Return of the Trolls as Prologue to New Campaign

From about April of 09 to April of 2010, our group played a campagin using my homebrew "Return of the Trolls."  It was a lot of fun, and I think we, as a group, enjoyed it more that we had the D&D 4e campaign of the previous year.  Putting the system itself aside, that campaign is a sort of prologue to the AD&D campaign I'm planning.

Return of the Trolls was set in a fantasy parallel to the 5th century Western Europe.  The Ardean Empire, the analogue of the Romans, was weak and suddenly collapsed.  This gave enterprising warlords the chance to seize local power.  In addition to the more mundane civil and ethnic strife, the campaign saw that when the Ardean Empire's magical net of Augur's Towers were destroyed, it allowed trolls, dragons and other fantastic beasts to run wild in the imperial lands once again.

Bob's character, Dengwur the Sorcerer, became the driving force of the campaign.  He developed a rivarly with a local garrison captain, turned warlord, named Julius Wulfgar.  At first, various Orthodox and Lawful figures were helped by and gave assistance to Dengwur against Wulfgar, seeing Wulfgar as a dangerous pagan with grand ambitions.  However, in the end, Dengwur unleashed a hideous wrath.  He released the Black Plague on the general populace of the provincial capital, Noviodunum, and summoned a powerful demon that crushed the city cathedral.  He turned Wulfgar to stone and defeated Wulfgar's druid ally.

The setting of the new campaign will be the same region, 200 years in the future.  I posit that Dengwur carved out a sorcerous kingdom of Chaos nearby, but that he then was drawn into a protracted war with the Old Ones (or Nasenna).  The Nasenna had brought about the destruction of the Augur's Towers across the world through secret magic and were plotting to return to the surface world after many centuries of exile. 

The "safe' zone for the campaign will be Portchester.  This is the city known as "Portus Nardo" during Return of the Trolls.  During the war between Dengwur and the Nasenna, the remnants of the tribe of the Haxmen, joined with the citizens of Portus Nardo to form the Dual Kingdom of Portchester.  It is a sort of a city-state or petty kingdom on the model of Athens or Sparta or the early Roman republic or the small kingdoms of Dark Age England or Wales.   All of the landowners are expected to be warriors at need, and there is not a specific military elite or knightly class or professional army, beyond the guards of the 2 kings.

The area for most of the adventures, at least to start, will be the 50x50 miles region, south of Portchest's borders and around the ruins of Noviodunum.  This is called the Badlands, and will give its name to the campaign.  I've have divided the region into 10 mile by 10 mile districts, each with 1-4 settlements or monster lairs already set up.   One settlement/lair is already created with great detail.  It is called "Bastardville" and is a tough jerkwater town that serves the fortress of a powerful bandit chief named Lucius Bastardo.   Bastardville sits right next to the "Island of the Dead" where Noviodunum once stood and serves as a jumping off point for salvagers and adventurers picking through the ruins.

The goals of the campaign are for the players to discover treasure in the various ruins, try to turn the Badlands into something of their own liking (for good or evil), deal with the remnants of Dengwur's kingdom, discover the mystery of Dengwur's long life and recent disappearance, keep the Nasenna from establishing their genocidal rule in the Badlands, and make a name for themselves.