves" in the PHB (to be fair, the MM came out before the PHB and compared to the dwarves of OD&D, this would have been slightly higher). 

Well, whatever...in MY campaign, you'll only find "mountain dwarves" in the Cascade Range; this is their "native territory." You will not find dwarf clans in the Olympics; they are not nearly as mineral rich (and, yes, my dwarves are miners) as the Cascades. My dwarf clans tend to specialize in whichever veins of ore lie in the vicinity of their houses and strongholds which are NOT typically built underground. Oh, they'll have some defensive bunkers (usually) dug out, but dwarves still have to farm, cultivating fields and husbanding livestock. The mountains are their home, but they don't live in the tunnels they dig; they're not troglodytes.

You won't find Moria on my map, in other words.

Dwarves are diurnal creatures (just like humans) and some have come down from the mountains to seek work and residence in human communities. This is the "stock" from which PC dwarves come: people who've chosen to live with (and who appreciate) humans for the odd menagerie they are. Dwarves have their own spiritual leaders ("cleric equivalents") but these are only found in the mountains and are strictly NPCs; their abilities are also quite limited (level-wise) compared to human clerics...dwarven clerics are never "adventurers." 

Of course, there are other creatures that inhabit the forested slopes of the Cascades besides dwarves: generally all the creatures you'd expect to find in temperate mountains, hills, and forests (sub-arctic up in the northernmost Cascades). But dwarves are the main people with whom characters will be interacting, should they decide to search for a way across. As I noted earlier, there are some passes over (and, perhaps, some tunnels through) the mountains, but they are nearly all guarded by dwarves...dwarves who charge a hefty toll for passage. You can be sure that the easier and swifter the route, the steeper the charge will be. Still, for those desiring a way from one side of the campaign setting to the other (and who don't want to take the time to travel down to the Columbia) such fees are a small price to pay to avoid falling prey to a dwarven ambush, deadfall, or rockslide.

Okay, I'm starting to digress. Final points: the Cascades separate our real Washington State into two distinct cultures: we who live here talk about "eastern Washington" and "western Washington" as two very different regions. The western half has an economy based on forestry and maritime trade; the eastern half is (mostly) rich farm land. Urban centers on the west support a larger population, making for a more diverse group of people which leads to a faster pace of life and more liberal viewpoints/politics. On the east side, there are vast open stretches of farmland, smaller towns, a slower pace (tied to the soil) and far more conservative view points. These dichotomies are things I consider with regard to my campaign, but they are not necessarily inherent in my campaign...there is no "east versus west" mentality. Both sides of the Cascades are further petitioned by individual kingdoms, duchies, and city states...the people on the east side fight each other as do the people on the west side. Because of the Cascades, however, the problems and conflicts of one side simply fail to impact (or even garner notice) from the folk on the other.  

For example: my Dragon Wrack adventure creates the scenario of a military threat (dragon army) out of Idaho...arrayed against that threat are a loose alliance of nations from the east side; however, there are NO armed forces from west of the Cascades taking part in the conflict. They simply have little (or no) idea of anything amiss on 'that side' of the mountains.

All right, that's enough for this entry.