The March 2019 Blog Carnival challenges GMs to revisit and re-purpose material from the first half of their career behind the scene. For Campaign Mastery’s first entry (I have another in mind but might not have time to write it) I’m going Waaaay back – all the way, in fact, to my very first AD&D campaign, and to my original notes on Elves made in the day.

And then, I’m going to update them and re-purpose them.

Part 1: The Elves That Were

Elves have very long lives, and this gives them great patience and tolerance toward individual failures of character, but far less tolerance for institutional behavior that violates their sense of right and wrong and what is appropriate. They tend to take the long view in their dealings with other races. The only race that approaches the Elven lifespan are Dwarves, and Dwarves focus almost completely on the current moment; “solve tomorrow’s problems, tomorrow” is a popular Dwarfish saying that absolutely infuriates Elves.

Image by Free-Photos on Pixabay

These traits mean that Elves hate being forced to rush into actions or decisions, preferring to take a long time to discuss possible alternatives, consequences, and choices. If at all possible, they will spin out this process until the problem solves itself – and an elvish maxim is that most problems go away if you wait long enough. Elves can be decisive when they have to be, but they hate and resent it.

No-one can be grim and serious all the time, and all Elves have their playful side. This manifests as a greatly refined sense of aesthetics; every elf seeks to master at least one type of art, whether that be sculpture, design, or poetry. Elves include as ‘arts’ many things that others do not consider artistic subjects at all – from the design and casting of spells through to the recording of history. They are also possessed of a deep well of sentimentality that their arts attempt to reach into and stir.

Halflings in particular have learned to prey upon this sentimentality, being reminiscent of young Elvish children – but where the elvish child will outgrow this phase and turn serious in a mere decade or so, Halflings perpetuate their innocently-blatant hedonism all their lives. Elves can rarely refuse an earnest request of a Halfling.

Elves are, as a general rule, extremely courteous to others; wrapping insults in great subtlety (another popular art form), especially in a form that non-elves would perceive as a compliment. Despite their differences with Dwarves, and the offense they take at the obnoxiousness of Orcs, the most popular targets for this wit are humans, both as a race and as individuals. Elves consider humans to be arrogant without just cause, decisive when caution is warranted, self-serving when altruism is appropriate, inconstant, egotistical, and of minimal worth. They regard the human sense of humor as crass and their art as ribald. It perpetually surprises them when they encounter exceptions to this perception – aesthetic and artistically-inclined humans, or those who manage to combine decisiveness with awareness of the society that will be around them or their descendants decades hence – and romantic attraction and entanglement inevitably follows in some form.

Elves live in trees, or so it is said. In reality, they make their homes within the trunks of trees that they grow and shape to their wills, creating hollow spaces within, and enlarging the size of the trees so manipulated as necessary. It is sometimes said that you can recognize an Elvish forest by the unnatural size of the trees within and improbability of two trees demanding such diverse climates being found side-by-side. The Elvish throne room and royal apartments are located within Lehandra, the largest living tree in the world, which stands a full 3000 feet high and has a trunk that at it’s base measures more than 200′ across, of the birch species. Ropes descend from the upper branches where a constant lookout is maintained, and some of the branches are large enough and broad enough to contain, within their hollows,.dungeons or guest quarters. The smoothness of the Trunk makes it almost impossible for non-elves to climb.

It is also said that when an Elf dies, if no other should inherit his tree, that tree will soon wither and die. Elves refuse to confirm or even discuss such matters, regarding them as personal and privileged and you’re a typical human for even asking.

The current ruler is Cerith III, former court jester, and a distant cousin of Patrus IV, his predecessor. Twenty years ago, a terrible plague swept through the Elvish population. In response, the King sealed the cities until the disease burned itself out, well aware that he was signing the death warrants for up to one-half of the Elvish population, despite the best efforts of Elven Clerics. He did not realize that the disease was resistant to their abilities, or that as a result, his own family would number amongst the victims. Elvish diplomacy has had only one priority since – to conceal, by any means necessary, the resulting vulnerability.

Some retrospect

Most of the areas in which I now see shortcomings in the preceding section fall in the last three paragraphs. The “Elvish Forest” concept presages the treatment of Lothlorien in the Lord Of The Rings movie trilogy by several decades, though there are some obvious similarities – but it now seems confused, as though I started with one idea and then switched to another. Nevertheless, players from my Fumanor campaigns will recognize some of the nascent thinking shown here.

But it’s the plague that now troubles me, as a writer and GM. Okay, so let’s assume that only 3% of the Elvish population are clerics of sufficient level to cast Cure Disease. And that the average number of them that they could cast is 3 per day. That’s 9% healed in a day, maximum. Really nasty diseases have a virulity – a chance of catching the disease from someone who has it – in single digits percent, or less. Diseases that kill their hosts too quickly tend to die out themselves. A really contagious disease might have a 4% infection rate.

So, one infected person who goes about their daily routine might meet 100 people in a day, resulting in 5 infected people, including the original. The next day, the first person is feeling poorly, and goes about an abbreviated daily routine, producing one more infected person from 25 contacts. The other 4 people feel fine and each meet 100 people, creating another 4 infected people each, or 16 in all. That gives us a total of 5+1+16=22. Except that there is almost certain to be some overlap between them, especially in relatively isolated communities. So the real total is more likely to be 20. On the third day, patient zero dies. Patients 2-5 feel ill, have an abbreviated schedule, and only infect one more person each. Patients 6-20 feel fine and spread the disease to four more people each, less overlap. That’s maybe 40 more cases, between them. 20-1+4+40=64 cases. Day four, cases 2-5 die. Cases 6-20 feel ill and maintain an abbreviated schedule, and infect maybe another 10 people, allowing for overlap. The remaining 44 spread the disease to a maximum of 176 people – but by now people are becoming aware that others are dying, and are taking extra precautions, and there’s still the question of a perpetually-shrinking pool of potential victims like innkeepers and merchants. In reality, you would be unlucky to get even 60 new cases. So that’s 64-4+10+60=130 people. Day five, and cases 6-20 die, and cases 21-64 feel ill, and everyone’s scared to death. Those cases are isolated – infecting no-one – and the remaining 66 mostly maintain an abbreviated schedule if they go out at all after learning they had contact with someone who’s now in isolation. Better to go hungry for a day than to catch something fatal. So their chance of infecting someone else is probably around 1/8th of what it was – so instead of 264 people infected, it’s about 25. 130-14+25=141. Day six, and cases 21-64 die, and isolation for everyone becomes mandatory, enforced by police and fear. At best you’d get 1-2 new cases. 141-43+2=100. The trend is clear – with no magical healing intervention at all.

Now let’s throw in some magical healing. On day 2, person one feels ill and is cured. So patient #20 never gets ill at all. On day 3, four more people feel ill – but there’s at least 100 people, and that means that there are at least 3 healers capable of curing an average of 3 cases each, so they still aren’t stretched. But that would be enough to tell the clerics that something was going on, and by day 4, civil containment measures would be ordered. Day 4, and 16 people feel ill; 12 of them get cured. More clerics are sent for. From the progression, they would even have some idea of how many more clerics they might potentially need! Day 5, and the other 4 of the 16 die. You don’t have to do the math; even in the time of the ancient Greeks, they knew that one person could catch an illness from another (even if they had the mechanisms involved all wrong), and that you should isolate the sick. It won’t be long before the disease is contained or burns itself out.

What’s needed is a longer infectious period before symptoms show up, and probably a longer time period all round.

Even back then, I could see this – and so I grafted in the notion that the disease resisted clerical healing, without explaining how or why. Today, that invokes the concept of antibiotic-resistant bacteria; back then, there was no such concept. What there was the concept of was bio-warfare, and the prospect of manufactured diseases that resisted treatment. That would mean that someone would be responsible for the creation and spread of the disease, and a huge bounty would be placed on their heads by the crown. This, in turn, would stimulate interest to the exclusion of everything else that was going on at the time. Meanwhile, the royal family would receive the best care and advice and be amongst the first in line for any treatment, palliative or curative. The whole premise of putting a jester on the throne falls apart.

The more you attempt to explain the why and how of the disease’s resistance, the more blatant an attack this all becomes, and the more strongly the disease would factor into the lives of people in the modern era – i.e. when the game was set. It didn’t.

That in turn requires not only that the disease be resistant, and far more infectious, but that this resistance abruptly goes away, allowing the disease to be stamped out. That sounds like the sort of thing an adventuring party would do – especially in pursuit of that huge bounty I mentioned – and so I would, these days, look a lot more closely at the how and why of the disease, have a responsible individual, and have a legendary party hunt that person down and end the grip of the disease, all in the campaign backstory.

Image by luxstorm on Pixabay

Let’s apply some reinvention

Anyway, the goal isn’t just to revisit the past, it’s to revise it into something completely different. I happen to know that at a future point I will need a cold and ruthless politician in my Zenith-3 campaign – starting reasonably soon, in fact – and there’s enough commonality between that description and the racial profile given for Elves that the one could be used as a reasonable template for the other.

I don’t want to refer to this guy as “the politician” or “this guy” throughout, so I’m going to start by giving him a name. For campaign purposes, a British name would be preferable. Fenton Cole sounds like a solid, neutral, name, believable in a politician.

Fenton Cole was the class clown in his early years. All that changed at the age of 16 when his parents and only brother caught a rare tropical disease and Fenton became the sole heir of the family fortune – a small but noteworthy collection of stocks and bonds, and a declining family business which he had no interest in running. Accordingly, he asked for the business to be sold by the estate’s executors and the proceeds added to the family trust. Placed in the care of an Orphanage, he quickly came to hate it and all forms of socialized care. Throwing himself into his studies, he surprised everyone by graduating first in his class shortly before his 18th Birthday, when the first installment of the trust became available to him. Each year that followed would bring another slab of cash, until – at 25 – the entirety would come under his control.

He then attended Oxford university, studying economics, politics, law, and business. During this period, his political position firmed as he drew himself closer and closer to the right wing of the Conservative Party. Upon graduation, he head-hunted the smartest of his fellow graduates and started an IT business.

Cole had studied his business history well, and was of the opinion that the climate was ripe for a new revolution within the business sector. In particular, the producing mobile-phone apps aimed squarely at optimizing business processes, just as – prior to Microsoft and Bill Gates – the computer had not been seen as a business necessity. Although moderately successful, this enterprise never succeeded in developing a “Killer App”, something that would be viewed as ubiquitously necessary by business. His programs were too slow and had insufficient capacity.

In those early years, he faced and fought off numerous legal challenges from both ex-staff and rivals, which he fought both vigorously and ruthlessly. At a trade show, he was discussing a hi-fi app with another businessman – and rather bored with the conversation, from all accounts – when the other man explained the concept of a separate pre-amp with all the controls and a power amp which supplied the muscle. As a way of structuring audio processing units, this had been around since the 1950s, hitting the peak of popularity in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but never completely fading from view. Nevertheless, it was an obscure concept by the time Cole heard of it, and had an epiphany.

His vision: Mobile devices as the “front end” that controlled everything, and home or business computers with minimal interfaces as the dedicated “muscle”. This would put the full computing power of the centralized device in the hands of the end-user without wasting resources on networks and the like, and reducing the cost significantly. This would also permit him to gut the mobile device, reducing its cost to the consumer substantially. In combination, by eliminating the redundant overlap in capabilities, he could undersell a competitor by more than 40%. Integrated collaborative software that permitted multiple remote “controllers” to be linked to a single device or network proved the final piece of the puzzle.

He knew he was onto something when both Microsoft and Google came sniffing around with offers to buy his company and it’s intellectual property. Rather than make enemies of them, he chose to draw negotiations out, and with every passing month, the recompense he could expect to receive ballooned. It was only when demand began to outstrip the manufacturing capability that he could bring to bear that he sold a one-third interest to each party, retaining the last third for himself.

With this capital and the resources at his disposal, he began a career in conservative politics as something more than a mere contributor. Slowly, he has worked his way to stand one step behind the current leadership, and is poised to elevate himself still further.

Okay, that’s a nice, coherent personal history of someone with little spark of originality and superficial real-world competence finding success on a grand scale. But it doesn’t say much about the character’s personality, which should derive from these formative elements. This is something that I have nevertheless kept in mind throughout. It may also have been noted that there isn’t a lot of resemblance between the material on Elves presented earlier and the above – that’s about to change, too.

Fenton Cole has great patience and tolerance toward individual failures of character, but far less patience for institutional behavior that violates his senses of propriety and decorum. He doesn’t begrudge funding necessary services, but demands accountability and that the services so funded deliver on their respective mandates as efficiently as possible. He tends to take the long view in his dealings with other nations, and will frequently castigate them for their shortsightedness.

He hates being rushed into actions or decisions, preferring to take the time to discuss possible alternatives, consequences, and choices in depth. If at all possible, he will spin out this process until the problem solves itself and he publicly holds the opinion that “most problems go away if you wait long enough”. He can be decisive when he has to be, but he hates and resents being painted into a corner. It is sometimes expected that this practice encourages factionalism within his administrations, but once a decision has been taken, he is ruthless in demanding loyalty to the policy, the party, and himself – in that order. Behind the scenes, he is cold and ruthless, asking no favor and granting none.

No-one can be grim and serious all the time, and Fenton is known to have his playful side, though he indulges it only as a calculated measure. While this once manifested as a source of practical jokes, these days it usually presents as a delicate sense of aesthetics. He has turned his hand at one time or another to almost every type of art, with extremely variable results. The choice to which he returns, time and again, is oil painting, but he has experienced enough of the alternatives that he is comfortable discussing them with other practitioners of those arts, and they with him; this celebrity cache makes him a popular guest at dinner parties and television programming.

At least in public, Cole seems possessed of a deep well of sentimentality that is exhibited in dealing with those experiencing difficulties. He strongly believes in holding out a helping hand to those in genuine need, while demanding accountability for what is done with the assistance that is provided. It is sometimes alleged that he holds a particular soft spot for the Irish, lamenting the past divisions within that nation.

Cole is, as a general rule, extremely courteous to others; he likes to offer barbed compliments and to damn with faint praise. When presented with a piece of legislation which he intends to oppose, he will, for example, scrutinize it closely before remarking that it “appears to be well laid out” or “the full stops are in an attractive font” before proceeding to rip the proposal apart on policy grounds. He is well respected within political circles for always making his criticisms substantive and never superficial; he is always good for talking points that those opposed find difficult to refute.

So, what we have here is a well-spoken advocate for the conservative position who absolutely believes in his party’s position – and isn’t afraid to say so if he thinks they are wrong. He has to be dragged forcibly into any compromise, but will staunchly protect and defend such compromises when he finds them necessary.

A politician who would be respected by his enemies, and who could plausibly be about to rise to the leadership of his political party – who can be and will be draconian and ruthless in the ways that I need him to be, plot-wise, who is that most dangerous of opponents – someone who believes he’s right. Exactly what the doctor ordered for my campaign! Only you and I know that he used to be an Elf…