Miria, a smuggler awakes next to her sinking starship on a strange world, alone, with holes in her memories, and only the clothes on her back and her wrist computer. If she’s going to survive, she is going to need to find a way past the strange alien cephalopods circling her vessel like hungry sharks…

Episode 1 of the podcast introduces us to Miria at level 1, and has her survive the crash of her starship the Empyreal’s Coin. We encounter a monster called the Psi-squid, and eventually meet Teo helpful characters: Olan and Rayya, who believe Miria is there to fulfill a prophecy, something she partially verifies with the ancient Trassi incantation “Bah wheep graghna wheep ni ni bong“. We also get a glimpse of a potential enemy known only as The Master.

Miria finishes the task of slaying the Gorum, and struggles with the guilt of destroying helpless foes. As she struggles with her thoughts she makes a bond with a psisquid, and is then interrupted by a call from an old enemy.

In this episode we discuss the use of alignment in OD&D and Swords & Wizardry and why it matters. We also continue to feature the Gorum, shared in the Bestiary section of the SvM homepage.

In segment 2 of the episode, I discuss Alignment including how it was used in AD&D.. I mentioned my casual retroclone project Ruins & Redcaps, and reproducing (and re-arranging) the rules of AD&D using modern information design in a way reminiscent of Old School Essentials. Here is a downloable excerpt on Alignment from Ruins & Redcaps.

For purposes of a campaign with only a Law-Neutrality-Chaos axis this can be expressed as a linear scale from 6 to -6 using row 0 of the Alignment table.

In any case, I don’t want Miria, Rayya, & Olan to slip too close to Chaos, but after this, Miria is definitely sitting somewhere around -1.5.

Yanghu is a smuggler captain of the Trassi Syndicate and former business partner of Miria’s. He is the one who shot her down, but she can’t remember why. Yanghu is a cruel Ogre Magus who loves to gloat.

Yanghu: HD: 5+4 (44hp); AC: 4 [15]; Att: portable laser cannon (4d8) or boarding sword (d12); SV: 12; Special: Magic use (See below), regenerate 1hp/round; MV: 12/18 (flying); AL: Chaos; CL/XP: 7/600

• Magic Use: Yanghu can fly, turn invisible (per the spell), create a 10-foot-radius circle of magical darkness, change into human form, cast sleep and charm person once per day, and cast a Cone of Frost with a range of 60 feet to a base of 30 feet, causing 8d6 damage to any caught within (saving throw applies).

I’ve drawn a map of Nar for an upcoming Hex Crawl!

Each hex is about 6 miles, but the terrain is mostly hilly jungle. I’ve marked a few locations with images:

• 0903 is the location of the Village of Nar and the Church.

• 0602 contains the Cloister of the Order of Stars.

• 0402 includes the Pit of the Gorum.

• 0401 includes the local Volcano, Guluke, and the secret Shrine of the All-Knowing.

The wreck of Empyreal’s Coin is just to the South of the peninsula 0405 (not shown, as I have to import a sunken flying saucer into CC3+).

Here are my Hot Springs Island inspired random encounter tables: