Ick + Humb

The Forest Ick is (choose one):

• A ragged forest full of old ruins and memories
• The one time home of giants who raised their giant bees and fruit trees
• A place of great trees, giant mushrooms, and primal forces
• Just a forest with a road, a river, and a decades long warlock war
• OTHER (please specify)

The {Ruins | Village | Town | City | Temple} Humb is (choose one):

• A place destroyed by Malakar Brite on a mad quest of domination
• A thriving market town at the crossroads of the River EOS and the Old Road
• A decently sized city under long siege by the warring Warlocks
• The center of worship for the lost trickster god of art: Sennas
• OTHER (please specify)

This Campaign is (choose one):

• The story of Barston Bakersfield: herbalist, book printer, and recent head of a newly discovered long lost religion
• The family story of the Bakersfields who travel the island Phillia driven by a sense of putting things right
• The adventures of the various bastards, liars, and screw-ups that have befriended the Bakersfields over the years
• A set of side stories in the Fighting Fantasy universe on a backwater island far from better known places like Blacksand and Arion
• A fantasy game of miniatures created by a long lost wizard who gave his toys life and freedom with his dying breath, left in confusion on a tiny island on a vast ocean ruled by the Great Mages of Antiquity and Happenstance
• OTHER (please specify)

My first solo play campaign of any length, the contradictions brought up by a reliance on random tables and not always understanding how certain gamemaster emulators and oracles worked (as well as a few soft-restarts and rebalances) lead to the meta-story of the campaign: The Forest Ick and the Town of Humb is the place where an ancient god and an otherworldly visitor entwined to twist reality into a canvas painted by the people living upon it. 

Ick + Humb was built on the idea of being a multi-generational quest to defeat the evil warlock Malakar Brite. Then the second generation, Barston Bakersfield, stuck long enough that the base game changed and rather than generational it shifted to being a campaign of various points of view. 

This series is played with Arion Games Advanced Fighting Fantasy and Tana Pigeon's Mythic. It was originally played as a "one-shot" and then "two-to-three shot" of JoyPeddlar Games' Harper's Quest 2 before it got too big and expansive.

Barston Bakersfield was the main character at the core of it for some time but finally semi-retired from adventuring, leaving several open threads that people inspired by him have taken up. The campaign is about a series of heroes (and those slightly less heroic) and the island of Phillia. 

The Big Barston Bakersfield Recap

Since the campaign went on for so long before the blog, and since it had a lot of information, there is no real likelihood that the old sessions will be fully transcribed. Instead, a 3-part "big recap" was written to sum it all up.

• Part 1 (dealing with original Harper's Quest 2 era and possibility of an even bigger Troika campaign)
• Part 2 (dealing with the transition to AFF, the development of Humb and its environs into a full blow setting, building up the hidden religion, the explosion of characters, and the shifting of the meta-plot).
• Part 3 (dealing with the final few sessions in which the whole campaign changed)

The Lore of Phillia

Covering some various chunks of lore and ideas for the campaign outside of traditional sessions.

• On the Strange Histories of Humb

A Tiny Bit of Background

A year-long campaign (with lots and lots of moving parts) started before this blog came into existence, the first chapter dealt with the last few days of Shellyton Bakersfield (a purposefully silly name). Shellyton sought revenge versus Malakar Brite, the Arch Warlock who destroyed Shellyton's hometown decades before.

After Shellyton's demise, his nephew Barston went a decade or so later to find out what happened to his uncle. Only, when Shellyton's hometown - Humb - was found it was not a burned out wreckage of a small town as Shellyton had described but a growing city. Barston went on several adventures to try and find out the truth of Shellyton, the truth of Malakar Brite, and the truth of Humb. Along the way, he found out strange things like a buried religion at the heart of Humb and that he, himself, was not merely bad at arcane magic but somehow was inherently anti-magical.

When his fiancé Astrid died in the final battle versus the Warlocks, Barston went into semi-retirement and became the new priest and leader of the long buried religion of Sennas. His best-friend Derron, once a stables boy and now something of a fighting monk, has joined him as a second-in-command.

The Various POVs

And thus, the "Barston Bakersfield Chronicles" was likewise semi-retired as a series until it finally showed up on this blog after a months' long break and has returned under its original title of Ick + Humb. Barston is still there but a lot of the story looks at friends and allies he made along the way. The rough divisions are:

• Barston Bakersfield, Wandering Priest. Traveling around the island of Phillia with his best friend and follower, Deron, Barston tries to find the secrets of a long lost religion that is doing something to reality on the island. 
• Alice Hunter Investigates. Alice Hunter, along with Lun (ex-guardsperson), Nadya (wrongly imprisoned catwoman), and Chungly (a rhinoman priest who just likes helping people out) form the Duncan-Hunter Solution Specialists. In the aftermath of Barston's adventures, the City of Humb grows faster than ever while the city guards are in disarray (still being largely owned by the various guilds). Alice, Lun, and the rest solve crimes and try to make the world a better place until the city can heal. But Barston's shoes are pretty big ones to fill and the world is getting stranger by the day. 
• Haig Raven, Reformed Warlock. Haig realized the Warlock War was getting out of hand and helped Barston to take down one of the factions, Now, he travels around Phillia with various companions - including the world's stranges, fluffiest dog, Gulwin, and seeks out sites of power and other spots of intrigue to explore. 
• Yevony and Nizel, Right Bastards. Yevony the Great is Phillia's Greatest Wizard (tm) and Nizel Torel is the World's Greatest Swordsman (tm)! Both are known around the island (and even beyond!) and stand as a testament of goodness and heroic activity. Both are also lying bastards. Yevony is actually a decent wizard but uses his name to try and steal magical artifacts from others. Nizel is a better storyteller than fighter (much better). The two travel the island carrying out con games and generally getting into and escaping trouble.
• Shellylee and Barlee Youngfry, Rapscallions. A more light-hearted and lower-intensity set of side-stories. Barston's twin nieces (by way of his sister and somewhat fellow adventurer Marylee Bakersfield-Youngfry), this one takes place in the overall more quaint western side of Phillia and has the two twins carry on in their uncle and great-uncle's footsteps (with less tragedy, hopefully). 

== 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.