Category: Publisher’s Blog

The Much-Maligned Troll, Part Three

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Close-up of a troll

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Trolls. Trolls, trolls, trolls … Where were we?

Royal Road West is dedicated to the increase and diffusion of knowledge concerning the ancient kingdom of Kesteva—specifically by creating role-playing game materials. And trolls, our research staff keeps finding, are a problem.

That’s because virtually all RPG material about them perpetuates harmful stereotypes. That not only risks gumming up otherwise good RPG games but denigrating an entire species.

So in this third post about trolls (you can read Part One here and Part Two here), we’ll take a look at what trolls are, since we’re so sure of what they’re not.

To prepare, I sent Kenneth the Intern to our archives to corral all available texts concerning first-person accounts of trolls. As it turns out, the records are nasty, brutish and short–but it’s the best an intern could do on three cups of coffee and short notice:

  • The Troll-Hunter’s Guide. A delightful practical skills book by a professional adventurer named Walls of Roxen. Has two descriptions of encounters with actual trolls.
  • Troll Census, Year 155. Don’t let the title fool you. We think this is a Kestevan bureaucrat’s half-hearted attempt at troll counting and not a serious endeavor. Kenneth the Intern included it because of a brief passage concerning a troll family.
  • Trollkin. Scraps of troll encounters stitched together by Marsus of Kesteva City. Contains at least one encounter by Marsus himself, which is what we think prompted him to search for other accounts.
  • Ulric’s Little Descriptive of Trolls. A rare edition for Ulric, who wrote most of his Little Descriptive series about towns, Royal Road stations and other points of interest to travelers.
  • Mindy’s Adventure School Syllabus. For Year 307.
  • Mindy’s Big Book of Big Monsters.
  • The Tragedy of Trolls. Ulric’s pamphlet, not the work of fiction of the same name by Royal Road West’s Translator.

I’ve asked our esteemed Editor if he might search for more texts concerning trolls on his next expedition to Kesteva through the multidimensional door.

Vote for which text should be published next

On a side note, Royal Road West’s editorial staff decided Thursday morning to publish one of the above titles this fall. We couldn’t agree on which, so we invite you to vote in our online survey. All participants regardless of whether their choice wins will get a free pdf copy of the winner if they sign up for our mailing list.
Click here to vote.

To continue, here is but one extract from the above titles. It comes from The Troll-Hunter’s Guide:

My next lesson is how to hold a spear when faced against a troll. Beware you will seldom have to do this, for trolls are not easily angered. I encountered one such troll on my fifth expedition into the Parthian Mountains. When I feared I had gone too deep into that rocky ocean and climbed too near the Old World, and was short of breath, I missed my footing and plunged down a crevice, leaving behind the waning sun. …

(Several lengthy paragraphs follow, describing Walls’ fall into the darkness, his stumbling around for a while, falling again, more references to the “waning sun,” “flaxen sun,” “sweet mountainy air” and so on, and finally to this next paragraph.)

I had at last tumbled into the mouth of a sort of cave within a cavern, a small and delicate space of glistening stalactites and stalagmites straight out of one of my childhood dreams of pirates grottoes. My body ached and burned, my left arm was broken and bleeding, my head was cluttered, and it was a few moments before I realized my surprise at not only having survived but being able to see in this underground world. There was light, and as my senses returned I could see the light came from a lantern, which was held by a towering gray giant that I knew at once was a troll. …

… I grabbed my spear, and the towering troll swatted it away as it howled a horrid howl, a most horrid howl, into the cavernous depths behind it. …

… Its foul breath stank as it leaned in close, and its menacing teeth jagged and sharp lay inches from my face as it pinned my arms against the damp rock and veritably inspected me head to toe, paying close attention to my damaged arm. A second troll appeared behind the first and moved to my bloody arm. It held a grim roll of bandaging material, and this it proceeded to wrap around my wounded limb. …

… In my struggles against the beasts my body, exhausted, finally collapsed and my mind drifted into a senseless state of slumber. …

(Some paragraphs later, the writer gives the proper technique for actually holding a spear when facing a troll. It’s mostly tips based on his unsuccessful earlier attempt and actually not that helpful.)

Conclusions

I’ll spare you the other extracts and go straight to building up our picture of the accurate troll:

Tall. Ferociously loud when they want to be, which is not often. Compassionate. Fearless. Unable or unwilling to speak the common tongue of Kesteva—but I hasten to add that they seem to have their own language, and failure to speak any particular language is not in itself a sign of stupidity (or intelligence, as most of us can confirm back on Earth). Skilled with bandages. Skilled with spears. Observant—keenly observant.

Accordingly, we’re going to modify our official Royal Road West ancient Kesteva for Dungeon World stats a bit further than we did last week:

TROLL

Solitary, Gregarious, Large

Club (d10+3 damage)     20 HP    1 Armor

Close, Reach, Forceful

Special Qualities: Regeneration (unproven by the historical record, but we’re OK with it for a fun game)

Tall. Real tall. Eight or nine feet when they’re young or weak. Covered all over in warty, tough skin, too. Big teeth, stringy hair like swamp moss and long, dirty nails. Some are green, some gray, some black. They’re clannish and hateful of each other, not to mention all the rest of us. Near impossible to kill, too, unless you’ve fire or acid to spare—cut a limb off and watch. In a few days, you’ve got two trolls where you once had one. A real serious problem, as you can imagine.

Instinct: To smash (We think “to smash” is a harmful stereotype perpetuated against the species) To observe

Undo the effects of an attack (unless caused by a weakness, your call)

Hurl something or someone (probably not, but it could happen)

These changes, we at Royal Road West believe, will honor the limited, but growing factual knowledge we have of trolls while also giving RPG players a rollicking good time.

What do you think?

Until next time, happy adventuring, wes thu hal, &c.

A Word about the Much-Maligned Troll, Part Two

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Troll carved into a hillside

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As I said last week: It’s time to talk about trolls.

Last week that meant identifying a problem: that fantasy RPG stats, and Dungeon World’s in particular, do no justice to troll-kind. Hateful brutes? No. Not at all.

The real story of trolls is found in ancient Kestevan literature. Far from being nasty and hateful, trolls were kind, in their own way, and their story in Kesteva is tragic. Their history, in fact, prompted Ulric of Skara to write a pamphlet called The Tragedy of Trolls, which inspired Royal Road West’s Translator to write a short story of the same name (the story is included in the book Tales From the Royal Road).

The tragedy is everything that happened after humans arrived in what is now the kingdom of Kesteva. Aelfric and Aelin, as scholars of Kestevan history know, escaped the Old World with their followers and then marched from the Parthian Mountains in Kesteva’s east to the Great Western Ocean, founding cities as they went. As humans appeared, trolls visited the new cities and attempted to trade. But whenever they appeared, humans died. Not from violence, mind you – and curse the slanderous words of so many RPG books that say trolls are violent – but from mysterious diseases.

The Great Dying, they called it.

Some of Aelfric and Aelin’s followers said it was dark, evil troll magic, and they were loud. In response, town mayors gathered patrols and sent them into the hills to root out and destroy the trolls. The early kings sent armies to destroy troll-kind. Their cave-villages were burnt. Trolls were slaughtered. by the dozens and hundreds.

The Great Dying ended without explanation. One day, it seems, after many humans and many trolls had died, the humans stopped dying. The trolls by this time were invisible, having moved far from humans without entirely abandoning their homeland. Today—that is, Kesteva’s today when we access it through the multidimensional door—trolls are seldom seen.

Most in Kesteva today do not contemplate the matter. Scholars and philosophers do, some of them. They trace actions and reactions and trace fault. If there is hope, it lies in the trolls, wrote Ulric of Skara.

Where would you assign fault for the Tragedy of Trolls?

But this is a ponderous philosophical quandary to pose in a blog. Royal Road West has adjusted the stereotypical Dungeon World entry on troll to reflect their humanity.

TROLL                                    Solitary, Gregarious, Large

Club (d10+3 damage)     20 HP    1 Armor

Close, Reach, Forceful

Special Qualities: Regeneration

Tall. Real tall. Eight or nine feet when they’re young or weak. Covered all over in warty, tough skin, too. Big teeth, stringy hair like swamp moss and long, dirty nails. Some are green, some gray, some black. They’re clannish and hateful of each other, not to mention all the rest of us. Near impossible to kill, too, unless you’ve fire or acid to spare—cut a limb off and watch. In a few days, you’ve got two trolls where you once had one. A real serious problem, as you can imagine.

Instinct: To smash (We think “to smash” is a harmful stereotype perpetuated against the species) To observe

Undo the effects of an attack (unless caused by a weakness, your call)

Hurl something or someone

Perhaps this is pointless talk. Kesteva—the RPG Kesteva, that is—is supposed to be a fun hack-and-slash kind of world. So it shouldn’t matter that the actual, historical Kesteva was complex … right?

The bottom line is, trolls are people, too.

That is, they’re trolls. But people-like. I mean—

Yes: trolls are trolls.

I think that’s the point.

Happy adventuring.

A Word about the Much-Maligned Troll, Part One

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Rocks shaped to look like giant trolls

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It’s time to talk about trolls.

When we at Royal Road West say our RPG publications are “somewhat” optimized for the Dungeon World game, it’s for good reason. Despite its otherwise excellent qualities, sometimes Dungeon World’s stats don’t jibe with the historical facts of ancient Kesteva. Trolls are a case in point.

The Dungeon World guide gives these stats. Don’t worry; I’ll pick them apart in a minute.

TROLL                                    Solitary, Large

Club (d10+3 damage)     20 HP    1 Armor

Close, Reach, Forceful

Special Qualities: Regeneration

Tall. Real tall. Eight or nine feet when they’re young or weak. Covered all over in warty, tough skin, too. Big teeth, stringy hair like swamp moss and long, dirty nails. Some are green, some gray, some black. They’re clannish and hateful of each other, not to mention all the rest of us. Near impossible to kill, too, unless you’ve fire or acid to spare—cut a limb off and watch. In a few days, you’ve got two trolls where you once had one. A real serious problem, as you can imagine.

Instinct: To smash

Undo the effects of an attack (unless caused by a weakness, your call)

Hurl something or someone

When we read an entry like that, we have to say we’re disappointed, and we have to ask: what are the sources for such nonsense? It’s as though the writers were making it all up. Our own sources at Royal Road West are historical documents, books and papers that have come to us through a multidimensional door into ancient Kesteva itself, a door discovered by an anonymous former newspaper Editor from a fog-shrouded Midwestern town. Which is more trustworthy: a multidimensional door into another world or unspecified sources?

At any rate, we say: Give the much-maligned troll a break. Give more, in fact: Give some pity

What Ulric had to say

According to the pamphlet The Tragedy of Trolls, published in ancient Kesteva by Ulric of Skara (obviously a real book since our Editor retrieved it through his multidimensional door), trolls lived in Kesteva’s hills and mountains long before humans arrived.

We all know that Kestevan history begins with Aelfric & Aelin’s descent from the Parthian Mountains and their march to the sea. But that’s human history. Ulric’s pamphlet gives us insight into trollish history. Much of this, by the way, is based on accounts of elves, gnomes and the like, since trolls themselves were and are illiterate. And yet they – the trolls – told stories and conveyed oral histories that these other races sometimes captured into words. Despite this filtering of history, Ulric was confident to write of trolls’ society, how they lived in cave-villages, and how they called themselves Trollin, and how they fished and hunted and traded among themselves and rarely with elves and gnomes.

All this so far puts the unfortunate Dungeon World entry on trolls to shame. Hateful brutes? Not at all.

The so-called tragedy of trolls also is covered in Ulric’s pamphlet and was the inspiration for our Translator’s short story of the same name. The short story is part of the collection Tales From the Royal Road. As for what the tragedy of trolls was … that will be next week’s blog entry.

Beyond Ulric: Contemporaneous writers of ancient Kesteva

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People inside a bar engaged in different activities such as gambling, drinking and card-playing

From the Publisher of Royal Road West

Yesterday, a paper-binding assistant in my office at Royal Road West asked me if Ulric the scribe was the only writer in ancient Kesteva. That got me to thinking: Ulric definitely was the best-known writer of ancient Kesteva to us today, but he was not the only one. Today, I ask you to consider Bellius of Roxen. He isn’t as well-known as Ulric of Skara, but they were contemporaries. Like Ulric, Bellius was a scribe who made his living writing words and putting those words in front of the public. His approach was different than Ulric’s, however. Bellius aimed his words at other writers such as Ulric. While Ulric wrote about the sights and sounds of his world, Bellius wrote about how to write about them and how to sell the words.

Bar news

Advertisement: Sign up for newsletterUlric’s newssheet was distributed once a week to inns, taverns and other locations for purchase by residents and travelers. It contained travel tips, local news (or gossip), profiles of interesting people, etc.

Bellius’ sheet was similarly produced but distributed to bookshops and bars. Its contents were different from Ulric’s. Here are the headers of a sheet our Translator recently converted into English (we have no immediate plans to publish it):

  • This week in Scribing
  • 10 Scribes Who Make A Living at Their Vocation, and So Can You!
  • Twisted Words
  • How to Eavesdrop With Success
  • Chalk Talks: How to Give Them, How to Finish Them
  • Lettering Techniques
  • Letters

This last section was an innovation in Kesteva’s scribing world. Writers would write to each other via Bellius’ newssheet. Conversations would range far and wide and last for months, with contributions coming from all corners of the kingdom.

Beyond Bellius

Another contemporary of Ulric’s and Bellius’ left civilization to become a hermit. He returned to towns and cities often to lecture on the topic, and he produced a quarterly sheet, copied and distributed through an independent copyhouse, called Simple Mornings: An Account of How to Have Nothing to Do With Society. Our research indicates he made a good living at it. Another writer, who had lost his job as a reeve in his majesty’s service, began writing tip sheets on how to invest one’s money. He later produced a book and gave chalk talks about the importance of money. Yet another scribe we discovered in the Editor’s trove of material produced books about getting rid of excess, a concept he called “Size-Downing.” Another scribe was more of a poet than a copyist. So far as we can tell from her recovered and translated diary, she wrote exactly one poem a year, and we know from other accounts of the time that they were fairly regarded.

So, no, Ulric was not the only scribe in ancient Kesteva. We think he was more popular than Bellius and the others because he was more prolific. Of all the material the anonymous former newspaper Editor in a fog-shrouded Midwestern town pulled through a multidimensional door from ancient Kesteva into our world, his count of works so far exceeds that of any other writer except “the crown” and its numerous works written by numerous authors. What do you think? Is the key to fame showing up, and showing up often?

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Those who write, survive: What Kesteva and Gettysburg have in common

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Statue of face of Patrick O'Rorke Monument at Little Round Top

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Once upon a time, an anonymous former newspaper Editor from a fog-shrouded Midwestern town discovered a multidimensional door into the ancient kingdom of Kesteva … and that’s how Royal Road West came to publish RPG material based on Kesteva.

But what if we had never heard of Kesteva?

I visited Gettysburg National Military Park several years ago and took a tour with one of the park’s well-regarded battlefield guides.

When we got to Little Round Top, our guide—he was in his 60s, probably, and we’d learned through the tour that he had taught high school history once upon a time—paused as a faint grin appeared on his face. He told us the story of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment’s heroic defense of the position under the command of Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. What’s funny? I asked.

“You’re a publisher,” he said. “So you know who gets published survives, and those who don’t get forgotten.”

How often do we hear of Culp’s Hill?

He went on to say that several other historical figures were just as important as Chamberlain and his 20th Maine. Col. Patrick Henry O’Rorke, for example, on July 3, 1863, brought his 140th New York regiment to bear against advancing Confederates, drove the invaders down the slope and helped win the day for the Union. He was shot dead while urging on his soldiers. A monument to O’Rorke stands at Little Round Top today. But we hear a lot less about O’Rorke than about Chamberlain.

My guide’s point was that O’Rorke, Strong Vincent, and also Charles Hazlett on the Confederate side, weren’t around after the battle to tell their stories. Chamberlain did. Not only that, but he was a university professor and good at it. So movies were made about him, and the others slipped into faded history. Not only that, but over on the other side of the battlefield is Culp’s Hill, the site of a Union defense just as important as Little Round Top’s. But again, Little Round Top is part of the popular culture, while Culp’s Hill is not, except to history enthusiasts like my guide, who insisted we spend a good amount of time there.

If university scholars had taken our Editor seriously when he presented documents he pulled through a multidimensional door from one world into another, they would have found themselves on the fast track to academic greatness. It was fortunate indeed that the multidimensional door this former newspaper Editor from a fog-shrouded Midwestern town opened into an ancient Kestevan library and not into, say, a dovecote or dairy operation. It opened into a chamber of academic treasure. And so what that the writings were of previously unknown languages. Here was an entire library full of such samples. How wonderful a contrast to Linear B, Linear A, and the Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Enter Royal Road West

But no, the academic world turned its back on the Editor, and so he turned to Royal Road West.

As the Translator undertakes the work the academics wouldn’t, and we publish the translations, we find matters that surely would have interested the university establishment.

Ulric survives and is remembered because he put down his thoughts. He wrote. He cemented his thoughts.

He shared his thoughts.

Little Round Top vs. Culp’s Hill is only one example of publicity winning over equivalent merit. There are others – maybe Newton vs. Leibnitz inventing calculus (they did it independently, but in our English-speaking corner of the world it took a long time for people to figure out Leibnitz did that). Do you have any favorite examples? Please share in the comments section. I’d love to hear them.

Twentieth Maine monument at Little Round Top

Sunset at Gettysburg, from Little Round Top

How librarians used letters of marque to send adventurers on quests

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A rolled-up letter of marque

In my last post I mentioned letters of marque and how the royal librarians of ancient Kesteva used them to send adventurers on quests to recover artifacts of interest. I felt then that I should explain them a bit more in a future post, so here it is.

Letters of marque were well known in Kesteva by the time the royal librarians figured out how to use them to their advantage. We know from the historical records pulled through the multidimensional door by the anonymous former newspaper editor who lived in a fog-shrouded Midwestern town that they were in use by the Kestevan military. Their full name was letters of marque and reprisal and in form and function they mirrored the documents by that name used in our own world.

In Kesteva as in our own world, a letter of marque and reprisal gave the bearer the legal right to hunt and attack pirates. From early in its history, ancient Kesteva faced pirate dangers from the Western Sea, and like the governments of our own world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries lacked the naval ships to deal with the menace. Letters allowed private shipowners to join the effort and be handsomely rewarded through the capture, looting and sale of enemy vessels.

This went on for a century. Then the royal librarian of Roxen, perhaps in a fit of bureaucratic inspiration, issued a letter on his own authority as a government agent, not for aid in fighting pirates but in seeking out and retrieving the legendary Vessel of Amarantine from a rumored Lost City in the Wild Wood. The area was full of kobolds, which the librarian’s letter treated as a hostile enemy, with the Wild Wood treated much as open waters were treated in the naval letters. He issued the letter to an adventuring company called the Red Scourge. With the letter in hand, the Red Scourge was given permission to travel through the Wild Wood, technically owned by the king, and to loot the Lost City with the express charge to bring the Vessel of Amarantine back to the royal librarian.

The company was not successful. In fact, it disappeared. So did the second expedition, and the third. The fourth expedition, however, reached the fabled city and found the Vessel of Amarantine in a throne room that was caved in and losing to the elements.

The royal librarian of Roxen issued more letters to more companies. Each charged the company with recovering an object. Later letters dispensed with obvious scholarly pursuits and instead amounted to quests for gold and treasure “for historical purposes” such as may be fulfilled by sacks full of ancient gold coins. As more adventuring companies gained success, more royal librarians began issuing writs, and a small industry was born.

What the influx of treasure into Kesteva’s overall economy is a subject for another blog post, but it should be sufficient to say the letters were successful. In Kesteva of the 307 time frame in which we have placed our game, player characters will find no shortage of opportunity through the royal librarians.

Royal Road West probably will offer translated letters of marque in the future (let us know if reproductions or fill-in the-blank letters would be helpful in your game sessions). What do you think? Would you like to see letters of marque offered as gaming aids?

Adventuring in Kesteva vs. Adventuring in Our World

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A medieval-looking sword

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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About Royal Road West’s attempts to create a multidimensional door

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A darkened passage with light at the end. Two figures move toward the light.

This website came about because once upon a time an anonymous former newspaper Editor from a fog-shrouded Midwestern town discovered a multidimensional door into the ancient kingdom of Kesteva.

How hard can it be to build a multidimensional door that accesses other universes? As it turns out …

Royal Road West gets regular shipments of translated historical documents from the Editor, who we think sends us what his Translator has sent him. I should stress at the outset that our relationship is solid and productive, if, well, maybe a little weird given that we have neither seen nor spoken to the Editor and all of our communication with one another is by snail mail at the Editor’s insistence.

So it was not out of a competitive sense that not long ago we embarked on an in-house project to create our own multidimensional door.

The project charter mentioned business opportunities in the way of charged admission and tours of the ancient library the Editor draws his material from, and of the possibility of unlocking further universes to discover and turn into role-playing game material. I can’t take credit for the idea. That belongs to my IT helpdesk guy, who after proposing the project to our executive team during a free-pitch day open to all employees won appreciation for his outside-the-universe thinking and was immediately appointed project manager and given a sizable budget.

The PM and the war room

Helpdesk calls went unanswered for two weeks as the PM set up a war room we gave him on the ground floor of a warehouse we were renting to store print products. Finally we brought in a temp and then made the position permanent; too many computers needed to be shut down and turned back on again and could not wait. The executive team also had thought the project would take only a couple of weeks, but after a month of getting the go-ahead, the helpdesk guy was rarely seen or heard around the office. I paid a site visit about a month into the project as part of a regular check-in and was amazed by what I saw. The IT guy, Kenny, had transformed the space we’d given to him into a tiki bar, with potted palm trees, three dozen varieties of liquor and rows and rows of tiki torches illuminating the conference tables. The fire alarm system had been disabled.

“Now that’s a space for creativity, Kenny!” I said, and he raised a hurricane glass with four varieties of rum in it.

“The team’s at lunch,” he said. “I’m holding down the ranch.”

I should also say that in and among the potted palms and Christmas lights were dozens of wheeled whiteboards, smart boards and other creative tech.

Much to my relief, the whiteboards were covered with scribblings, numbers, graphs and matrices.

For his team, Kenny had recruited a street magician, a palm reader, a Ph.D. mathematician from the local university, a dog walker, a carpenter, an electrician and a physician’s assistant.

“Why the physician’s assistant?” I asked.

“He’s our scribe,” Kenny said. “He also might help diagnose any radness with the situation of pulling live bodies into and out of multidimensional space.”

Looking for results

To date, the team had tried these approaches and noted these results:

  • Built a door frame. The carpenter made it out of specially ordered wood. Then the street magician jumped through it. He emerged on the other side. “Maybe should have said ta-da?” read the field notebook.
  • Added wire wraps to the frame. No change.
  • Connected power to the wire wraps. No change.

Discussion item: Does anyone have tips on how to build a multidimensional door? Anyone? Anyone? How do we build it?

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How Royal Road West got its name

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Man reading a book

Names matter. Royal Road West’s history begins with the anonymous former newspaper Editor from a fog-shrouded Midwestern town who pulled a cache of historical records from ancient Kesteva through a multidimensional door.

The Editor tried to get universities and academic journals to treat his find seriously, but he was ignored or shown the door. In one case, he may have been carried through a university building’s exit bodily, but we have little information about the incident. For that matter, we have little information about the Editor. To this day, we have neither met him nor had a phone conversation with him. Our intermediary is the Translator—whom we also have not met.

Out of desperation, the Editor turned to those of us who would become the future Royal Road West.

We try not to take it personally. Instead, we put Royal Road West into motion.

The name comes primarily from the Royal Road, a marvel of ancient Kesteva. The Road is the ancient kingdom’s highway, main post road, telegraph trunk, watchtower network and lodging system rolled into one. It stretches from the eastern mountains to the western sea and connected Kesteva with such efficiency that, according to our preliminary research, economic activity rose at least 25 percent in its first 10 years of operation.

Given all that, we thought “Royal Road” would be a good name for the Editor’s great project.

“West” comes from a couple of things. First, the story of Kesteva’s founding is the story of Aelfric & Aelin’s flight from the Old World, with thousands of their closest followers, and their subsequent march from the mountains to the sea.

That is, their westward march.

The company also is located in the western United States. And so “Royal Road West” was born.

Discussion question: If you were to name your own adventuring company, what would you call it? What elements would you try to capture in a name?

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