From the Publisher of Royal Road West
Life on modern Earth can feel like an adventure. On any given day we may be fighting traffic, navigating the perils of government or exploring the Web. Every rush of news makes me think there are dark forces looming over the world. Some of us are scraping by in a quest for mere survival. Then there are the police officers, firefighters, EMTs and military personnel, too often caught in real-life, live-fire battles against enemies seen and invisible.
We know from the documents recovered through a multidimensional door by the anonymous Editor in a fog-shrouded Midwestern town that ancient Kesteva was full of danger. Day-to-day survival was a battle for many who lived within the kingdom. Those who ventured into woods and plains faced sabertoothed cats, wolves and a mottle of sentient beings hell-bent on destroying humans: kobolds, trolls, goblins …
Some who made a living at it: adventurers.
It’s a job
What strikes me when I read the raw translations of Kestevan documents is how much of a job adventuring could be. To be sure, some Kestevans went into the wild on a lark. Sometimes it was to prove to their parents that they weren’t soft and could handle dangers. A few families even used places like the Wild Wood or the Caves of Oblivion as testing grounds for their adolescent children, to winnow those who could survive and were fit to lead the clan from those who could not. Others did it out of desperation, to seek profit from whatever riches the unknown held.
Kesteva’s professional adventurers sometimes sounded as though they were owners and operators of small businesses, which indeed they were. The most successful adventuring companies often had partnership agreements, bylaws, accounts and on occasion dispute resolution mechanisms. As for clients, a common source of contracts was the Royal Library. Royal Librarians in the major cities were charged with accumulating and diffusing knowledge. Their realms covered more than books, and most Royal Library buildings would appear to us to be as much museum as library.
History hunters
The librarians most often sought artifacts from previous eras, the ones that should have been destroyed in previous Ragnaroks but whose remnants survived in such places as the Wild Wood, in caves and in mountainous regions. The librarians could trace objects of great value or other interest through the scraps of texts they possessed, and often they could create letters of marque that enabled adventuring companies to venture into these places to retrieve the objects without fear of being branded criminals, since the crown technically owned all such lands and retrieval of anything of value would have been otherwise treated as theft. Adventuring companies and solitary adventurers also sought work from private individuals or companies, and sometimes the work sought them. All manner of adventure was available in Kesteva, and the greater the danger, typically the greater the reward.
That must be another reason why the Editor decided to put Kesteva’s history in front of the world in the guise of a role-playing game, of all things.
As for me, publishing this material is quite a lot of adventure, and the rest of the daily world presents an overabundance of danger and daring. What about you? What are your daily adventures, and how can you use Kesteva to get away from them?
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