Putting a Pin in the Seclusium

Tower Map, Location Map, Some Notes

As In It's Done!

I finished my seclusium map and key today.  All that's left with this is to get it on the campaign map.  Since it's going on a part of the map we haven't adventured towards, yet, I'm going to leave that to be done later.  It will be going several hundred miles south of where the PCs are currently and there will be more mapping to do "down there" when the time comes.  Now I can move on to finishing up whatever I had left undone with preparing "Scenic Dunnsmouth."

Ground Floor and Second Floor

Third Floor and Fourth Floor

Fifth Floor and Basement

Wednesday's Seclusium Stuff

Drinking an Almond Milk Chai While I Work On Orphone's Seclusium

This My First Post Composed On Tablet

Typing this way sucks, maybe I should get a little keyboard for my tablet.... anyway brought my notebook to Starbucks and worked on the last questions of Section 6 of The Seclusium of Orphone.  Done with that, just need to finish up mapping and then I can move on to another project.

I've Lost My Compass

Canning Rings=Improvised Drawing Tools

I Needed to Draw Some Circles

But my compass was nowhere to be found.  I've done so much minimizing in the last two years that I don't know whether my cheap little compass was a victim of my purging or not.  So I brainstormed for a minute and figured some canning jar rings would make the right size circles for the tower levels I needed to make for Orphone's seclusium.  I was able to map out levels 1-4 , completing level 1 (or ground level) enough for use and roughing levels 2-4 out with the intent of adding more detail next RPG work session.  I still need to map a subterranean level (doesn't have to be round) and get those Section 6 questions answered; so maybe a work session or two away from getting this Orphone business behind me and on to finishing the prep for Scenic Dunnsmouth (maybe, we'll see what I really feel like tackling!)

Orphone's Tower Levels 3 and 4

Building A Seclusium

Building A Seclusium, Here We Go

Lingering Unfinished For A Little Over A Year

I have owned The Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions by D. Vincent Baker for about four years, but I didn't get around to trying to use it until a little over a year ago.  For those unfamiliar with this product here's the back of the book blurb,

     "This book provides the rules, guidelines, tables, and suggestions for creating wizards' seclusia for your own campaigns, and features three sample seclusia in various stages of completion, including the Seclusium of Orphone of the Three Visions."

For those of you wondering "WTF is a seclusia?"  the back of the book also gives these four definitions,

     1. A place to which a wizard withdraws from the world to pursue mastery.
     2. A place of magic and plasms and grotesques and horrors and treasures and doorways to other worlds.
     3. A place which, when abandoned by the wizard but with its treasures and dangers remaining more or less intact, is a terrible and antic catastrophe in process.
     4.  A place which makes for marvelous location-based adventures.

So last year I thought it was high time I bust this book out, make a seclusium and place it on my campaign map somewhere.  A combination of laziness and name preference led me to choose the most completed sample seclusium belonging to Orphone of the Three Visions.  By the way, this isn't a review, just an anecdote of my experience using the book as intended for the first time.  Once the PCs actually interact with this location, then I'll write up a review, as I don't want to review materials that haven't seen actual campaign or one-shot play.

I was able to complete five of the six sections of this seclusium last year, but stopped due to tediousness in the process and non-urgency (this encounter location wasn't going anywhere near where the PCs were at the time.)  I vowed to complete this back during #DIY30, but got bogged down with other projects and am just now picking this up again.  Today I was able to narrow the work left down to five questions in Section 6 and although I have a rough map of the island where Orphone's seclusium is located, I need to draw a map of the tower and key it.  Not sure how much of this I'll get done tomorrow, but after I get those tasks complete, I'll place this location on my campaign map.