Now we come to the present state of Places by the Way, such as it is. We published Tomb Raiders of Orek and Into the Royal Tombs last year, and we haven’t added any new titles since then. I will get back to the series eventually, but a couple of projects have muscled their way ahead of them to the top of my to-do list. Above all, I would like to have more time overall to devote to writing, as having to maintain a day job is a serious impediment — and if that isn’t a hint to buy Ramen Sandwich Press titles, or take out a paid subscription to my Substack, or at least make a one-time donation to support my work through Buy Me a Coffee, I don’t know what is.
I have admitted elsewhere that I got the idea for these modules from the Egyptian village of Deir-el-Medina. It’s the place that John Roemer describes at length in his TV series “Ancient Lives” (I have no idea about Roemer’s bona fides as an archaeologist, but I have always found him an effective presenter and author). In Pharaonic times it housed the workers and artisans who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. However — at least, as I recall the story — when Egypt began to fall apart during the 20th Dynasty, one of the residents resorted to robbing the tombs that his predecessors had built. This put the local authorities in a bit of a pickle, caught between protecting one of their own and their allegiance to what remained of royal authority.
By now, it should not surprise you that I found elements in this story that I could port to Places by the Way. First, there is a village with a secret, and once the player characters become aware of it, they have to figure out what to do with that knowledge. In this case, do they tattle to the proper authorities that a local family has been raiding the nearby royal tombs that they and their ancestors have helped to build, or do they sit on this knowledge, knowing that doing so could make them complicit and get them into trouble if found out? Second, tombs are classic settings for dungeon crawls, especially dungeon crawls filled with undead. Obviously, translating the entire Valley of the Kings into a single mini-module was not going to work out, but something much smaller would fit the premise without straining credulity. Even so, I decided to split the idea into a linked pair of modules, one for the village and the other for the dungeon crawl.
The challenge, of course, was to translate the premise into a context that was not specific to ancient Egypt so that it could slot into a wider range of campaign settings. While it is impossible to remove all traces of cultural context when you’re describing a village, Places by the Way modules are supposed to relatively generic so that they are also versatile in that sense. The sponsors of the village of Orek are not Pharaohs as such, but any sort of royal dynasty will do. In fact, they don’t have to be royal at all; they just need to be rich enough to build a necropolis and fill the tombs with goodies worth stealing. There should be some sort of dynastic aspect, however, because a complex of tombs built by a single patron implies that everyone interred there has some sort of connection to everyone else. It also explains why building out the tombs is an ongoing enterprise that requires a permanent resident population of laborers and artisans.
This in turn led me to give the premise behind the modules a twist that I found rather humorous: You don’t need a general economic and social collapse to explain why some of the residents of Orek have started robbing tombs. Instead, the problem is that the villagers get paid for each new tomb created and furnished, and no one in the sponsoring dynasty has died in a while. Orek’s problem is that that patrons are living well and peacefully; no one is dying young from disease, violence or general stupidity. Yes, in case you haven’t sussed it out by now, I have a strange sense of humor.
Orek is yet another one of those names that I pulled out of thin air. It has a vaguely ancient Egyptian sound to it, at least to my mind. However, I cannot rule out that I was influenced by the homophonic name of a company that makes vacuum cleaners, Oreck. I’ve never owned an Oreck vacuum cleaner, but I remember seeing TV commercials featuring the company founder, David Oreck, some years ago (and this was a long time ago, back when basic cable still fascinated me). I guess I always liked the sound of the name, but I also found the sight of a man wearing a dress shirt and suit pants working a vacuum cleaner rather striking — that’s not usually how I dress for housework. Anyway, I hope they don’t sue me for trademark infringement. So if I was to leave you with one message about Places by the Way #11 and #12, it is this: Buy the modules; but don’t tell the Oreck company about them.