Quote from: SHARK;1119847Greetings!

What is the Mwangi Jungle like, my friend? Do you have any notes on its major geographical features?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Yup, Omega has it right, this is part two of the Age of Ashes campaign.  I have some extra time to detail the hex exploration this week because the Chilli Eating contest went so well with only minor hilarious chilli injuries and one PC successfully eating the infamous Mwangi Ghost Chilli Pepper.

Greetings!

In addition to my previous commentary, I would also suggest some fairly extensive and detailed notes and profiles on several different human, as well as humanoid tribes. That will provide a vivid framework from which to jump from, and it is also good to write up half a dozen significant NPC's for each tribal group. If the party meets them, goes on adventures, helps them, has romances or makes enemies, all that is good. Even if they don't, right now, though, it is still good because you have more concrete ideas of the tribes and key figures and people in the area for your own development of the area, as well as being well-prepared for whenever the party returns to the region, or otherwise decides to explore more and get involved with NPC's and so on. So, it is a good investment of time, thought, and effort.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

They will find the Source of the Nile.

For a board game, it had some handy ideas.

If the party is in the jungle, I offer a Real Life story of John Ringo's as inspiration.

Quote from: John RingoOkay. Since people liked the hog story, now for one where even the bravest of the brave lost the battle.

So there we were, my airborne company and me, in Panama doing JOTC. (Jungle Operations Training Center) I even had the patch at one point. This is important because shortly after our visit, JOTC became one with yesterday's prickly heat. We were almost the last class. But I digress.

We'd been doing something so out of the movie Platoon it was hilarious as we, as a company, stumbled around the jungle looking for 'insurgents.' I think there was some vast plan by our notably incompetent battalion commander that there were other units in place to catch the insurgents as they 'retreated' from our bumbling patrol, but whatever. We were wandering through triple canopy jungle down in a valley, swatting mosquitoes, fighting prickly heat and dehydration and hating every damned minute of it.

As with Vietnam, when night fell so did we. This was before the days of universal night vision so we were blind as a bat. Ergo: Time to hooch up.

We set up our hooches against the inevitable rain, set our watches and crawled under our mosquito netting relieved to be away from the blood suckers.

As seemed to be inevitable, about 0400 it rained. In Florida, where I mostly grew up, it would rain every afternoon at 1630. In Panama it rained every afternoon at 1630 as well. Then at 2230 and again at 0400-0430. Lovely. There's a reason that it's called 'tropical rain forest' but I prefer the old fashioned term 'jungle' or better yet 'green hell.'

Please keep the situation in mind. We are in 'tactical conditions.' No fires. As little light as possible and even then only red lens flashlights. No night vision devices save for some among the nomenklatura. (Officers and senior NCOs.) Under triple canopy jungle, at night, that means dark as a fucking cave.

Shortly after the rain, my story begins.

There were a pair of NCOs that to this day remind me of the positive racial effects of being in a military unit. Sergeant Williams (E5) was a black kid from urban north somewhere. Heavy ebonic accent. Serious jive cat. Sergeant Polanski (E5) was exactly what you'd picture, a blond, blue-eyed, Polack, heavy across the shoulders and stolid as they come.

Despite what would seem to most progressives as insurmountable racial and cultural divides, the two were inseparable in the field. They had two teams in a platoon and they hooched together and in barracks roomed together to the point that jokes were told about their interest in women. No basis, they were just 'buddies' which is a term that truly makes sense only to those of us who have lived that life.

In this case they'd set up a 'jungle hooch' which was a poncho strung up in a particular way to allow the rain to tip off in various directions. They were sleeping by taking a 'rucksack flop' leaning up against their rucks which were set back to back.

About fifteen minutes after the rain stopped, persons in their AO were awoken to Williams' rather angry and sleepy protestations.

'Polanski!" he said, angrily and sleepily. 'Why the fuck'd you hit me?'

'Whaaaa?' Polanski replied, barely awake. "I didn't hit you. Go back to... Motherfucker! I said I didn't hit you! What the... oomph!"

"Quit hitting me, mother... oomph, what the fu... OW!"

About then there were a series of cries coming from, well, everywhere. Trees. Ground level. Every direction. They are hard to describe but they were more or less:

EEEWEWAAAK ERRRKAKAKAKOW!

At which point the shit hit the fan and we were hit by the Monkey Cong.

You see, we'd set up in the territory of a group of howler monkeys.

Please note, howler monkeys are more or less black. And under triple canopy jungle, in the rainy season, with the sky overcast, tactical, it really didn't matter because YOU COULD NOT SEE YOUR HAND IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE. And they Monkey Cong had breached the perimeter.

They had no care for rank nor age nor race nor in the case of our platoon medic sexual orientation. They were there to fuck us the hell up and they did a very good job. It may seem funny but these things were about the size of a small German Shepherd and hit like Mike Tyson. They also tore down hooches, threw fecal matter and generally acted like a more organized group of anarchists at a Democratic rally.

Tactical went out the fucking window as first red lens flashlights came on and then filters came off for white light. We did not give a shit if notional 'insurgents' spotted our encampment cause the shit had just gone Real World and we were in a duel to the death with the Monkey Cong.

All you could see were black flashes in the brush as the Monkey Cong rushed hither and yon, up trees, into branches, down on the ground, often on someone's unprotected head, doing all the damage a monkey insurgent could. Guys were lighting them up with blanks, throwing grenade simulators and one guy even pulled off his blank adapter and tried to nail one by sticking his cleaning rod down the barrel.

All to no avail. These monkeys had heard and seen every sort of pyro in the time the JOTC had been in existence and they cared not a whit. Loud noises did not bother them. Light did not bother them. All they cared about was fucking us up til we got out of their territory.

After about fifteen minutes of the craziest moments I experienced in my short Army career, they disappeared as rapidly as they'd appeared.

There was a short colloquy amongst the nomenklatura on the various benefits of moving out, holding our ground, presumably with more cleaning rods or just waiting for daylight but our company commander made the, in my opinion wise, choice to move the fuck out. Nobody bitched as we, still with our white lenses on our flash-lights, packed our shit and slunk away into the jungle as fast as we could move given the wet, the night and the terrain.

The Monkey Cong had won the night. And I took an oath that night, solely to myself:

If I ever go back into a fucking green hell, I'm taking a fucking shotgun.

I hear they taste alot like chicken.

Also on page 94 of the 2011 Secret Santicore PDF is an excellent random hex map generator that I have been using with great results.

The Monkey Cong!  Great stuff.

Amazing.

No Magic involved on the Cong side.

Can't call the GM out on that one.  

Some good advice on this thread.