A to Z of My D&D Campaign: A is for All Along the Watchtower

I'm running late with the Blogfest but I think this would be both a good exercise and a distraction.

This year I'm doing the A to Z of the DnD Campaign I start running tomorrow night on Roll20. This Campaign is being played by some dear old friends who I rarely get to see. They are wonderful friends, the type of friends that you might not see in a few years but you pick back up as soon as you are around each other. True friends. Well be running DnD 5E and we are starting at 1st level.

A is for All Along the Watchtower.

Its the name of the Campaign on Roll20. 

I've chosen to set the game in Mystara and at least the first several levels will be in and around the Keep on the Borderlands, also known as Castellan Keep, which is on the North-Eastern edge of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos.

In my version of Mystara Karameikos has recently finished a terrible war with Alfheim and Darokin to its East which drew in Rockhome, the Five Shires, Thar, and the Emirates of Ylaruam.  Alfheim, in a last and desperate bid to shatter the enemy nations that surrounded it summoned the Tarrasque and watched its enemies and their entire world tremble. It took forty-seven days to defeat the monstrosity and in the end, the Broken Lands* were all that remained of the homeland of the Orcs of Thar.

Its been two years since the end of the War. The Occupation of Alfheim gets more and more complicated each day as the Church of Zinzerena wages a guerilla war against the Confederacy while also rounding up the Archons of Lolth.

Many who fought in the War simply want to forget and Castellan Keep is a good place to do so. There are ample opportunities in the Altan Tepes Mountain range and the Borderlands between the Grand Duchy, the Emirates, and the Broken Lands.

The Keep and even the Borderlands is a fresh start away from the War and its horrors. There are cairns and hidden tombs to plunder, pilgrims to protect from monsters, and land to settle.

*For the record, the Broken Lands are actually North East of Darokin, but for my purposes, they are what remains of Thar after the Tarrasque was finally stopped and take up a portion of Rockhome and the Emirates. That's the beauty of DnD and RPGs in general, I can stand on the shoulder of Giants and still make their works my own.