Resource Management and Aakom Poisoning

The most complicated part of Qelong - as many have pointed out - is the system for handling aakom poisoning. The system handles poisoning in 1-2 point increments, but the symptomatic doses will be in the dozens, and differ for each character. This means that, until characters start reaching symptomatic thresholds, there will be be a lot of slow, detailed record-keeping, without tangible effects.

The point of this design choice is, of course, to evoke a feeling of Qelong's hostility - a slow corruption of the characters' bodies that might take a while to build up, but nevertheless inexorably forces them out of the province. Aakom will affect the player characters in basically the same way that it has affected the setting - nothing apparent at first, but with catastrophic effects and no way to easily recover. It forces the players to really integrate themselves into their environment, and experience the war and devastation as inmates, and not tourists. It turns Qelong into a negadungeon. For these reasons, it's taken me a while to figure out the best way to simplify the aakom poisoning rules, because their complexity is so important to their purpose in the module.

Part of the solution is in slightly realigning the module's structure. Qelong assumes a seasoned party, having had some adventures under its belt, traveling across the world and arriving here. The players will have established their own baseline, and they are strong and tough enough to weather the River's hardships for a week or two and come out unscathed. Of course, aakom should have started making things go awry by that point, and then the module sinks in its teeth. But even then, a way out is consistently within reach - just a plundered stupa, or a cardamom caravan, or a midnight raid on Sajra Amvoel away.

I'm going to run Qelong for a first-level party, and that means a lot of those assumptions won't be true. There's much less gear, magic, and hit points for the players to fall back on, making it commensurately more difficult for them to pull off a big treasure load to pay for a ticket home, or for a well-executed plan to actually allow them to capture the lich-garuda and fly to safety. There isn't technically even a home to return to, or at least a "home" that the players have tangibly experienced. Qelong's primary objective becomes survival, not escape and profit. And in a survival story, the main antagonist is resource management.

In the module, aakom poisoning is inflicted in these five ways: breathing air, eating food, drinking water, and taking damage. The last one is even more granular - there are four different ways of taking damage that lead to varying levels of aakom poisoning. Fighting the Naga faction is the most dangerous - every wound they inflict causes an equal amount of aakom contamination.

Most of these are easily conceived of as effects on resource management. Breathing air makes time spent in Qelong its own resource. Consuming food and water do this as well, though there are some ways to mitigate this. The damage effects are an additional cost to the existing resource trade-offs that occur in combat. Since a 1st-level party can be expected to be spending a lot of time in Qelong already, and mundane damage and disease are inherently more significant costs to the characters, I'd change the poisoning conditions to this:

• 1 point per water ration consumed (as normal) and 3 in 6 chance per food ration consumed, ignored for mountaintop springs or alpine plants
• Points equal to damage from Naga faction
• Snake poison adds 1d4 aakom for three rounds, rather than inflicting 1d4 HP damage

Now, time (measured by meals consumed) is a trade-off. The party can either move freely, at the cost of  aakom from the natural environment, or it can stay put in a mountain hex, avoiding aakom accumulation but not taking any actions. Since I'm running the four factions as active and dynamic groups, "staying put" can incur significant costs on Qelong's power situation. Survival in Qelong is thus about balancing food needs, water needs, and aakom contamination, with encounters and combat positioned as the opportunity cost of engaging in exploration or treasure-hunting.

The rest of the aakom rules stay the same, though with significantly less granularity due to a 1st-level party's lower HP totals.

Vornlong, The Complete City Kit

Qampong - the player character's embark point in Qelong is one of the smaller entries in the book (and rightly so, considering what the interior of the river valley contains). Swollen by refugees and foreign opportunists, it's now a misshapen port city at the mouth of a dying land. Because Qelong is intended for levels 4-7, and I'm using it as a campaign kickoff, I've decided I'm going to flesh Qampong out a bit, enough to provide fleeting interest for the rookie party. Part of the strength of Qelong as written, though, is that the concision of its entry for Qampong really prevents players from getting bogged down in the city - it forces you out, and into the interior.

So, nothing too detailed. The impression I get of Qampong is that it's dangerous and ungovernable - the book frequently mentions the anonymous 'warlords' endemic to the River Valley, but perhaps none rules here. Perhaps the influx of refugees and war profiteers has rendered the city ungovernable. Somewhat like Vornheim, except due to anarchy, rather than sprawl.

Most of Qampong - which has doubled in size as refugees have flooded in - is now rotting slum. Mapping is fruitless, as the alleys are constantly reshaped by fires, collapses, and new arrivals. The population is poor, famished, angry, and mostly male. There are 12 informal slum gangs, named for the signs of the Zodiac, though this is the only constant among their fluctuating membership and territory.   Any slum-dwelling contact the players make has a 1 in 20 chance of simply disappearing each week.

There are only two districts worth mentioning - the Seaside, which is where the merchants' Factory is and where the boats are kept, and the Hilltop, which once held the wealthiest households, and whose ruined husks now shelter the most bloodthirsty and powerful gang (roll a d12). Behind the hill is an aboveground cemetery. Both districts are actually kept relatively clear of typhus and plague, and are the only stable places where "establishments" of any sort can be found.

Every hour the players spend in the slums has a 1 in 6 chance of an encounter. And it takes at least an hour to get anywhere in the slums (including out of the city.) 1d20.

1. Desolate alley. Person lies apparently injured in street. Actually in league with the 1d6 cannibals waiting in the shadows.

2-3. Desolate alley. 2d4 dholes gnaw on something in a doorway.

4. Desolate alley. Person lies injured in street (d6 - 1-3 member of random gang 4-5 foreigner 6 - adventurer, level d4). Good chance of recovering unassisted, but will remember the players and how they treated her.

5. Crowd, minding its own business. Except for the pickpocket (Thief 1d4). Party will notice any theft, it's just a matter of before or after. Roll 1d20 for possible gang affiliation, results higher than 12 indicate no affiliation.

6. 2d6 members of a random gang (Fighter 1) stumble around drunk and looking for a fight.

7-8. Seasonal weather - intense heat doubles the effective weight of worn armor, or driving rain halves visibility and modifies balance and missile fire by -4.

9. Monsoon. If rolled on the first or last day of any month, it also carries fish or frogs. Chance of doing 1HP damage on hit, and slums will go crazy trying to gather the fallen food.

10-11. Street fight or drunken brawl between (roll 1d6 twice) - 1-2 members of random gang 3 foreign guardsmen 4 cannibals 5 strange beast 6 unarmed, helpless refugees. 

12-13. Abandoned shack (roll on table)

14. Lunatic standing on rooftop harangues small crowd about the evilness of dwarves and one other random rumor.

15. Aakom-cursed woman holding aakom-cursed baby. Tries to press baby into the arms of most charismatic adventurer.

16. Foreign guardsmen conducting deals with members of a random gang. Roll reaction with 2d4. 

17. Members of two random gangs conducting deals with each other. Roll each reaction with 2d4. 

18. Elephant experiencing musth. Morale 12. Everyone else flees. Owned by most powerful gang.

19. Guardsmen searching for waylaid shipment of cardamom or pepper. Will suspect or press-gang anyone well armed.

20. Shifty foreign merchant offers to sell the party "a great treasure" for only 200 sp. Wants 100 sp just to let them see it.

It is (1d6):

  1-A boarded-up shack (roll on table). The merchant slips away at first opportunity.

  2-A cannon with 8 granite cannonballs. No carriage, no powder.

  3-A jar of Hagen's fake anti-aakom tincture

  4-A jar of Hagen's real anti-aakom tincture

  5-A hidden group of 2d6 cannibals. The merchant slips away after they attack.

  6-A dozen jars of cardamom or pepper. False bottoms conceal aakom-laced livers soaked in wine.

What's in that boarded-up shack? (Roll a d8)

1. A pair of aakom zombie hands.

2. A pair of aakom zombie hands, and 2d100 sp buried in the floor.

3. A massive pile of shit. No joke. There are some holes in the ceiling people use to relieve themselves. 50% chance of typhus infection.

4. Nothing but a single word scratched into one wall: "Leave"

5. A pile of bones. An araq demands you bring them to the cemetary. 

6. A child's skull with the top sawn off. Filled with dozens of teeth. Eight gold coins placed in a circle around it. If anything is disturbed, a qmoc praj will emerge from this spot in three days and hunt down the desecrator.

7. A solid gold pendant in the shape of the lotus. Renders the wearer invisible to undead, but any monk will attack on sight.

8. The shack is bedecked in the worship livery of the Naga Qelong. The family of 1d4 cultists have become hungry nagakin in the weeks since they were trapped here.

 

EDIT: Two things I forgot to add.

For the most part, the "What's in that dead guy's pockets?" table is not going to apply here, since most people have very little in their pockets and even less in their bellies. The exceptions:

• Gang members have daggers and 1d20 copper pieces each. Every fourth or fifth has a mace or sword.
• Foreign guardsmen are the mercenaries defending the Factory and escorting most merchants through the city. They have leather armor, a dagger, a sword, and a light crossbow. 20 are stationed at the Factory at all times. They carry no coin, as there is nothing for them to buy.

The Sajavedran Calendar

Click to embiggen. 

I'm preparing to run a Qelong campaign - if you don't know, it's a horrific Southeast Asia setting being poisoned by a misfired magic bomb - and so I'm putting the ol' tools to work.

Here is my Qelong calendar. I based the months off of the Khmer lunar calendar, with Qelong-style syllable replacements. There are ten months for the reasons explained in this post - but in short, it's easier to not have to remember different numbers of days for different months. The yellow is, of course, the dry season, and the green is wet - changing around what would be November and April. Meqasay is the "new year."

Basically, use it to keep track of major events, past and future. At least three of the four factions in Qelong are actively attempting to increase their power, and while you can certainly have that be a foggy, unresolved background, having them dynamically clash and maneuver is, I think, much more interesting. With the calendar, you can simply jot down future clashes and some notes on them, for the party to interfere with (or ignore.)

As for the year itself, the Khmer calendar marks years with zodiac signs in the way the Chinese calendar does, but also respects a multi-year cycle, where each animal also advances in number - resetting every 60 years.

For Qelong, I decided to modify the cycle so that each decade is marked by a single zodiac sign, creating a 120-year cycle. However, changing to the next sign is usually accompanied by some sort of portent, determining the mood of the next few years, and the lack of portents can sometimes extend the "decade" well past its normal expiration date. Therefore, the dying land of Sajavedra is still in the Years of the Dog - with no end in sight.

To reflect this, add two rumors to the rumor table - they can be included normally, or you can use them in lieu of the first two duplicate rolls.

The Mage War began in the Years of the Rooster, and it will end in the Years of the Pig. After that, we'll face the long Years of the Rat...
The sign of the zodiac usually changes every ten years. But we've seen twelve Years of the Dog, and I hear there will be many more...