MoltenSulfur

PCs on the Battlefield: Benedict Arnold Tries to Take Over

American schoolchildren learn about Ethan Allen’s 1775 seizure of Fort Ticonderoga: an important moment early in the Revolutionary War. What’s less commonly talked about is that the man who’d go on to be the war’s most famous traitor almost botched the whole thing. Right when Allen was about to start the operation, Connecticut businessman Benedict Arnold barged in with a piece of paper from Massachusetts, claiming to anyone who would listen that he was in charge. The incident makes te...

More NPC Foibles from the Mughals

In my last post, I wrote about the character foibles of two of India’s Mughal emperors and how those foibles can make good quirks for memorable NPCs. Today I’m doing the second half of that thought with their successors, the last three of the truly great Mughals: the patron of the arts Jahangir, the mismanager Shah Jahan, and the zealous Aurangzeb.

This post is brought to you by fello...

NPC Foibles from the Mughals

Back in 2020, I wrote two posts about character foibles of Roman emperors that made good quirks for NPCs. Now I’m going to do it again with the Mughal emperors of India, who were just as quirky and gameable! Skipping over Babur, the first Mughal emperor (who has his own 2024-01-16 07:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp

Before the American Revolutionary War, slavery was legal in all thirteen colonies. There were no slave states and free states, no Mason-Dixon line that people fleeing slavery could cross and find freedom. Still, there were places you could go: English Florida to live among the Seminoles, a big city to lose yourself in the crowd, or the deep forests across the Appalachian Mountains. The people who escaped slavery to live in the woods were called ‘maroons’. And the most interesting (and gam...

The Uncertain Truth Behind Thugee

The word ‘thug’ arrived in English in the early 1800s to refer to a specific kind of bandit operating in India. The concept of ‘thugee’ (the practices of thugs) soon lodged itself in the Anglophone popular consciousness, spawning media like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But real-life thugee was very different from the (racist) thugee in the pulps and papers, and some historians today argue that it never even existed. Inasmuch as thugs and thugee can be said to have ex...

Weird Treasure: Letters of Introduction

In the seventeenth century, an Iraqi named Elias al-Mûsili traveled throughout Latin America, armed with a thick stack of letters of introduction from some very prestigious people. With these letters, he was welcome just about anywhere ruled by Spain – and he accumulated more letters as he went. Historically, letters of introduction were boilerplate, a standard part of any traveler’s kit. Al-Mûsili took these boring letters to their logical extreme. In addition to making good inspiratio...

The Battlemap Entrance of Maiden Castle

The east entrance to the Iron Age hillfort at Maiden Castle, Dorset, England, makes a really great battlemap for RPG combats. Lucky for us, it also has some really interesting history and archaeology behind it! As a battlemap, it’s got strongpoints a single PC can hold, branching paths, and restrictions on movement that are interesting hindrances, rather than hard stops. It led to the best combat of my 13th Age campaign, so I figured I’d better write it ...

Hunting the Wilderness Fop

In 1773, failed architect William Mylne fled his creditors in Scotland by absconding to the backwoods of the American colonies: a little shack outside Augusta, Georgia. He had a vision of setting himself up as a farmer, but a lack of funds and his own incompetence foiled his plans. He abandoned Georgia and traveled overland to New York hoping to find architecture work up there. He was no woodsman. He was an upper-class twit with no money on a grueling thousand-mile journey ag...

Three-Month Hiatus and the Future of the Blog

August 14th marks six years of the Molten Sulfur Blog. In all that time, I’ve never missed a weekly update. But I need to think about what the future holds. This blog is not going away – I love doing it, and I’m not going to stop. But it is going on hiatus for three months while I take my first break in six years. After that, the blog will update every other Tuesday instead of weekly.

Six years is a long time. That’s as long as I spent in u...

Retaking the Ship from Confederate Pirates

In July, 1861, the U.S. merchant sailing vessel S.J. Waring was seized by Confederate pirates. William Tillman, a black man and the ship’s cook and steward, learned the pirates intended to seize him too and sell him into slavery in the Confederacy. Tillman was not going to let that happen. He spent nine days quietly preparing, then sprang his trap. He personally killed three Confederates, took control of the Waring, and sailed her to Union territory and a hero’s welcome....

Seeing the Enemy with Shang Oracle Bones

China’s Shang dynasty ruled a Bronze Age proto-state that used a lot of divination to inform the king’s decisions. The pyromancy that Shang officials wielded to understand their world left a rich trove of documentary evidence: oracle bones covered in burns and writing. They’re a great fit for RPG campaigns, even ones that don’t have magic!

This post is brought to you by fellow Patreon backer Arthur Brown. Thanks, Arthur – and all of you!

2023-07-25 06:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Old Essex County Jail

This is probably gonna be my last post on the blog from Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. I still haven't 100% decided what changes I'm gonna make come mid-August and the six-year anniversary of the blog, but I'm 90% confident it will include not posting from Archive anymore.

This post is brought to you by fellow Patreon backer Justin Moor. Thanks, Justin – and all of you!

2023-07-18 06:00:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Divine Intervention and the 885 Siege of Paris

Through much of 885 and 886 A.D., a large force of raiders from Scandinavia besieged Paris. An eyewitness account of the Viking siege has survived: the Bella Parisiacae Urbis (Battle of the City of Paris) by Abbo, a monk of the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Brother Abbo did not seek to produce a literal and accurate accounting of precisely what he witnessed from the walls of Paris. Instead, his epic poem recounts what Abbo saw as the truth behind the truth: how God’s foremost s...

Six Political Power Players from the Pangani Revolt

Last week we looked at a really complicated (and interesting!) revolt against the Zanzibar Sultanate in 1888 Pangani, Tanzania. The revolt featured three different factions: the independents, who wanted total separation from the Sultanate; the autonomy faction, which wanted to reduce Zanzibari authority over Pangani and restore the privileges of the local elites; and the reco...

Pangani: a Pile of Conflicts Exploding in Revolt

In 1888, the Swahili coast of what is today Tanzania rose up in revolt against the Sultanate of Zanzibar, triggered by the arrogance and brutality of the sultan’s new German ‘friends’. The revolt was particularly memorable at the trading town of Pangani. But while German shortsightedness may have provided the instigating incident, Pangani had been moving towards revolt for a long time. The town was conflict heaped atop conflict, just waiting to explode – and then some dummy set i...

Pygmy Forest

This post is brought to you by fellow Patreon backer Colin Wixted. Thanks, Colin – and all of you!

Credit: gbohne, released under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license

Pygmy Forest
Nature's Delicate Dollhouse

At first glance, the terrain ma...

Moving Lost Packages with the 6888th Postal Directory

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion (its soldiers just called it the ‘six-triple-eight’) was a groundbreaking U.S. Army unit in WWII: the first unit of black, female soldiers America ever sent overseas. The 6888th spent 1945 in Birmingham, England, sorting mail bound for U.S. troops on the front lines in Europe. The unit’s commanding officer, Major Charity Adams – a legend in her own right – wrote a memoir about her experiences with the 6888th, and it’s a remar...

The Abandoned God of Wat Kon Laeng & 13th Age Review

Sukhothai, in what is today central Thailand, was the capital a Medieval Thai kingdom in the 1200s and 1300s. The city was later abandoned, and by the mid-20th century, the ruins were totally overgrown by jungle. When archaeologists began to study the site, they were initially perplexed by an odd pyramid south of the city. It was stylistically unique, of a low-quality design, and did not fit the Theravada Buddhist religious pattern evident in the rest of Sukhothai. It was later determined the...

Change is coming in August

August 14th (three months from now) will mark six years of the Molten Sulfur Blog. I’m probably going to institute some changes to the blog at that time. I don’t know what those changes will be yet, but I’m leaning towards taking a break for a few months and then going to posting every other week (and no longer taking posts from Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs).

I haven’t mentioned this on the main blog yet (and probably won’t until August), bu...

PCs on the (Failed Invasion) Battlefield and Coleridge’s Red Herring

In February of 1797, a small French military force landed in Wales. It was farce, easily rolled up by the British defenders. Participating in an invasion based on this one – either as an invader or a defender – is a surprisingly interesting RPG adventure hook! One of the weird events that followed the invasion also makes a cool hook. In the paranoia that came after the invasion (what if the French were going to try again?) two of the greatest figures in English poetry, William W...

Sappho

This post is brought to you by fellow Patreon backer Colin Wixted. Thanks, Colin – and all of you!

Sappho
Sensual Poet of Ancient Greece

Sleep thou in the bosom
Of thy tender girl friend,
Telesippa, gentle
Maiden from Miletus.

Like twin petals shyly
Closing to the darkness,
Dewy on your drooping
Lids shall fall her k...

The Chinese Legation to the Paris Commune

In 1870, the government of China had to send an emergency legation to Paris in response to an incident in a Chinese port. It was an unusual circumstance; this was only the third formal diplomatic mission sent by the Qing dynasty to the Western world. A translator with the 1870 mission, Zhang Deyi, had served on both of the previous missions and should have found this one routine. Instead, when the party reached Paris, they found a city devastated. The French government had been overthrown, an...

Empire City Thieves’ Tools

Thieves’ tools are an iconic piece of kit in RPGs. Their nature is often handwaved as “y’know, lockpicks and stuff”. When it doesn’t matter, that’s totally the right call. But specificity can prompt adventure! A specific tool, given as treasure to the PCs, can open new avenues for them. A novel tool hitting the streets can generate fun mysteries. Here, then, are six thieves’ tools used in late 1800s New York City. I took them from a memoir by an odious New York lawyer. Because o...

I’ll Sell You Sicily, but You’ll Still Have to Conquer It (Part 2: The Conquest)

From 1250 to 1266, four successive popes worked to sell the Kingdom of Sicily to any capable European warrior-aristocrat who could afford their steep asking price. The trouble was, the papacy didn’t own Sicily. The kingdom already had a king. Anyone who bought what the popes were selling would still have to conquer Sicily themselves. Last week, we look...

I’ll Sell You Sicily, but You’ll Still Have to Conquer It (Part 1: The Hook)

From 1250 to 1266, four successive popes worked to sell the Kingdom of Sicily to any capable European warrior-aristocrat who could afford the steep asking price. The trouble was, the papacy didn’t own Sicily. In fact, Sicily already had a king who was none too pleased with the whole affair. These popes weren’t selling control of Sicily, just recognition of the title. Once you paid, you still had to conquer the kingdom yourself. It’s a weird story, and it makes a really interest...

The Trial of the Six Generals

This post is brought to you by fellow Patreon backer Arthur Brown. Thanks, Arthur – and all of you!

The Trial of the Six Generals
The Guilty Be Damned

In 406 B.C., the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta had been raging off and on for almost three decades. The Spartans had just taken a strategically important city on the Greek islan...

Five Dead Bodies in an Old Chaco Farmstead

In or around 1030 AD, two women, three babies, and two dogs asphyxiated to death in a farmhouse in a thriving community at the bottom of a canyon in New Mexico. Was this event a tragic accident or was it murder? Modern archaeologists have investigated the site thoroughly and lean towards accident – but it’s still a mighty suspicious case. This true-crime-adjacent story from the vibrant world of the Ancestral Puebloans of the Medieval American Southwest makes a really interesting myst...

Andrew Battel: Pirate, Convict, Merchant, and Mercenary

Andrew Battel was a failed English pirate. Captured by his intended victims, he was forced into convict labor by Portuguese colonial officials in Angola, Africa. He then went on to a varied career as a Portuguese soldier, a weird sort of half-merchant-half-mercenary dude, a minor warchief, a soldier again, and finally a deserter. His and his comrades’ story makes a really interesting template for enemies you can use as mooks supporting whatever villain your RPG campaign needs.

This po...

Families Turned Detective in Edo Japan

Societies have handled the enforcement of laws a lot of different ways in different places and times; the ubiquity of police in the 21st century can make it hard to imagine what other systems might even look like. The way the authorities tracked down suspects in Edo-era Japan (1603-1867) is particularly interesting. The system was a good fit for its time and place, yet it had obvious loopholes known about and exploited at the time. Using a system based on this one in your fictional campaign s...

The Murder Castle

This post is brought to you by fellow Patreon backer Arthur Brown. Thanks, Arthur – and all of you!

The Murder Castle
Hotel Hell

On the outside, it was a three-story brick building in downtown Chicago. Shops rented space on the first floor. The upper floors held a hotel with sizable rooms. H.H. Holmes, the architect and owner of the buildin...