N is for Northern Wastes

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!

N is for Northern Wastes. That is to say, Canada.

As I've written in earlier posts in this series, there are some things one wishes to have in one's "generic vanilla fantasy" setting. Dense jungles. Life sucking deserts. Sky scraping mountains. Evil empires. Well, add frozen/cold/arctic areas to that list as well. 

From Howard's The Frost Giant's Daughter to Leiber's snowy Nehwon tales ("Stardock," etc.) to Shackleton-inspired adventure stories the Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness to the Viking sagas and those who would novelize their legends...fighting the hostile elements of cold, snow, and ice (while also dealing with monsters, etc.) are a big part of tropey fantasy worlds.

Fortunately for me, my world includes British Columbia. 

There's not much I care to write about B.C. specific to my setting. Like our real world, the bulk of the population lives within the southern third of the territory. Only something like 5% of it is arable land. Much of it is mountainous; more than 60% is heavily forested. And the farther north you travel the colder it gets, until you hit the Yukon,..pretty much certain death away from the coast.

As with all of my setting, there are are a LOT fewer people than our real world. The Washington State of my campaign is home to about two million persons...a little more than a quarter of its actual population. Using the same ratio, B.C. would be about 1.3M in total. And yet, of Washington's two million, only about 1.5M are human (maybe)...I've been tweaking the numbers based on historic populations (literally: I'm looking at census data 100 years before present). If I do the same for British Columbia (and why would I not), there's a bit more than half a million humans living in the Northern Wastes...a territory a LOT larger than Washington State.

But uninhabited by humans, doesn't mean "uninhabited." This is where you'll find giants: all the major ones (i.e. the ones from the MM), and probably some of the lesser types as well. The hill giants lair in the more temperate parts of B.C., the frost in the colder, the fire giants within volcanic caverns beneath the mountains, etc. Not so far away as to be outside of a long trek from determined adventurers, but far enough that they're not a general nuisance to the southlanders.

Until they are. 

But much as I am anticipating (and looking forward to) running the Giant series for my players, right now I'm working on other plans for Canada. Specifically, the tournament adventure I'm developing for Cauldron 2025 is set in B.C. specifically along the Fraser River (or the"StoLo" as it's called in my campaign). People said they enjoyed the tourney adventure I wrote last year, but some considered it, perhaps, a bit "too easy." Which...Heavens!...that cannot be allowed to stand!

[personally, I'm not sure what they're talking about...when I ran it for my home group the result was a TPK. Maybe I'm just mean...?]

So the new adventure...titled Rivers of Blood, Death, and Glory...should be a skosh more dangerous. Maps have been drawn, stocking finished, pre-gens generated, and I'm just trying to pare down the writing to something manageable. Originally, I'd hoped to playtest it yesterday (on Father's Day)...but then my kids had four soccer games on the docket. Which...sure, it's a bit maddening (because I have other adventures I also need to playtest in the next couple-three months). But priorities are priorities. Plus watching my kids play in the sunshine? With other soccer parents handing out beers from their cooler? I mean, come on...it was pretty awesome Father's Day. Diego scored three goals in two games, and both kids’ teams crushed their opponents (combined goal differential was something like 17-4...all wins). D&D can wait...Wednesday is looking pretty free in the afternoon.

Sorry. I'm digressing.

Anyway, I'll wrap up by saying Canada gives me a nice sub-arctic environment to play around with (yes, I understand it's temperate in the lower elevations)...which lends itself to increasing the diversity of adventures I can offer my players. That's a very good thing, and yet another reason why I am O So Satisfied with the PNW for my setting.

Later, gators.

: )

Majestic beauty...and giants.