My Cairn setting: a fantasy version of the Kingdom of Northumbria

 

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Look, I have a fixation with fantasy versions of our world, ok? Years ago I wrote stuff for a community-made setting (a post zombie-apocalypse Mexico) for the italian ttrpg Sine Requie, for example. The fact that Cairn 1e doesn't have a pre-determined setting drove me to create one.

When I was adolescent I put a great amount of time in the creation of a bunch of custom, "historically accurate", scenarios for Age of Empires II. One of them was supposed to be set in the Kingdom of Northumbria. Most of those scenarios never saw the light of day (I managed to finish only one about the attempted mongolian invasion of Japan), but I was left with a bunch of suggestions and ideas floating in my head. As you've probably guessed, my setting for Cairn is a fantasy version of the Kingdom of Northumbria. I mean, it sounds cool, most of the stuff is already done and I think it suits the game very well.

I mostly get dark-middle-ages vibes from Cairn, between 700 and 1000 AD; an era of great change for Europe, an age where the Western Roman Empire crumbled on itself and many cultures and civilizations grew from its ruins. For example, in Northumbria there is the Hadrian's Wall. So, I like the idea of a setting where remnants of a latin past (or invader, if you will) still play a role among the saxon, briton and dane influences.

In fact, that's what I did with my first Cairn adventure. Called Fatwode, it's the story of an isolated village deep in a forest called Grenefirth (Green Forest, no need to be much more creative than that), where people disappear due to an ancient demon/entity sealed there centuries before by celts, romans and the forest's goblins. In this village they even worship a roman deity of nature, called Flora. Investigating on these disappearances drives the player characters to reach for the goblins, which speak to them in a fragmented version of latin, since it's the only human language they know. Yeah, latin-speaking goblins. I'm quite proud of that idea.

Originally the setting was made only for this adventure, but I ended up liking it and I promised to myself to expand it a little bit. Coincidentally I recently (a month and a half ago counts?) started watching this solo campaign by Bandit's Keep (hi Daniel, my name is Daniele) and got really inspired. What if an hexcrawl was just what I needed to embellish my setting? So, I did create my hexcrawl rules (with tons of inspiration coming from all sides) and started playing/playtesting. And I'm still having a lot of fun. I'll try to post a summary of what happens in game. Luckily, I decided to write down everything of importance that happened since the beginning.

© Daniele Fantoni

Other than Fatwode, I introduced two more settlements: the small town of Hwitburl and the city of Rywold. Regarding religion, there are three main faiths: Celtic, Old Norse and Roman. Elves, dwarves, halflings and other humanoid folk who live here usually do not partake in those human beliefs; if they have a religion, they keep it very close and secret. The Green Forest spans over more than 200 kilometers from east to west and more than 100 from north to south, with rivers, hills, ruins, dungeons, temples and more. In fact, the settlements are almost squeezed to the sides of the map. Geographically this specific setting is placed between Bamburgh, Carlisle and Edinburgh, but has no real historical counterpart. I've no intention of specifying the exact year; suffice to say that more or less it's the second half of the ninth century. But it's fantasy.