Talislanta One Shot FAWS7

This is another old draft I found and publish now after 5 years:

While I have some basic ideas for a Talislanta one shot of some research in the meantime, I try to bring it in playable (=not railroadish) form by creating a FAWS7 write up.

I love that Talislanta feels a lot like the dreamland stories by HP Lovecraft, so I decided to choose a setting that reflects this better than the Seven Kingdoms. Those are a little bit cheesy with their whole free love and seminaked Muses vibe anyways. ;)

The cursed city of Marduk seems to be a cool place, but it should tied in a little bit with the Seven Kingdoms to shift the game westwards in the future. (=one line idea or title)

Locations:
Street to Maruk: encounter with Sindarin equs merchant and collector who wonders about the duality between Phaedrans and Wild Men INTERACTION There is also risk that the heroes don't come to the city in time before the cursed month starts.
Gate (p.33): Guards don't want to let them enter at first, because the think it is a bad omen if strange travelers come shortly before the cursed months. INTERACTION
House of Customs (p.33): Sent there by guards, but nobody controls if they are really going there.
House of Oracles (p.33)

Some inn in Maruk (House of Sorrows?, p.34)
Old Maruk Palace = Dung Warehouse

TWIST1:
Sindarin asks them to take care of his 4 equs and disappears while healing
girl that was sent away from home, because she is cursed and her husband will only take her back if she brings Talisman from House of Fortune


NPC
Sindarin equs merchant: wants to get healed from sickness in the House of Fate

Honestly: this notes lead nowhere, but noone needs to read them. Don't complain about free stuff! ;-)

Talislanta is free! What could we play?

I was looking for an old fashioned and simple system recently and stumbled upon Talislanta.
I own the 2nd Edition of thie classic non-EDO fantasy setting, but my books are a few 1000 kilometres away.

So I was happy to be able to download most of the pdfs for the system.

Here you find the free RPG books for Talislanta.

What means "non-EDO"? EDO=Elves,Dwarves,Orcs? Talislanta breaks out of the Lord of the Rings mold and is not influenced by old nothern European myths, but much more by Jack Vance and H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands.

But what adventure should you play in such a huge setting?

I would let the players only chose between archetypes from the Seven Kingdoms and maybe the Wilderlands. That is enough choices. And I would set the adventures as well in this region.

Probably I would start in the near the realm of the Gnomekin, as some of the Seven Kingdoms are a little bit too cute. And for exactly that reason I would create an adventure where someone wants to create a Civil War in this nice union of races. An intrique that should split this bright corner of Talislanta apart.

Some interesting seeds:

• The Muses don't have a real ruler, but one is assigned randomly every month. What if a player character Muse becomes ruler, or if an "evil" (or blackmailed) Muse takes reign.

• The bird people (blue and green) seem to be quite split, it is a good point to start a war.

• The Cymril people seem to quite arrogant. It would also be easy to seed suspicion among the other races.

Now combine this 3 ideas through one villain and let the players run wild and create even more of a mess. Then villain should even empower the PCs to behave like PCs do. What a fun mess.