It's been awhile since I've talked about the Iron Coast. Sure, there have been tangentially related to the Iron Coast, in particular my write up for the "posskum" (giant opossums ridden by the vermen of the Iron Coast) and recent Henchmen Week posts, but there hasn't been a good, solid update on what Team Viking Jesus has been up to for quite a long time. Since September, really. Right when the guys had finished off their excursion into the Lichway.
The Long Road To Sakriskyn

The party went through the inbetween adventure checklist, buying stupid things that they'd had on their wishlists, filling up ye olde wyzarde bonge with unknowne substances, hiring some new henchmen and all other sorts of general carousery and debauch. After the party weighed its options and rumors that it had collected over the course of the previous adventure (and carousing), the party decided to head off across country to the nearby barony of Sakriskyn where the beleaguered Baron of Sakriskyn (but he's of an Iskurlandik persuasion, so he calls himself a "Thane") was said to be having trouble with the local vermen population. Setting off across the countryside, I found myself DMing a group on its first hexcrawl.
Hexcrawl Classic

The scale change was pretty convenient for me because I bought this great double-sided hex paper from Black Blade Publishing at GenCon this year (at the Pacesetter/OSR booth, in case you were wondering). So, this remarkably convenient hexpaper has larger hexes divided into smaller hexes on each side (you know, like hex paper does); on one side, there are four small hexes per larger hex and on the other its six small hexes per each larger. Since the scales I'm concerned with most of the time are 6-mile hexes and 24-mile hexes, it makes an awful lot of sense to use the 4 small hex per 1 larger side for the 6/24-mile side, allowing me to use the 6 small hex per 1 larger side for something different. Scaling things downward logically, each of the smaller hexes here are 1 mile while the larger ones become 6 mile. I feel like that was a very complicated explanation. Here's the deal: one side, the small hexes are 6 miles each, other side it's 1 mile hexes.
With the players moving around one mile hexes, the passage of time actually becomes pretty easy to sort out. They're moving slowly due to Artur's cart, and different types of hexes (plain, hills, swamp, etc.) all get travelled through at different rates. Also, if there's a road present (here's a hint: there probably isn't), that'll speed things up, too. The math here has been simple and the effects are enjoyable, particularly since the players are really scouring these hexes for details. It has always felt to me that movement on a 6-mile scale would make it really easy to miss details; on a 1-mile scale, as long as the PCs aren't asleep at the wheel, they should be able to find most details. It's been pretty damn cool so far.
A Note For The Observant

The players have been collecting some pieces of the overall puzzle, and also some pieces of different puzzles that seem to have ended up in this box. What's been fun is that they've been trying to put them all together in one cohesive whole. For the sake of the story and the fact that several of the Iron Coast players actually take the time to read the blog here, so I can't quite go into too many details. At this point, the adventurers are criss-crossing the barony, trying to find survivors of the verman attacks or, even better, to find the verman warrens themselves. Up until last session, they had found very little, but then, in a verman warren, they found a map that shows an ominous tower in the nearby mountains (that separate the Orphan Baronies from the Orroztalani nation) with the symbol of a black ring that they've learned has some connection with the whomever worked the vermen up into attacking Sakriskyn in the first place.
In about a week, we'll see what the players do with the knowledge they've accumulated so far.
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