Most of the planet's inhabitants live in small enclaves: hamlets, villages, and isolated settlements, separated from one another by vast stretches of hostile terrain. Enclaves are often distrustful and ignorant of one another, and afraid of powerful factions and cities. Travelers are usually treated with suspicion, but not outright hostility, since they are often useful for information and trade. Hospitality might be given in exchange for gifts or services. People in need are equally likely to be robbed and slain as to be helped.
Enclaves are built around reliable sources of water and food. In areas where none can be found, people organize in nomadic groups. The population of smaller enclaves is usually of a single color, but towns and cities are somewhat mixed.
You can create your own enclaves randomly or otherwise, or use the ones described at the end of the chapter. When creating your own, you do not need to describe every aspect of it. Instead, just choose one single distinction to be more noticeable and later flesh things out as needed.
Distinction
1. Appearance
2. Customs
3. Problems
4. Leadership
5. Prejudice (likes)
6. Prejudice (hates)
7. Style
8. Buildings
9. History
10. Roll twice
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| Noah Bradley |
Size
Most
settlements are home to have fewer than a thousand inhabitants. The next
chapter introduces several city-states, which may be all your campaign needs, at
least to begin with. When the PCs approach an enclave, the GM may choose to
ignore rolls of 12 or even 11, since the largest enclaves can often be seen,
recognized, and sometimes even heard or smelled from a distance. At the very
least, nearby enclaves will have heard about this place, and probably will
treat it with respect, caution or fear.
2d6 |
Community | Population | Description
2–3 | Band
| 10–40 (d4×10) | A handful of people, maybe a single family. Commerce is
unlikely.
4–5 | Clan
| 41–150 (d6×20+20) | Clear leadership, conflicting interests.
6–8 |
Settlement | 151–400 (d6×50+100) | Permanent walls, clear division of labor.
9–10 |
Village | 401–900 (d6×100+300) | Has allies and enemies, crops, some history.
11 | Town |
901–2,500 (d6×300+600) | A ruling class, professional soldiers, taxes.
12 |
City-State | 2,501–10,000 (d8×1000+2000) | Often ancient, powerful, brutal, and
corrupt.
Demographics of colors and
cultures
When
needed, roll 2d6 to determine color, assigning one color to each number. The
result indicates the majority (or ruling) color of the area; use that color
unless otherwise specified, in which case use the die on the left.
Although
most enclaves share a single color and culture, larger enclaves are more likely
to show heterogeneity. To determine this, roll 1d6 and multiply the result by
the 2d6 size roll; this gives the percentage of the population (round down) belonging
to “minority”, a non-dominant color or
culture. At most, you may end up with 72% of other colors and 28% of the dominant
color. It is not impossible that there is a minority ruling over several
smaller minorities or even a majority.
For bigger
enclaves, you can repeat this process to refine the exact composition when
necessary.
Example: First, we roll a 7, meaning a
settlement (see above). Let’s say it has 200 people, with blue as the majority
color. Then we roll a 3, meaning (7 × 3) = 21% of the population are
minorities. That’s about 42 green individuals. Are there smaller minorities?
Since 42 is equivalent to a small clan (4–5), we roll again and get a 3,
deciding there is a smaller minority of 12% red humans (about four people).
Or, in a
town of a thousand, we roll a 6 and get a “minority” of 66% (660 people,
equivalent to a village, or a roll of 9-10). Now we roll another die and roll 1
– meaning only 9-10%, or less than 60 people, are a smaller minority. This
might mean that a group of 340 people of color A are more powerful than 600
people of color B and 60 people of color C.
Appearance
A typical enclave is a cluster of tents, huts, and low buildings of mud or stone, sometimes surrounded by a palisade of sharpened wood or bone. There are usually a few sentinels, especially at night, and some activity during the day (cooking, eating, weaving, talking, fixing, etc.). Most have a well and a communal fire pit. Each house is home to four or more people.
1. Intertwined with trees
2. Underground
3. Lifted from the ground on stilts or platforms
4. Made of moving tents and wagons
5. Camouflaged
6. Suspended over water
7. Built amidst ancient ruins
8. Huge and mostly empty
9. Carved into rock or cliff face
10. A single massive building
11. Perched atop a great boulder
12. Vivid colors
13. Impossibly tall, narrow buildings
14. Shrouded in mist
15. Dense and tangled, mazelike streets
16. Inside a crater
17. Constantly flooded
18. Built with massive bones
19. Built with scrapped metal
20. Heavily fortified
Customs
Most people hunt, forage, and collect. Some plant crops when the soil and season allow. There is modest trade within the enclave and some exterior commerce.
The traditional family unit is the most common social group within enclaves, with polygamy and polyandry sometimes permitted to leaders. Bastards, orphans, and prostitutes are common, especially in larger enclaves.
Outsiders are treated with suspicion but can be accepted if they prove themselves useful. Some hospitality is expected, but so are gifts in return. Disturbing customs such as discrimination, cannibalism, infanticide, and slavery are not widespread, but rarely outright rejected either, and some may be temporarily adopted in special circumstances.
1. Property is communal
2. Identity is defined by masks
3. To be accepted, you must be marked
4. Universal vow of silence
5. Adults are cast out at a certain age
6. Children are raised by all
7. Appropriate clothing is mandatory
8. No concept of privacy
9. Visitors have no rights
10. Color determines caste absolutely
11. Travelers welcome for a single day
12. Weapons are forbidden
13. "Couples" are always three
14. Widespread eugenics, infanticide, euthanasia
15. Those who can't fight must serve
16. No activities during daytime
17. Violence is never the answer
18. Everything is permitted
19. You cannot leave without a price
20. Casual cannibalism
Problems
All enclaves face some kind of problem, most of them common to everyone in Primus: scarcity, monsters, strife, and natural disasters. Life is short, danger is common, survival is never guaranteed. Most enclaves, however, are not in obvious danger of immediate destruction, to the best of their knowledge.
1. Besieged by monsters
2. Ruled by tyrants
3. Poverty and hunger
4. Infected by disease
5. People are barren
6. Infiltrated by impostors
7. Filled with criminals
8. Resentful of outsiders
9. Cursed with madness
10. Violently expansionist
11. Ongoing power struggle
12. Damaged by recent war
13. Something sacred was stolen or destroyed
14. Opened a dangerous shelter
15. Half the population is mutating
16. Widespread panic from an unexplained omen
17. Hopelessly indebted to a larger faction
18. Children are disappearing, one by one
19. A prophet has split the community in two
20. Periodic human sacrifice; next one soon
Leadership
In most cases, a single leader (a chief, elder, or warlord by default) holds authority through the implicit consent of the majority and the explicit support of a small circle of allies. They govern for their own benefit as often as they do it for the good of the enclave. There are often rivals and disgruntled minorities who are tolerated but have limited power to change the status quo.
1. The highest bidders
2. Law-enforcing machines
3. A secret society which cannot be mentioned
4. A church or cult
5. An oracle
6. The winners (or losers) of the annual lottery
7. A powerful monster
8. A set of ancient written laws of unknown origin
9. A cabal of sorcerers
10. A psionic who reads every vote before it is cast
11. A semi-mummified elder
12. The wielder of a sacred artifact
13. Whoever survives the local deity's ordeal
14. The family that sacrificed the greatest number
15. The mob rules
16. A conquering warlord (or local thugs)
17. The brain-damaged survivor of hard drugs
18. Blind counsellors, relying on lies
19. A dying monarch with no apparent heirs
20. None - govern yourself
Prejudices
People favor their own enclave first and everyone else at a distance. They instinctively defend the status quo and reject new ideas. They will usually be more welcoming to people of a similar color or language, but many people in Primus are practical and can sometimes set their prejudices aside when there is something to be gained by cooperating, or by double-crossing someone they treat as an ally.
Where this table indicates a prejudice, it should often be noticeable. An enclave might slaughter any beast on sight, or skillfully employ domesticated creatures found nowhere else. A mutant or sorcerer might be hanged at the border as a warning to strangers, or the enclave's ruling elite might be composed entirely of psionics. An aberration could be the object of worship or hatred by the whole community. Lost technology might be feared or carefully studied and hoarded — and wielded exclusively by the tribe's most skilled warriors.
If you want to gauge how significant the prejudice is, roll 1d100. A preference of 90 or more toward technology might mean that all inhabitants are automatons, or at least partly machine. A hatred of 80 or more toward other skin colors indicates a dangerous supremacist culture that is likely to attack outsiders on sight. A near-100 fondness for warriors might resemble a stereotypical ancient Sparta, while a 100% dislike of outsiders calls to mind Clark Ashton Smith's "The Isle of the Torturers".
1. Other skin colors
2. One particular color
3. Mutants
4. Sorcerers
5. Warriors
6. Beasts
7. Lost technology
8. Outsiders
9. The rich
10. Religion
11. The weak and weary
12. Psionics
13. Nearby communities
14. The poor
15. Automatons
16. Slavery
17. Cannibalism
18. Aberrations
19. Wanderers
20. Hallucinogenic plants
Style
The usual attire in Primus is light clothing, suited to the heat. Modesty is not a common cultural value. Practicality, combined with some natural resistance to the sun, reduces clothes to straps and harnesses to carry tools, weapons, and jewelry. Adornments double as status symbols, worn close to the body rather than displayed on fabric. A good pair of boots or sandals is far more common than pants. Capes and wraps are sometimes used as tools or protection from the elements.
1. Bare skin, little else
2. Tattoos or ritual scars
3. Colorful body paint
4. Skulls, bones and ashes
5. Filed teeth
6. Demon masks and weird armor
7. Colorful silk
8. Lots of spikes
9. Corpse paint
10. Dinosaur or beast hide
11. Camouflage
12. Feathers, wood or straw
13. Machine parts as amulets
14. Piercings or skeletal alterations
15. Closed helmets
16. Completely bald or hairy
17. Heavy robes
18. Face wrappings and goggles
19. Colorful hair, beads or braids
20. Sun-scarred, barely clothed, unkempt
Enclave Buildings (d20)
At the center of most enclaves stands one main hall, larger than the rest, used for gatherings, disputes, celebrations, and the occasional shelter during a crisis. Other buildings exist but are rarely larger or more noticeable than this.
Castle or citadel
Monastery
Prison
Asylum or hospice
Underground vault
Labyrinth
Abandoned ship
Temple or shrine
Pyramid or ziggurat
Mausoleum or catacomb
Tower
Library or archive
Coliseum or arena
Tavern
Slave house
Crashed vehicle, repurposed
Sacrificial altar or blood pit
Quarantine ward
Public market
History
Most inhabitants know a handful of legends about how the enclave began, who the great leaders were, and what enemies were defeated long ago. Most of these are fabrications with no apparent use other than tying the community together, justifying their rights to the land or their possessions, or hiding something much darker than the official story.
1. Escaped slaves or thralls
2. Survivors of a destroyed enclave or tribe
3. Nomads who turned sedentary
4. Woke from vats with no memory
5. Founded by a prophet, now deceased
6. Wiped out the former inhabitants and took everything
7. Remnants of a defeated horde, now forgotten
8. No memory beyond the current generation
9. A union of several refugee groups
10. Nobody talks about it
11. Cut off from the world by natural disaster
12. Built around a single water source that is slowly failing
13. Once believed to be the only enclave in existence
14. Exiled to this location by a larger faction
15. Welcomed by former residents; a rare act of generosity
16. Waiting for a sign that hasn't come
17. Once ruled the world, or so they say
18. Inbred descendants of a single family
19. Fled from something scary that’s still out there
20. A group of raiders, now tax collectors, and their victims
Entering an Enclave
Most enclaves treat visitors in a practical way. Strangers are noticed quickly and someone with authority, or close to it, will approach before long. In smaller enclaves this is often the leader directly. In larger ones, visitors are more likely to be intercepted by a guard or a random inhabitant. Either way, the questions are the same: who are you, where do you come from, what do you want, and what do you offer in exchange?
The results of such conversations, including the enclave's distinctions and the players' Charisma, languages, and skills, will shape how the enclave treats the characters.
Sometimes, however, the enclave's reaction will surprise the characters entirely. The GM can decide this before or after an initial conversation, or even after a mission or quest has been failed or accomplished. Such unusual reactions might occur whenever the GM finds it appropriate, or on a roll of 1 on a d6.
The tables below should be interpreted according to the enclave's disposition toward the characters. A marriage proposal, for example, might be offered warmly, negotiated coldly, or forced outright. An interest in one of the characters, or one of their possessions, could be expressed with a generous offer or outright theft. A duel or game could be a friendly contest where losing is expected and winning earns instant respect — or a fight to the death fixed against the visitors. A neutral disposition might indicate a mixed result — for example, a gentle offer to participate in a heroic but suicidal expedition.
1. An interesting marriage proposal is made.
2. Your skills are exactly what a local problem requires.
3. They need guards or muscle for a current — and possibly dubious — project, conflict, or quest.
4. You are expelled, denied entry, or welcome to come and go freely.
5. There is a permanent position to be filled and you seem adequate.
6. Your exotic stories, customs, and objects provoke admiration or mockery.
7. They seem eager to share information with you.
8. You are chosen as impartial judges of a local dispute or duel.
9. Invited to share the beds of willing partners. Probably no strings attached.
10. The enclave values your gold or possessions highly.
11. They offer you something valuable for a reasonable price.
12. You are invited to participate in a welcoming party or local ritual.
13. They want you to carry a message, package, or person somewhere.
14. Someone invites you for a meal, with unclear motives.
15. You are encouraged to participate in a game or duel.
16. One specific character is treated with awe — because of a prophecy, a resemblance, or a sign on their person.
17. A powerful figure decides, on instinct, that you are to be loved or feared.
18. You are mistaken for someone or something else entirely.
19. They insist on trading gifts of unequal value.
20. You provoke different reactions in different factions within the enclave.
---
This last table was inspired by something I read from Taylor Lane. Thank you for the inspiration!
---
Here are some three cities I generated instantly using these. I used one main distinction plus three traits, but maybe two traits would be enough.
Mud city
~300 people; Distinction (Appearance): Constantly flooded
Customs: No concept of privacy.
Problem: Widespread panic from an unexplained omen.
Leadership: A psionic who reads every vote before it is cast.
A ruined, primitive version of Venice. Lots of mud. I can see it. People are panicked, the leader might be going crazy or causing the panic for peculiar motives.
Mistwalkers
~20 people; Distinction (Customs): Universal vow of silence
Appearance: Shrouded in mist.
Problem: Infiltrated by impostors.
Prejudice: Hatred of wanderers.
This looks like a creepy encounter more than a village to wander into. Unlikely to be a peaceful encounter. As the PCs cannot count how many there are in the mist, they'll have to be very brave to start a fight...
Spire city
~1,500 people; Distinction (Problems): Half the population is mutating
Appearance: Impossibly tall, narrow buildings.
Customs: Appropriate clothing is mandatory.
Leadership: A conquering warlord and their thugs.
Now this is more interesting. A big city, tall spires, maybe elaborate clothing (with 1500 people, some are recognized only by that; there is a possibility of infiltration...), ruled by thugs, with a severe mutation problem. Maybe he main building resemble something out of the Judge Dredd movie.
I think it works. I will try it in practice this week, as the PCs are approaching a new settlement!
Feedback is welcome! Leave a comment below!
