The Maps of the Pilot Rodriguez
In 1512, a ship’s pilot in service to the King of Portugal penned a real-life treasure map. The story of the map’s production is a bizarre tale, and the map itself makes excellent inspiration for your own adventures. In the Middle Ages, the spices nutmeg, clove, and mace were grown only in a handful of […]
House-to-House Combat Encounter from 1756
Lieutenant Thomas Blagg’s defense of a British mansion in the 1756 siege of Calcutta was a footnote in the overall battle. Though valorous, it had no real impact on the siege’s outcome. Still, it makes a great template for a setpiece combat encounter in your own campaign. The siege was a relatively brief affair marked […]
Mali’s Real-Life Adventurers’ Guilds
Timbuktu is an ancient crossroads town in northern Mali, in the dusty Sahel between the Sahara and the green lands farther south. Its scholarly institutes make great adventurers guilds. Seriously – the libraries of Timbuktu have everything a good adventurer’s guild needs: an interesting ideological reason for existing, tension, high stakes, plot hooks, and quests […]
Aristodemos
The 5th century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus records an interesting story about Aristodemos, the one Spartan who survived the battle of Thermopylae. It’s the sort of thing that could make some great PC backstory. Quick background: the Battle of Thermopylae, best known these days from the movie 300, was a three-day battle fought in 480 […]