The Very First Game In Ampliterra
Now that the final illustrations of Ampliterra: Echoes of the Rift are underway, I’ve been reminiscing on the home game that started it all. During its first year, I gathered all the background material and sessions I prepped into an anthology to share with my players. You might call it a dry run for this book! I felt inspired while reading through those original sessions last week to share the very first session played in Ampliterra.
Me with the first Ampliterra anthology. Please excuse the terrible mid-pandemic home haircut!
The Tree of Muses
Njarovík is home to the renowned Vifildottir School for Arcane Studies, a small but deeply influential school that teaches magic to the next generation of magic users. When students at the school reach thirteen years old, they undertake an academic and educational milestone called a Könnun.
Since magic focuses from the Skadi Forest are the most powerful on the continent, each student researches a place in the forest to find materials and craft their own. The school frequently recruits professors, students, and townspeople to accompany these students on their dangerous journeys.
Our very first session featured the four original party members; Remus Feliusson, Sterling Drake, Johime, and Olf Silverdragon. They were recruited by Thyre Vifildottir herself to accompany a young bard named Viktoria Sigvadottir into the forest to the Tree of Muses. The tree will grant a select few branches from its boughs to worthy bards that use them to craft an instrument.
The party met lots of characters in Ampliterra: Echoes of the Rift including Hrolf Bjarnisson (the catfolk barkeep with a mysterious past), the aforementioned headmaster, Thyre Vifildottir (I just saw a first sketch of her character art last week and she looks amazing), and Siv Altidottir (the resident artificer who always has a new gadget to show off).
The party set off with Viktoria on the day-and-a-half long trek to the Tree of Muses. While traveling through the Skadi Forest, the party started to notice signs of disruptions to the Skadi Forest’s arcane balance, including strange hostile twig-monsters, and discordant music coming from nowhere.
Oh! And Olf met the Silver Elk (and became the youngest member of a very secret Order), but that’s a story for another time.
The next day, the party found the tree covered in malevolent ice elementals. These were the first signs of the forest reacting to the Silverwolves, a notorious band of criminals stripping it of precious natural resources. The party and Viktoria managed to defeat the elementals and retrieve a branch for her to craft into a new bow for her violin. The group returned to town to celebrate the young bard’s completion of an essential educational milestone.
At this point, Ampliterra was no larger than this one small town and its nearby forest, but the world was already beginning to come alive as the players sought to explore what lay beyond the town’s borders. I hope that the sense of wonder carries through to you when you see the book this fall. There’s so much to explore and so many stories of your own to tell here.
Until next time!
Austin
