Asignación configuracional y modelo estereoquímico

This section details the standard races of d20 fantasy, and discusses ways they can be incorporated in an Arthurian campaign as ei-ther near-humans or fearful outsiders. The

“Races” section includes specific game rules and races; this section provides ideas and guidelines for quick adaptation of the core races themati-cally and inspiration for how to think about adding non-core races.

E

As near human, elves maintain woodland kingdoms that are nonetheless recognizable and comprehensible to man. There is a touch of magic in all they do, but only a touch — they bleed as red as any mortal man when wounded, and while their heraldry tends to leaf patterns rather than colored geometry, their knights are easily identified. There is an Elf King to whom all the Elf-Princes swear fealty, and a grand tourney is held in a huge clearing in the deepest woods each year, to which the very bravest of human knights, and the Knights of the High King’s Table, are always invited. During these fairs, much elven mead is consumed, leading many otherwise great knights to miss the tour-ney due to being face down, and many fair elven maids and squires use their charms to ensnare a human, leading to half-elven bastards who in-variably have intriguing destinies. The winner of the tourney, each year, is invited to join the Table of the High King, and thus, several of those seated at the table wear armor of metal leaves and bear swords of unearthly fineness.

As the other, elves are akin to the description above, but turned up to 11. The elves live in kingdoms of light and music, and a human cannot easily touch, or even see, their houses.

Elvish mead does not merely put a hearty knight down for a few hours; it enchants and bewitches him, filling his head with strange visions and, like as not, drives him mad. The grand tourney of the elves does not include humans or any other race by default, but a human knight, alone except for his entourage and paramour, may dare to challenge for his right to entry. There are no elves at the High King’s table and if an elven knight is seen riding from the deep woods into human lands it is an ill omen.

Game Rules: Otherworldly elves gain the ability to cast prestidigitation 1 time/ day, at will.

They are deeply imbued with magic, and use it casually for trivial tasks.

D

As near human, dwarves should not dwell wholly underground. Perhaps they used to, but now live on the surface, or perhaps they are

“merely” skilled miners, so skilled that humans who don’t know better think they live under-ground. Dwarves of this type live on the surface world, and often take the place of an appropriate human culture — the Scots make an excellent model for a near-human dwarven culture. Fierce warrior dwarves in kilts, brandishing axes and swords seemingly too large for them, but with consummate skill, charging down a hill scream-ing war-cries, is a sight not soon forgotten by those who survive. Outside of war, these dwarves are boisterous, loud, boastful and prone to seeing a challenge to their honor in any minor slight.

Their knights ride well-bred war ponies, and some have managed to master the art of horse-back riding, provided they have a “tall fellow” to help them into the saddle. A dwarf at the table of the High King is not at all out of place, though he is a bit weak on the courtly manners and a bit quick to get drunk at festivals. While it is rare, some dwarves are smitten with humans and go to extreme lengths to win them, performing deeds of honor and valor such as few can imagine. A careless promise to an ardent dwarven suitor (“I shall not love thee, unless thou can’st bring me the heads of a dozen dragons!”), can send such a one off for years, only to return covered in blood and glory, and lugging dragon heads, and expect-ing his chosen to keep her word.

As others, dwarves dwell deep, deep, under-ground, and rarely, if ever, see the surface — it may be that sunlight turns them to stone, or perhaps they just can’t stand the stuff. Either way, these are not boisterous, fun-loving rowdy dwarves, but dark, gloomy, and scheming dwarves. Even if not actually evil, they are suspi-cious, hostile and insular, viewing humans as invaders or interlopers. The deeper the humans mine, the better the odds that the dwarves take action. Few humans ever see a dwarf, except as a shadow in the darkness or as a deep mutter from far down a mineshaft. There are no dwarven knights as men would understand them and if these dwarves have any code of honor or chiv-alry, it is one humans do not and cannot ken.

They do, however, have one redeeming feature

— they are master smiths, better than any others in the entire world, and they forge weapons and armor of unearthly power and beauty. The sword of the High King, it is said, is of dwarven-make, and a handful of the bravest knights may seek out the dwarflands, venturing far below the earth, to abase themselves before the dwarf-king’s throne and beg from him a weapon. There is always, of course, a price. The price might be something as simple as a double handful of emeralds or it might be a drop of blood from a virgin queen or the promise of the firstborn girl-child of the knight making the request.

Sometimes, the dwarves present a weapon or other item as a gift in exchange for the promise of a service; such a service is never easy, and usually involves the slaying of something ex-tremely powerful.

H

As near humans, halflings revert to the more traditional fat, stay-at-home, gentleman farm-ers. Halfling villages spring up all across the rolling hills, and they live at peace, usually, with their human neighbors. Halflings do not wish to rule or conquer, but neither are they servile; left to themselves, they govern their own lands and pay just taxes to the rightful king. Those few halflings with an adventurous bent most likely find themselves serving as assistants or helpers to knights, rather than as knights themselves, though there are always exceptions — a deter-mined, brave halfling on a war pony covered in fine barding is a rare sight, but not an entirely unknown one, and if a chair at the High King’s table must be raised a foot or two to enable its occupant to see the others, well, so be it! Halflings in this mode are perhaps the least alien of all races, and it is quite possible that the “dwarves”

of Arthurian legend are, in fact, halflings — indeed, it’s hard to imagine a true dwarf being quite so servile or easy to intimidate.

As others, the halfling as mysterious wan-derer comes into play. They are shadows on a moonless night, little men who slip through the peaceful farming towns and bustling cities with equal ease. Few see them face on in sunlight;

they are nearly ghosts. Often, they are confused with fey, but they are mortal still, though cun-ning, sly and tricky almost beyond human understanding. If one is pursued into the woods, there are a dozen waiting in ambush, and if they seek out humans, it is only on their terms. A halfling knight of this sort is almost unguessable;

he would be a champion of his own people,

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surely, but his motives and goals would be very strange to humans.

G

Gnomes as near-humans are somewhere be-tween the roles of halflings and dwarves; they are less isolationist than either. They are more likely to dwell in and amongst the few large human cities, and to adopt human dress and customs.

While halfling farmers live in their own lands and do nothing more than pay homage (and taxes) to the local lords, the gnomes have all but abandoned their own communities to become part of the human world. There, they work as crafters, artisans, and merchants. Their skill and cunning with all sorts of handiwork secures them a place; while not quite as good at weapon and armor smithing as the dwarves, they have a broader range of skills, and produce fine cloth, exquisite jewelry, and other luxury items, in addition to mundane things like long-lasting candles and well-made saddles.

Gnomish knights are rare, but not un-known, and often have the best-made armor and weapons money can buy — and gnomes have a lot of money. They adventure for much the same reasons humans do — honor and glory. Gnomes are likely to petition to join

human chivalric orders, but a small number of gnomish orders exist, often associated with a craftsman’s or trader’s guild.

As others, gnomes are not at all part of human society. They are, in fact, more insular than the dwarves, and do not make candles and saddles — they make strange and terrible things, in their twisting tunnels deep in the hills. Gnome-hills can be identified by the odd protrusions and towers that rise from them, staining the air with acrid smoke; wise folk give these hills a wide berth. A small number of the brave or foolish, or those quested to do so, dare to venture into the low-ceilinged mazes, and there, they gape at devices utterly beyond their comprehension:

monsters of metal that eat coal and belch steam, which produce an infinite cacophony of hideous sounds, grinding and screeching. These gnomes know many secrets, many things long buried in the Earth, and they work with seemingly fiend-ish cunning and inhuman endurance towards goals no man can guess.

They are not evil, though, at least not as far as anyone can tell. From time to time an emis-sary comes, honoring the High King’s authority, and he brings with him a wonder — a bird of brass and diamond which flies and sings, or a

machine that tells the time with accuracy a water-clock could never match. Sometimes, they even ask a boon — a monster to be slain, for example — and a human or elf knight rides, for a time, beside a strange little man who knows things most did not even know existed to be known! Such wondrous encounters live on in the tales of bards for years.

O

R

The above should serve as guidelines for how to set the ‘flavor’ of races, to make them fit well into an Arthurian saga as player races or to cast them as strange outsiders for NPC encoun-ters. Bearing these descriptions in mind, many other races can be added to the mix. A final recommendation, though, is to add races spar-ingly. The blessed isle of Avalon is, perhaps, larger in myth than in reality, but it is still not large enough to accommodate hundreds, or even dozens, or intelligent races. If minotaur knights sound like a great idea, then add them, but be even more careful about tossing in centaurs, harpies, treants and gnolls as well. Otherwise, the special flavor of an Excalibur game is lost.

(That said, if your vision of the round table is one where no two knights are of the same race, a Camelot closer to a fantasy version of the Mos Eisley cantina than to anything Mallory ever described, it is your game, after all. Do with it what you will!)

M ^ONSTERS

The Arthurian world is a rough place, and filled with dangers. Unscrupulous merchants, vicious thieves, and cruel knights can be found on the road or in cities and towns, and many’s the traveler who is robbed, tricked, beaten or worse by these unpleasant individuals. Storms and animals and other natural dangers can beset the unwary, and the unprepared often find them-selves soaked and freezing and suffering scratches and bites from their foolish foray into the woods.

But not every danger is as natural, or as manmade.

For the Arthurian world is filled with monsters.

This does not mean, however, that everyone who wanders into the forest encounters a hid-eous beast or a supernatural creature. Far from it.

Most people in the Arthurian world know that monsters exist, and many claim to have encoun-tered them. But few can actually describe these beasts clearly, and even fewer have any evidence of the fiend that tried to kill them.

In fact, listening to commoners talk, most monsters sound like exaggerated versions of ac-tual animals. A large, slavering monster with enormous jaws and a tail like a spiked club and two great eyes that glow in the dark could easily be a wolfhound or some other large dog, particu-larly a rabid one. A horrible creature that charges through the woods, trampling trees or slashing them down with its sword-like tusks, ignoring arrows and spears as they bounce from its jagged, armored hide and that kills those nearby with its shrill war cry alone, could easily be a maddened boar. Or an enormous monster that swoops down from above on silent wings, striking with envenomed claws and tearing into its prey with massive poisonous beak might be nothing more than a horned owl. In the dark and in the woods, out of sight of home and hearth, it is easy to get frightened and to mistake a normal creature for a terrifying monster.

This does not mean that monsters do not exist. They most certainly do, and many knights can prove it, holding up the head of a wyrm or the arm of a giant. But those who are not knights or wizards or at least hardy adventurers tend to run from beasts rather than stand and fight, and though this is the sensible response it does mean that they cannot prove to their friends that what they saw was anything more than a shadow cast by a farmyard cat. Even when they know they’re right — no cat walks upright or carries a sword!

— few dare to go back for a second look.

Basically, the further people travel from towns and keeps and other civilized areas, the more likely they are to encounter real monsters.

Even most semi-intelligent monsters know to steer clear of any place that might have knights and soldiers, and so these creatures are more often found deep in the woods or in old aban-doned buildings or high in the mountains.

Anywhere they can live and prey upon the occasional wanderer without fear of an armed patrol finding them. Closer to cities and castles, the only monsters still around are those too harmless to require killing, or too clever to be caught. The truly intelligent monsters may live right near such populated areas and use the very question of their existence to their advantage.

For example, nymphs, satyrs and dryads are often mistaken for fae or humans who simply live wild in the woods, while a wyrm can be explained away as nothing more than a large snake and giants as just really large men. By keeping the locals confused, these creatures can live nearby

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people think them a myth or a story, the town is unlikely to organize an armed party to hunt them down. Unfortunately for the monsters, knights and adventurers often see through these ploys, and recognize them as true monsters and sources of danger to every decent person in the area.

Although it may seem like a deliberate criti-cism of the more ubiquitous presence of monsters in the average d20 fantasy setting, the relative rarity and seclusion of monsters in an Arthurian setting is actually a staple of the sub-genre. If half-dragon sorcerers frequently wander in and out of a court, it becomes much less special for a knight to actually claim to have seen a dragon and lived (much less slain one!). This is an important consideration, when you consider that a dragon-slaying knight is by definition among the crème de la crème. You can certainly make an Arthurian game work with a higher monster-to-peasant ratio than what we describe; the default is simply presumed to be turned down a notch, to make those knights who deal with monsters all the more celebrated.