From the Attic: The first campaign of the Majestic Wilderlands

The first part of the wilderlands that became the Majestic Wilderlands was an area of Map 3 Valley of the Ancients. I was bored of Greyhawk and decided to move my campaigns over to the Wilderlands. At the time I was running a group of players calling themselves the Rane. One of them was fighter named Valeric and his player wanted to rule a kingdom. To get the Rane over from Greyhawk to the Wilderlands I made this story of how Valerica was a really an heir to the Kingdom of Nome that existed in another world. So off they hopped on their dragons and went across the planes into the Wilderlands. What Valeric found was a bunch of warring provinces. The kingdom had collapsed after the death of his father.

I still have the original notes I made for this.

This listed Valeric's government after he took over. For some reason I decided to go with Pharaoh for the title instead of King. I included ambassador to and from the other major power of the Wilderlands. Remember this is was still 5 miles per hex and very much the Wilderlands of High Fantasy.


Next is the listing of all the provinces and their military governors. Much of this is taken straight from the Map 3 listings. The obiliterated V was the Lord of Tarsh governed by Marlenius a human. This part was written first and then later when Valeric succeeded I flipped it over and wrote up his government. Note that Greenswabs was Valeric's capital.

The few details I remember is that Valeric had a lot of trouble with Tarsh as it was by far the largest settlement in the region. That Ligni Neben of Cudgel was a sneaky guy who managed to get Valeric to appoint a lot of his relatives to various positions. While loyal Valeric had always keep a hand on his pouch (and treasury) when he was around. Circess, his wife, was literally the greek sorceress of myth and wound up betraying him and kidnapping their son Valon. The quest to get his son back was the last thing that occurred in this campaign. (He succeeded).

A intesting epilogue was the player came back my home town in the mid 90s and played in a campaign with Tim of Gothridge Manor, Dwayne of Gamer's Closet. He was trying to figure out what to play and I said "Why don't you play Valeric's son Valon?" We looked at the campaign dates and it turned out that enough time has passed that the kid would be 18 making him old enough to adventure.


My first set of Wilderlands maps were much scribbled on with notes. You can see them below. First I scanned and combined the maps and drew in the borders so you can see it better


Here is a link to the original scan. Note that the each of the maps are 2 meg JPEGs.

The Kingdom of Nome on Map 3 Valley of the Ancients was the first step in the long process that culminated in the my release of the Majestic Wilderlands.