On the Strange Histories of Humb [Advanced Fighting Fantasy + Mythic] [Lore]

On the Nature of Calendars and the Geographic Location of an Insignificant City Growing in Power

Imagine, if you will, we are floating a mile or so over a relatively insignificant place, geographically speaking. Below us, there is a decently sized island at least a week of sea travel from the various centers of Allansia's society. 

By Allansia's calendar, it is the Month of Reaping of the year 288 AC. Earthsday to be precise. Night time shadows the Forest Ick. 

It is a time where across the ocean, great heroes have overthrown mighty villains like Zagor and the Lizard King while others then go on to let loose ancient stone giants to ravage the lands east of Blacksand.

However, where we currently are, floating over the Island of Phillia, the War of the Wizards had only the slightest of impacts. There was no "Chaos" for there to be a "After". 

The Bad King Phillic and his rebel kingdom was for sale and no one bought it. At least his inability to gather dark forces matched the ineptitudes of his moral teachings and The Bad King Phillic is mostly known for bungling a few bumper years of crops and once failing to cut a ribbon properly while unveiling a statue of himself. 

We are not floating over whatever remains of Phillos, once capital of the island. Instead, we are somewhere roughly in the south of the middle of the island, and down below is a city. The City of Humb. During the day, you could see that Humb has been growing a lot, recently. New streets and lot of new buildings are cropping up. Farm land now stretches north and south along the River Eos. The old road that once connected the Valley Towns to Phillos is being rebuilt. 

Some scholars debate whether Humb is a corruption of "Hub" or of "Humble" but in reality, both camps are wrong. Humb gets its name from a strange hum that once could be heard in the region. Before it was Humb, it was Sennasal: a holy site dedicated to Sennas, a God of Art. Humans and elves created great art and discussed how the land seems to have been a place of giants. It was a golden age of creativity and scholarship for the region. 

Then, something occurred. We will get to that, shortly. 

When it was Sennasal, there were no months. Time was reckoned in 13-day cycles each known after a shade of purple (Sennas has many, many names for colors). Each day was a shade of pink. Each hour a shade of blue. Years were marked in shades of green. Groups of seven years in shades of yellow. Orange was the color of eleven seven-year cycles. Subtler hues named longer and shorter cycles. The calendar was a sing-song collection of gradients and often these colors would be baked into current art to date it. Being able to read these dates is an art (pardon the pun) lost to time. 

A Brief History of Humb

Then, roughly forty years before the end of the War of the Wizards, the event occurred and something crashed down into the land and destroyed much of Sennasal and the Faith of Sennas. Some years later, a few farmers set up homesteads along the Forest Ick and remarked upon the humming sound, and they became known as the People of the Humb. One of those families specialized in cooking the food and in time were called the Bakersfields. The set up a series of restaurants and hearths visited by growing numbers of travelers.

Trade along the River Eos and the Old Road brought in new people and made trade decent but never quite so strong. But Humb endured. Legends of strange sights and sounds were common. The Moonstone Ruins, a remnant of a Sennas holy place, became the center of Humb's biggest festival. The waters flow out of it in a array of colors and change the shades of Eos. Once a year, these colors erupt so vibrantly that even those not trained in the subtle hues becomes aware. 

In 234, the mayor of Humb, Malakar Brite, conspired with his warlock followers to try and turn Humb into his own kingdom. At least this is how Shellyton Bakersfield remembered it. Shellyton was only a child at the time. The Bakersfields fled west through the Forest Ick and joined the Seven Tows of the Valley. 

In 272, Shellyton decided it was time to travel back through the Forest Ick and battle Malakar Brite and get revenge for the poor people of Humb. Alas, Shellyton died in battle versus the Red Warlocks. 

In 287, his nephew, Barston Bakersfield, traveled forth to find what had happened to his uncle. Barston was more successful in surviving the forest and made his way to Humb, expecting to find ruins and corruption. 

Instead, he found a bustling city. 

ANOTHER Brief History of Humb

In this history, Malakar Brite was a somewhat minor mayor who took Humb from a large town to a small city, in part by codifying the various guilds that ran the town and giving them increased power. Brite passed with honors but is largely forgotten. The guilds are the powers that be with the city mayor being largely in charge with organizing the unions together. 

And in this version, the Warlocks are a warring band of two groups - Red and Blue - who have closed off Humb in a thin blockade choking off progress. They are working based off missives from Malakar Brite who, in their version of events, is with the Gray Warlocks and is trying to find a true successor to his teachings. 

People are going missing. The city is struggling. Trade is decreasing. Religious temples are emptying of followers and holy relics. 

Barston navigates his dual-vision of a destroyed town and a sieged city. He finds a nearly forgotten Temple of Sennas. He inspires the Printer's Guild to keep growing in power. Eventually, a fight with the Temple's Guild exposes that that Guild is being run by the Order of Illker. A merchant's guild who has been using the history of Malakar Brite to send fake commands to the warring Warlocks. 

A version of Malakar Brite that makes no sense in this world. 

Barston undergoes personal sacrifice but breaks the backs of both warring factions and ends the siege, allowing Humb to start growing again. He then goes into seclusion to restart the religion of Sennas. 

In the back of his head, he realizes there's a weird truth here. Humb not only has two (or more) written histories, it might have multiple histories in reality. Different versions of the ruins, town, and city existing together and finding a balance. Some have more factions of Warlocks. Some have other ruins and monuments. Some have giants. Some are centers of trade.

And somehow this might be related to Sennas and the event. 

== DOUG'S COMMENTARY ==

This is a bit of a strange trip down a long memory lane going all the back to my Barston Bakersfield beginnings. I've mentioned before but that was a long campaign with two different beginnings and part of the reason I stuck with it is because the ruined-town-of-Humb ended up being a bustling city because of a single goofy oracle roll. Several plot lines got twisted and changed thanks to the randomness of dice. Nowadays, with more solo-play under my belt I would have tamped that down a bit but at the time I was playing what I thought were the rules. 

At peak, there were four tribes of Warlocks. At the end, there was two. At peak, Malakar Brite was alive and well. At the end, he is most likely dead. The Forest Ick was both a fairly practical forest and a mythical place. 

My final few sessions started building up a theme that somehow the worship of Sennas in the region caused multiple "paintings" to occur. One session's canon being rewritten was not because I had screwed up and failed to follow my own notes but because reality had shifted in the region. Heh. 

As I get ready to launch the Barston Bakersfield series on the blog, I want to start with a different focus, though. Alice Hunter and her band of "unofficial guards". Humb is still reeling from finding out that most of its guards were part of a plot to kidnap and ship off people and the most powerful Guild in town was tricking Warlocks into sieging the town to drive up prices. Alice, Lun, Nadya, and Chungly are four characters from the very end of the Barston series that will form a kind of comical detective agency to try and fill in the gaps as the city grows beyond its capacity to control. 

== CREDITS == 

This series is played using Arion Games' Advanced Fighting Fantasy and Tana Pigeon's Mythic. 

There are a lot of other sources that get brought into play and have been used in the fairly extensive worldbuilding at this point. It would be hard to carry on without acknowledging the tools that made such a long campaign possible (and are still part of the world and its lore):

• JoyPeddler Games: Harper's Quest 2
• Ben Milton: Knave 2nd Edition and Maze Rats
• Cesar Capacle: Random Realities
• Conjecture Games // Zach Best: Universal NPC Emulator Revised
• Madeline Hale: Table Fables
• Matt & Erin Davids: Several of the Book of Random Tables
• Kevin Crawford: Worlds Without Number, Stars Without Number, and Scarlet Heroes
• Chaos Gen // Duncan Thomson: various lists and tables
• Raging Swan Press: Several titles from the GM Miscellany and 20 Things Lists (Dread Thingonomicon and Dread Laironomicon)
• Third World Games: Into the Wild Omnibus
• Rory's Story Cubes
• A few products by Philip Reed

Others as noted. 

As always, I prefer splash art that gives themes and ideas rather than being designed to be a precise illustration. Other art comes from various human-created public domain and royalty free art packs or is made by me. Maps are made with Hex Kit, Gimp, Canva, and Google Drive tools. 

Special shout out to all the original artists of the Fighting Fantasy and the continued work by folks like John Kapsalis who are big inspirations for my own mental images.

Splash art this time is "Village Hilltop Town" by MemoryCatcher on Pixabay. Alterations by myself using GIMP.