150 years prior to the establishment of the first resettlement, the land of Matros was home to four nations, each an advanced civilization in its own way. Without warning, disaster struck as a strange and deadly fog swept over the land corrupting and corroding everything in its path. It poured into towns and cities and few were able to avoid the deadly tide, but your ancestors were some of those lucky souls who were able to board a vessel and cast off just as the fog was reaching the docks. Buffeted by the ocean breeze the fog remained isolated to the mainland, hovering like a predator unable to snatch its prey. With nowhere else to go, your ancestors sailed to the coastal island of Lei, where they established a refugee camp with several other vessels carrying survivors. After many scouting trips it is determined that the fog had enveloped the mainland. Matros was lost.
Mere days after the 150th anniversary of that grim event, the fog covering the mainland suddenly showed signs of recession. In the intervening years, Lei had developed from a refugee encampment into the small but thriving commonwealth of Leifar, and upon hearing that the fog was finally abating, the leaders of Leifar decided to begin a recolonisation effort by sending a first vessel to make landfall. Upon arriving, the members of this initial expedition found the land strange and twisted and altogether different from how their ancestors described. The fog had influenced the land, changed its very nature. Eager to learn more, the courageous visitors established the first resettlement on the coast, and called it Grailhold.
Grailhold is only the first resettlement attempt since the fog has receded. In order to travel into the land of Matros, adventurers must respect the land by building the infrastructure that will allow for shelter, sustenance, and crafting along the way. The wilderness will remain corrupted until a few brave souls work together to find the source of the wickedness.
Many questions remain regarding the origin and exact nature of the fog. All that is known for sure is that it brought with it a corrupting influence. As long as it hung low over the land of Matros, no upright being dared step foot on the shore. When the fog receded after 150 years, the people of Leifar trepidatiously began to establish their first resettlement project, Grailhold, on the coast.
The timing of the project was fortunate, for at Grailhold’s completion, just as the last walls were raised, the fog unexpectedly descended again and covered the land. It consumed the outlying buildings and butted up against the new walls, but never overcame Grailhold’s fortification. For three days the fog encircled the new settlement, and as the sun rose on the fourth day the fog receded yet again and allowed those lucky enough to enter the battlements to return to the sunlight. It was determined that the fog expands and contracts on a regular rhythm: contracting for three months, and then expanding and consuming for three terrible days.
These three month spans were deemed seasons, because each season seemed to turn the soil of Matros anew, and the three days of darkness seemed to transform and corrupt the land in new and terrifying ways. Any buildings covered by the fog during these three dark days are found broken and in need of repair. Without proper maintenance, built things will fall away and return to the land before too long. Each building will lose half of its health if consumed by the fog. The only real way to reach far into the land is to work together to establish new settlements.
Each building provides a boon to adventurers on their travels. There are three different types of building: sustenance, shelter, and crafting.
Anything you build for use in Matros will fall within one of these categories, and each build has a level, ranging from 1 to 10, which determines how effective it is at providing help to travelers.
When any hex in Matros has one build in each category that has reached level 10, the three buildings combine to establish a settlement. A settlement is the only building that has the resources and fortification to avoid being consumed by the fog between each season, and is therefore a new starting location from which adventurers may begin their excursions.
The first question for any adventurer should be “why bother?”. Going out is treacherous now that the fog has infected the land to such an extent that even your ancestors would be hard pressed to recognize it as home. Why strike out into such a place? The reason comes in two forms, tangible and intangible.
The first grail was discovered just after the first ship made landfall after the fog relinquished its control of the Matros coast. As they were exploring the shoreline in search of a place to camp, the first expedition found a nest of some small rodent, recently abandoned by its inhabitant. Inside amongst the twigs and mud they found a beaded necklace. The cord was made of plant fiber and the beads were carved from a light, porous wood of some type. Though simple, it was obviously made with care before the fog brought a swift end to its creator. It struck the members of the expedition as odd that, rather than decay over the 150 years, the necklace appeared miraculously unmarred by time. As it was drawn out of the nest, the bearer noted a warmth emanating from within the object, as if the necklace were imbued with some strange power. Over the next several days, more items were found of a similar nature. Simple, crafted items, often created by hand, which showed a resilience against time and decay and emanated a power of unknown origin. These items were deemed Grails and were soon discovered to possess the ability to push back the corrupting influence of the fog.
Finding these Grails and bringing them back to your community appears to be the only means of pushing the fog back and resettling the land. Grails allow characters to build and upgrade buildings that are resilient against the fog. Even if little is known of the true nature of these imbued items, their value is undeniable, and finding them has become a top priority for those wishing to establish themselves in this strange land. But finding Grails is not simple. Brave souls must scour the landscape, delving into the darkness to find where these items have been protected or stashed. These expeditions are called Excursions, and they are only taken with the utmost care and courage.
In order to explore the dangerous landscape, an adventurer must prepare and set out with intention. To plan an Excursion, a setup plan must be put into place, following the steps below to ensure that nothing is neglected.
Once these steps are taken, the user may review their setup and choose to lock in the scheduled excursion. Once locked, emails are sent to each participant with the details of the upcoming excursion, and a link to the excursion view for when the time comes.
When the time arrives for the excursion to start, all participants should use the link in their invite email to join together in an excursion view. This is a virtual room where only the participants may join, and represents your excursion crew. When you first join, before the excursion has started you will be sent to a waiting area, where you may choose your equipment and enjoy the last moments before your journey. At any point the participants may start the countdown to begin the excursion. When the countdown ends, all chosen equipment will be locked into place and the crew will begin their journey. A participant may join at any point after the excursion begins, but only those characters who began from the starting hex will have their choice of equipment. Latecomers will only have a dagger and a single ration.
Excursions follow a cycle where each iteration represents one day in the game world. Every day proceeds in this manner:
After step five the loop returns to step one and the next day begins.
Each step in Matros is dotted with interesting places to discover. Remains of the last days before fogfall, ancient, crumbling ruins, and natural cave systems are all examples of Points Of Interest. Though each Point is unique, through lines between points are not uncommon. Every Point has a level associated with it, and this level indicates how many parts the Point contains. A part is a distinct area contained within or about the Point Of Interest, such as a room in a dungeon, or a branch of a tree, or a phase of a hallucination. The higher the level, the more parts and the more difficult it is to traverse completely. The deeper into a Point the more likely a stash of Grails is there, waiting to be recovered. Most Points Of Interest shift and change with each passing season for unknown reasons, but some are fixed in place. Fixed Points are especially dangerous, and often contain uniquely wicked and conniving creatures of the dark.
Before the fog fell, the land was full of beautiful creatures, both wild and domestic. After catastrophe struck, while the land was made inaccessible to men, the flora and fauna were being changed. Strange, new, biology was emerging, physics was rent and reknit. The world was changing, and when the fog receded, the people of Leifar found the land of their ancestors wholly unrecognizable. Though many of the creatures shared aspects of creatures native to the land, they had clearly been corrupted, enhanced, reduced, and enlightened by the fog’s influence.
Discovering and documenting the creatures of Matros is one of the top priorities for the people of Grailhold, but there is a problem: Each season, when the fog returns to cover the land, new and unique forms are seen in the shadows of the forests and mountains. Every new season twists and molds the flora and fauna with such precision that the people of Grailhold are beginning to personify the fog as a wicked god obsessed with reforming the land each season.
As a character in the world, you must act as best you can to follow your values. Though the values of many lead to lives of safety and mundanity, your life is different. In order to reclaim the land that was lost to your people long ago, to recover what little remains, you must take risks. In order to easily determine the outcome of your actions, quantification of your anatomy and skills is necessary. The more capable you are at an action, the higher the likelihood that you will succeed at your attempt. No matter how much training or how gifted you are, however, there is always a possibility of failure, and catastrophic failure at that.
Each character is made up of three Attributes: Body, Mind and Spirit. Each of the Attributes has a score, and that score represents the number of six sided dice a player rolls whenever their character attempts to withstand the negative effects of an incoming force or stimulus. Consider these examples:
Attributes not only indicate your physical, mental and spiritual prowess, they are also an indication of how healthy your character is. When your character is harmed it will reduce one of these three attributes. See the section on Health and Harm for more details.
In addition to these three innate Attributes, each character has Skills they’ve accumulated throughout their life. In play, these skills represent your learned experience. Rolls using skills should only be used if an attempted action has an opportunity for failure with consequence. Consider the following examples:
There are twelve Skills:
Each Skill has a dice level which indicates the bonus die added when using that particular skill in a useful way. The levels are:
When a character levels up in a skill the player moves the skill track from one die to the next. Only the die related to the active skill level is added during checks. Characters automatically receive one Skill Point at the end of each session. In order to level up in a skill, the player must spend skill points equal to the die value of the level they are moving to. For example if a player wants to level up their character from trained (D8) to proficient (D10), they must spend 10 skill points.
When a character attempts to overcome a challenge that has a distinct chance of failure, the player rolls a pool of dice to determine how the situation plays out.
There are several ways to increase the dice pool and therefore make a challenge easier to overcome:
There are also ways of modifying the roll difficulty to fit the scenario. For example, if a character is trying to climb a particularly difficult rock wall, rather than an easy incline, the difficulty of the task might be increased. Do do so, all that changes is the target number. There are three difficulties:
At any moment a character may experience a dramatic shift which alters a situation entirely. Critical rolls represent moments when a character attempts an action and things either go extremely well or things go extremely poorly.
Adventuring in this land is not an easy task, and sometimes characters must push themselves beyond what they are normally capable of to achieve their goals. When they do, a whisper in their ear tempts them to embrace the darkness in exchange for power. At any point before a check, a player may take a Corruption point in exchange for adding 2d6 to the dice pool for that check. Additionally, creatures of darkness may attempt to impose corruption on the characters by force. If a character is ever required to spend the fifth and final Corruption resource, they are now Turned. They belong to the darkness and must act in the interest of the darkness. Whether the player reveals this fact to the other players is up to them. Turned characters do not return to society. They are lost after this excursion.
All characters have an inventory which they may utilize to hold a set number of items. By default, each character has six inventory slots available. Inventory items that are used by your character tend to wear down, and this is represented by three usage slots on each item. Though all items have the same number of usage slots, when a usage slot is filled is determined by the type of item.
Using a weapon is not the only way to resolve a conflict, but the wilds are dangerous and sometimes things go south. Melee and ranged weapons are divided into categories based on their relative size and base damage output.
Beasts with fangs sharp as any blade roam the wilderness these days hunting for adventurers to sate their hunger. Armor may be the best decision you ever made. Armor comes in two sizes:
Staying healthy is harder than it seems. The dark forests are full of predators, pestilence, and plagues bent upon bringing you low. Whenever a creature takes harm, one or more of their Attribute scores is reduced. If the targeted Attribute is explicit, that Attribute takes damage first. If not, the player may decide which Attribute is the target. When an Attribute is reduced it weakens the creature, making it more difficult for them to withstand the next attack by reducing the number of dice the player may roll on a save for that Attribute. If an Attribute is reduced to zero, any remaining damage is rolled over to another Attribute of the receiving player’s choice.
If one Attribute is ever reduced to zero, the creature gains the Weakened condition, making intended actions more difficult to achieve. The Weakened condition is not removed until the creature gets an undisturbed night’s rest.
If two Attributes are ever reduced to zero, the creature gains a special condition called Desperate. This condition represents the strength which wells up within a creature when they need it most, and adds a passive 2x multiplier to damage until the creature is healed. This condition is removed as soon as at least two of the creature’s Attributes have at least one point each.
If all three Attributes are reduced to zero, the creature falls unconscious and the player must make death saving throws every round until they receive treatment. A death save is a 50/50 roll, and may be rolled with a d6:
As an action any character may attempt a Medicine check to heal themselves or a willing creature. On a success the target is healed one point in the targeted Attribute. An Attribute may not be increased if it has reached its maximum, which is set at character creation.
Not all affliction takes the form of Harms, however. Both wild creatures and adventurers may take on conditions which hamper or aid their ability to achieve their goals. Some examples of conditions are
Each condition has an associated effect, either to increase the target number or decrease the target number. Each condition has a specific effect on the creature, and the effects are automatically applied when active on the character sheet.
Before your first Excursion you must decide who you want to roleplay as in this world. Is your character a tall, handsome bachelor who moonlights as a birthday clown? Or perhaps a gardener with small mice in her pockets at all times. Or perhaps you don’t have a concept, and instead want to let the dice determine who your character is. The steps below make up the process for building an adventurer in Grailhold:
You may notice that choosing equipment is not on this list. That is because equipment is chosen before each excursion and the chosen loadout may depend on the destination the crew is intending to reach.
The three Attributes: Body, Mind, and Spirit each start at 0 by default, and each character has five points which may be distributed in any manner. No attribute may have more than three points. Remember that these points also represent your character’s health.
Each Character has 100 Skill points to distribute however the player wishes between the 12 skills:
Each Skill has a level between zero and five, and each level is associated with a particular die type:
In order to level up in a skill you must pay skill points equal to the die of the level you are moving to. For example, if you were to level from 0 to 1, you’d pay 6 skill points. To level from 1 to 2, you’d pay 8, and so on. No skill may be higher than level 3 at character creation.
Any leftover points that you are unable or unwilling to spend will go into the skill point pool which your character will increase through experience in the wild.
Choose a profession your character has left behind in order to take up the life of an adventurer. Here are some questions that may help to inform who your character is:
And finally the last things to cover are the nuts and bolts of who your character is to their community. Personal details such as a name and pronouns are a given, but consider putting down on paper other details of your character such as personality quirks, dreams, nightmares, or hobbies. These details may feel definitive and therefore scary, but each detail you add is another improv hook which you may use to more easily embody your character during an excursion. Be warned though, the land of Grailhold is a very dangerous place and the average lifespan of an adventurer is not long, so try not to fall too deeply in love with your character.
The land of Matros is vast and without the bravery and communal effort of those who explore the wilds, it will remain inaccessible. Work together to reclaim what was lost. Without you, the fog will have the final say.