Dec. 7 versions
INTRODUCTION TO A LOW FANTASY CONTINENT This introduction serves as a primer for sandbox wilderness play in a low fantasy, warmed Antarctic region called THE BRINEMARCH RUN. It is intended for referees using rules-light systems such as Knave, Into the Odd, Cairn, or more traditional B/X, Basic Fantasy, Old School Essentials, or similar systems.
Brinemarch can be run as a straight exploration hexcrawl, but it’s meant to be a place that changes characters into something new, not a place to be conquered or fixed. Indeed, this landscape is an appropriate trap for imperial operations, stocked with rot-resistant lumber, gold, furs, fantastic wine, and more. Yet this landscape will digest what comes into it, change it, and regurgitate what remains. The land itself is not neutral terrain; it forgets, remembers, and resists in ways that will matter at the table.
The goal was for players to be able to use whatever TTRPG game they would like and tell whatever story they want tell, though there are some assumptions that will make using the map and the content written legible and translatable.
Assumptions of the Brinemarch Run
De-icing with Astroids
The common understanding in the world of Brinemarch is that the annual asteroid strikes at the South Pole, the ones that continue to stir up volcanoes and tsunamis, were responsible for chipping away at the ice cap. Assume this happened just enough for the first people to find a thriving green coastline around 8,000 BCE, but that it happened gently enough that Neolithic ancestors persisted, and their descendants established the hearths of so-called civilizations.
Weird Tradewinds Means Weird History
With no ice cap at the South Pole, there would be no conveyor of ice-cold water from Antarctica to churn the ocean and the atmosphere along predictable pathways and at predictable intervals. This would change the timing of harvests, conquest, and culture. World history will have branched into countless alternative timelines.
The icecap is gone, and global weather is severe and unpredictable. Thunderstorms arrive without warning. Cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons can harass the land at any time of year. What we would call “100-year storms” upend entire civilizations with new deluges at random locations every year.
Star Navigating Ancestors
The most specific assumption is that the first peoples of Brinemarch would be from Tierra del Fuego and the Andes of South America. Perhaps they arrived in whale-bone and seal-skin vessels. Maybe they used something more like an outrigger, or a catamaran. Regardless, they found a way. They would be the first to find and follow clues that a hospitable land lies across the fierce Antarctic Ocean. Next, assume they circumnavigated the continent and established care with different rivers and inlets along the way.
Canoe Culture Locals
The locals of the Brinemarch descended from the first people and they call these ancestors the Choir of the Stars. They call themselves Cousins of the Canoe, and River Folk or Tide Folk. They share a mother culture called the Canoe-line tongue. If asked where they are from, they answer, “Where Woven Shelters Float.” To you, it sounds a bit like “Brinemarch.”
Your Leige
It is assumed that Brinemarch, as presented, occurs during an age of foreign maritime imperial expansion. This assumes [the Empire] has 1. sea-worthy caravels, 2. is surveying the land for resources to exploit, and 3. maintains a fortified sea port in Brinemarch. 4. All maritime lore includes all continents and knowledge that they are all inhabited. 5. The Company is everything the Empire does not want to do itself. 6. Few outsiders could point to the Brinemarch on a map, but most have heard about it through its peculiar textiles, strange wine, rot-resistant lumber, gold, and other memorandums of culture.
###optional: Optional: solving longitude, gunpowder, clockwork devices, magic, recklessness, and intention to settle the land. This could be any kind of empire; it does not need to be something like our human history. The locals refer to the Empire and the Company as “the People of the Flag.” It is assumed the player characters will either be part of [the Empire] or [the Company].
Your Characters
Can I play an Elf? Where are the elves? Are elves low fantasy? What mythical beast does a rogue get to stab?
It is assumed they are not playing a character from the local culture because hexcrawling implies a lack of knowledge of the landscape's secrets. To play this setting as written, which is optional, means that one cannot both hexcrawl and know the secrets of the land. More strongly stated: hexes and druids are anathema. Outside of that, do what you will, but that would create a different timeline than this Brinemarch.
The greened Antarctica did not thaw completely. It only mostly thawed. Small glaciers and deep bands of permafrost hold back an older history that froze the moment the ice age began. As the glaciers receded, ancient beings awoke from their ice blanket, coughing, confused and flailing. Most died within hours of their release. The survivors became the stuff of legend. The only place it still happens is in Antarctica.
Elves are among the survivors. They cannot survive outside of their land. Most survivors of the abominable ice are a sensitive lot. They abhor the sun and the stars, and the rain. They must live in strange conditions to survive, as the world they knew was much different. These are the gnomes, orcs, elves, dwarves, a dragon or two, and beasts from legend. Of them, only the Ashwing Gnomes and the Icemaw Orcs fought to come above ground, and they only did so by marrying into necromancy. Both are considered exiles by the rest of the kin, but not by the empire.
The Magic?
Where is the magic? What spells does a wizard use??
Brinemarch is written in a systems-agnostic method. Hypothetically, magic spells belong to outsiders, but here's the thing. Brinemarch does not know your Gods.