Runequest Thursday #149 - Big Rubble: New Packs in Town!

Here are a few new inhabitants of The Big Rubble! More are likely on the way.

In the next little while, the Brightwater Company will be heading back into the Big Rubble. They have traveled through it, mostly onboard riverboats to Pavis and back regularly, but it has been a while since they have actually adventured there. This time they have a couple of things they need to accomplish.

Firstly, in order to act as guards to a bunch of Orlanthi heroquesters to Stormwalk Mountain, several of the Company needed an air rune association, gained via having a temporarily allied air elemental - granted to them by Jagrun Khan, patron entity to Wyrmhere Ironhand, sorcerer and Jagrun Khan cult leader. Jagrun Khan has been know to grant the occasional favor to Wyrmhere for services rendered, but he required something in return when asked to bestow his benevolence upon the sorcerer-priest's friends. SO he told them that they had to hunt down the trolls that had tried to bind Jagrun Khan himself a while back in Dark Season of the previous year. The fact that the Brightwater Company foiled the binding then was overlooked by the Storm Tiger, who rightly felt that his safety was threatened.  It was learned that the trolls who attempted the deed were from Trolltown in the Big Rubble. In fact, they were of the same clan that included a certain Gorakiki Dragonfly priestess who had been working for the Lunar at Corflu, keeping the giant mosquito population down. During a previous adventure, Ughari, the Praxian Shaman, had interfered with this, driving the Priestess to break her contract with the Lunars. 

There is at least one more reason for the Company to venture into the Big Rubble. Zoe Brightblade intends to challenge the Wind Masters of Orlanth for acceptance as a Rune Lady of Orlanth. Since she knows the Wind Lord Jarang Bladesong, and he owes her a favor, she has reasoned that traveling to his mobile camp of geurilla fighters is the best course to begin her challenge.

With all this in mind, I gave some thought to some new sights for the Old City. And since tonight is the Monster Design Episode on D-Infinity Live, I wrote up two new takes on old critters. One is a staple from the earliest days of Runequest - the Rubble Runner, adapted to life in the Big Rubble. The other is an Runequestification of a folkloric creature of the American Southwest - the Jack-a-lope, given a chaotic tweak by an injection of some jack-o-bear blood. Because both the creatures are pack animals, I wrote up statsheets that you can use to run packs of five.

Of course, if you want to go BIG (like the BIG Rubble) just make a couple of extra copies. LMK how they do!

NOTE: I cleaned up the Jack-a-lope datafile and worked out a pack of 15 (organized into three subpacks of 5) each with its own chaotic features and an alpha leader.  So if you downloaded the file before, do so again for the new and improved version.