So, months ago I made some posts here about an adventure I was writing for the Write Your First Adventure workshop, set in the town of Marshedge in the Lismelder Tribe territory. Well, I didn't finish by the workshop deadline (in large part because I got way too ambitious and went way over the suggested word count), and then with one thing and another I kind of... set it aside for a while. But I'm finally picking it back up again; even if I didn't finish it by the end of workshop I still want to get it finished and published, and I hope to have it done within the next month or so.
Anyway, when I say I got way too ambitious, part of it is that I decided there was enough material that it would be better to split it into two products: the adventure itself, and a Marshedge gazetteer. (The adventure could be run without the gazetteer—there are a few characters fully statted in the gazetteer who appear in the adventure, but they play very minor roles in the adventure and their stats probably won't be needed.) The adventure itself is fully written (though it could do with some editing and revision, and it hasn't been illustrated or laid out yet), but the gazetteer I just finally got off my duff and seriously started writing yesterday. But then I decided I may as well add a (much shorter) third product: a set of pregenerated characters mostly from the Lismelder tribe, for use in the adventure. (This maybe I'll release for free, to possibly pique interest in the other products. But I digress.)
So I've been planning out a set of pregen characters that (a) fits the area where the adventure is set, (b) isn't too similar to the pregens from the core book/starter set, and (c) covers all the bases players are likely to want covered. Now, to satisfy (c), I figured one of the pregens ought to be an assistant shaman. (The party doesn't actually need to include an assistant shaman to complete the adventure—although there are some parts of the adventure where it could be very useful to communicate with spirits, there are other ways to proceed, and anyway there's an NPC shaman whose aid they can enlist if they want to. Still, I figured I ought to have an assistant shaman character as an option.) And I've been having a bit of trouble coming up with a good concept for an assistant shaman character that fits criteria (a) and (b). I don't get the impression that shamans are that common in Sartar, so it would seem unlikely there are two shamans (well, one shaman and one assistant shaman) living in the Marshedge area. The core pregen assistant shaman is a Waha initiate from Prax, so I wanted to do something as different from that as possible. So I thought it might be interesting to have a Golden Bow shaman (well, assistant shaman) as one of the pregen characters. Sure, Marshedge is pretty far from the Grazelands, but the core pregens include some characters from outside Sartar as well (besides the aforementioned Praxian shaman, there's a Lunar Tarshite, an Old Tarshite, and an Esrolian), and all my other pregens are from the Lismelder area; having one foreign pregen didn't seem out of the question.
The problem is, given the Pure Horse People's isolationist and xenophobic nature, I'm not sure what plausible reason a Golden Bow shaman would have for adventuring with the other PCs in Marshedge. I thought maybe one of the other PCs could previously have traveled to the Grazelands and helped him out somehow, and he's returning the favor, but that seems a little thin.
And as I was typing this entry another solution occurred to me, one that in retrospect seems blatantly obvious and I feel stupid for not having thought of it before. I said it seemed unlikely there would be two shamans living in the Marshedge area—but that assumes they're there independently. What if the PC assistant shaman is apprenticed to the NPC shaman that I've already established lives in the area? The biggest problem I see with that is that, well, the NPC shaman only went through his own ordeal and became a full shaman a few years ago; he wouldn't be much older than the PC. Would it make sense for a relatively new shaman to take on an assistant only a few years younger than he is?
Okay, I suppose now this post contains two sort of unrelated questions, but I guess they're related in that I'm exploring two alternate solutions to the same problem and trying to figure out which one is more workable...