Cleverly Named City
A few years ago, I played in a 3.x D&D campaign run by my friend Cal, that lasted almost 10 years. At the time, it was the longest D&D campaign I'd ever been involved with. My own current World of Samoth campaign is probably going to slightly pass that record, but not by much.
At some point in the future, I'll talk more about this campaign, but what made me think about it today was that my dad just got back from this really cool business trip where he got sent to Uzbekistan to do some consulting work at a gold mine there. He got back last night and came over today to have lunch and tell me about his trip, part of which included visiting this really old city in Uzbekistan. The name of the city (which I'll reveal later) is what reminded me of this old campaign I played in.
I should firstly point out that the DM explained to us that he didn't really have a campaign map of the world to show us, so we had only ever seen the one small section of the world where we started out. We did travel quite a bit, but somehow he said he just "never got around" to making a map. So, we had to just imagine what it looked like.
In the campaign, we all traveled at a certain point to a big huge metropolis that was situated along a major trading route located roughly about 2,600 miles from our "home base city" which was in the far east of the continent in an area the DM called "Lower Farthing." The city was old, and was built from most white stone on a very interesting plan that included a big somewhat circular central area and have five pointed "fingers" jutting out from it. Because of the design of the city (we thought), it was called "Samar's Hand."
The city was home to a cabal of wizards who ran the city with an iron fist. Outside the walls of the city, however, the people from the surrounding area were mostly horse-riding nomads with dark hair and weather-beaten skin.
Well, I hate to reveal too much more, because it will somewhat spoil the "big reveal" when I write more about this campaign in the future. But, I will say that the city my dad got to visit in Uzbekistan was Samarkand.
And, we learned much later on in the campaign that "Samar's Hand" was the shortened name that had happened over time. Originally the city had been named after a famous Wizard, who had once been the "Leader of the Council."
At some point in the future, I'll talk more about this campaign, but what made me think about it today was that my dad just got back from this really cool business trip where he got sent to Uzbekistan to do some consulting work at a gold mine there. He got back last night and came over today to have lunch and tell me about his trip, part of which included visiting this really old city in Uzbekistan. The name of the city (which I'll reveal later) is what reminded me of this old campaign I played in.
I should firstly point out that the DM explained to us that he didn't really have a campaign map of the world to show us, so we had only ever seen the one small section of the world where we started out. We did travel quite a bit, but somehow he said he just "never got around" to making a map. So, we had to just imagine what it looked like.
In the campaign, we all traveled at a certain point to a big huge metropolis that was situated along a major trading route located roughly about 2,600 miles from our "home base city" which was in the far east of the continent in an area the DM called "Lower Farthing." The city was old, and was built from most white stone on a very interesting plan that included a big somewhat circular central area and have five pointed "fingers" jutting out from it. Because of the design of the city (we thought), it was called "Samar's Hand."
The city was home to a cabal of wizards who ran the city with an iron fist. Outside the walls of the city, however, the people from the surrounding area were mostly horse-riding nomads with dark hair and weather-beaten skin.
Well, I hate to reveal too much more, because it will somewhat spoil the "big reveal" when I write more about this campaign in the future. But, I will say that the city my dad got to visit in Uzbekistan was Samarkand.
And, we learned much later on in the campaign that "Samar's Hand" was the shortened name that had happened over time. Originally the city had been named after a famous Wizard, who had once been the "Leader of the Council."
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