Welcome back, and let's get this Gazetteer finished tonight. There are some more 'procedures' discussed on the next page, including awarding XPs for role-playing points of honor and the social structure of the setting, as well as a Storytelling rating for characters who want to channel their inner Scheherazade. It's based on your non-physical stats (Int, Wis, Cha) and level, and you had better roll high if you don't want to lose the audience (or worse, anger them to the point that you actually lose XP). Since BECMI goes up to level 36, the best base score a character could possibly have is 18 for all three ability scores, plus 36 more, or 90 total, to which you get to add a 3d6 roll, so you'll get a pretty awesome reaction even if you're a foreigner trying to tell the story to a pack of evil efreeti. Not too many characters are going to reach that level, though.
Next, there's a discussion about the Dervishes, or desert druids. These guys don't actually follow the BECMI rules for druids, and are more like clerics in that they get to turn undead. They also have high constitutions and save as dwarves. They also get their own unique spell list which mixes the cleric and druid spells with a few unique ones. This is an interesting addition to the setting, since this is the first variant class in BECMI after the publication of the boxed sets. It's restricted to NPCs, but how many DMs are going to actually follow that?
There's a very helpful page on courtesy tips for foreigners, introduced, like many of the sections in the gazetteer, as a narration from a friendly NPC. There's also a brief section on how to use the Nahmeh (the setting's equivalent to the Koran, although it's not detailed), and how you can just take well-known quotations and adapt them to make them sound more Arabian. It's a useful tip for any setting, really.
Ah, a glossary. Usually found at the end of the book, this is at the end of the Player's Section, and gives a list of typical terms for locations and cultural markers in the Emirates, as well as a few things about the overall Known World setting, which is a handy thing to have for newcomers to the setting, regardless of what part of the world you're adventuring in.
A page of Ylari customs finishes off the Society in the Emirates portion. I should note that the Player's Section was just the middle eight pages of the book, which split the Society section. The customs listed here are useful for gaming and setting adventures, whether it's games and contests that are popular in Ylaruam, or how to flatter your host in hospitality encounters. Good stuff that helps bring out the flavor of the setting.
Now we get to the centerpiece of the book, which is a description of the Village of Kirkuk, a useful starting place for an Ylaruam campaign. It is not, however, given an official location on the map; it's described as simply an important stop on a well-traveled caravan route, with a sacred grotto where Al-Kalim spent some time during his time killing Thyatians. We are promised a DM's map and key plus a list of important NPCs, but it's not on the inside cover as advertised. And while the player's map of Kirkuk is supposed to be on the reverse of the large color map that comes with the book, the back of the map is a white blank space. Oops.
Anyway, Kirkuk is well-described, and it's the only place in Ylaruam that is well-described. But with only 400 residents, it's not much of a place. However, it does have a couple of interesting points that can lead to adventures. First, there is the Well of the Faithful Prophet, the grotto that Al-Kalim visited years ago. It's under a curse, which has poisoned the well. There is an adventure seed to fix the curse, of course, because what else are curses for?
Second, there is Barimoor. Barimoor is an Alphatian wizard seeking Immortality, and he is using his underground complex beneath Ylaruam to help him get there. Barimoor is a great choice for campaign's Big Bad, one the PCs shouldn't even learn about until they're name level. He's been there for eight centuries, with the patience of a spider and the cunning of a high-level evil wizard. He's cautious and taking his time; after all, he's expecting to become an Immortal at some point, so time really is on his side. Barimoor has a LOT of minions, and his various quests and plots can lead to all kinds of interesting adventures. He's not explicitly set in Kirkuk, but he does have agents there, agents that don't even know they work for him (they're magically controlled). Lots of opportunity for mischief there.
There are a few adventure seeds given for Kirkuk, which is a pretty busy place for a small village in the desert on a caravan route. Many of them are in the spirit of the Arabian Nights stories; an old beggar has been babbling in an unknown language; turns out it's the tongue of the Elemental Plane of Fire, and he finally figured out what he wanted to say, and opened up a portal to the Plane just as the PCs happen by. There's a missing nobleman's son who the PCs have been hired to bring back, except that he fled from his father to escape marriage to a spinster, and loves the beautiful maiden instead. Stuff like that, which is all over the Arabian Nights stories.
The last major section of this book is the Campaigning section. This book is unique among the Gazetteers in that it barely details the important cities of the nation; the city of Ylaruam is the least-detailed capital city of any Gazetteer, meriting only a few scattered paragraphs throughout the book. Kirkuk, by contrast, gets fifteen pages.
So, the campaigning section gives a more general overview of things; where are the characters from (natives or foreigners)? Why are they adventuring in this inhospitable desert terrain? The DM is urged to get beginner PCs (native or foreigners) to Kirkuk to start things off, placing it on the map wherever is most convenient for future plans. Pick a Big Bad (Barimoor is one option among several) or two. There's also a list of monsters likely to be found in the setting, from aerial servants to bandits, from camels to lizard men, from manscorpions to zombies. There's quite the selection to work with, with challenges at all levels of play.
There's also a chapter on treasure hunting, because what would the Arabian Nights be without fabulous treasures to find? There is even a list of magical artifacts to find for all levels of play, from Basic to Master levels. Of course, the Master level items are a bit more powerful than the Basic ones.
Finally, there are some adventure seeds for the overall campaign (not necessarily Kirkuk-related). The very first one involves an evil sorcerer who tricks the PCs into going into a cave to retrieve fabulous treasures. Sound familiar? At least they aren't so blatant as to say the sorcerer wants a certain lamp.
Another of the adventure seeds takes the PCs to the fabled City of Brass, which doesn't get detailed, but there are some very juicy tidbits to give an idea of what this City might contain. Check this out: "Inside is an impossible paradise of a lush green jungle and fierce beasts abiding peacefully with their normal prey. They are finally greeted by a talking lion, who takes them to the throne room where they see a beautiful enchantress. She gestures and everything changes again. The characters awake before the gates they shattered at a touch. The jungle has withered, the ground is littered with skeletons, and gaunt men and women wander mindlessly to and fro, marked by the plague."
Good stuff, and there's more where that came from. The adventure seeds are evocative, presenting a wide range of opportunities for adventures of all sorts. Ylaruam might be a big desert just south of a Viking realm, but it's got lots of stuff going on, stuff your PCs will enjoy exploring and overcoming.
Finally, there is the Suggested Reading section. It mentions a few gaming modules from both BECMI and AD&D, some other game references, suggestions to research Egyptians, Mongols, Arabs, the Crusades, and deserts, and one fiction suggestion: Frank Herbert's Dune. It's science fiction, but it's got desert warriors and high-tech magical items, so why not?
You know what they didn't recommend?
Any version of the Arabian Nights! Say what?! You would think that a gazetteer set in an Arabian desert with genies, beggars, and storytellers might want to point gamers in the direction of the most obvious source material there is. But they didn't.
Regardless, Ylaruam is a fun change of pace for a campaign, worthy of checking out. If you want a hardcopy, it's not cheap, going for around $70 minimum on eBay. But you can also get the PDF at Drivethru.rpg if that suits your fancy. I'm glad I still have the original copy I bought way back in the day, and I'll hang on to it.
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