Review: Thousand Thousand Islands #7 + Drawings #2

tl;dr: another fascinating location and drawings to introduce your seaborne Thousand Thousand Islands campaign.

The missing boxes of materials turned up and these last zines were restocked, I ordered them and lo, they have arrived! I previous reviewed the first block of zines here and 5, 6 and 8 here.

Book 7 - "Ngelalangka - A market town built on the back of living puppets." This place is an entrepot, a trading town that can serve as an inland hub for adventures. As the descriptions say, the mastery of puppet horses and oxen is allowing a trail to be blazed to this place in normally dense wilderness - which provides lots of potential to drop in whatever wilderness dungeon or ruin you may like. The locals never poked it because they have too much sense, but for professional tomb-delvers... well, can the opportunity be resisted?

There are none of the immediate troubles and fizzing fuses that plague some of the other kingdoms, this is a place on the make, on the way up, and there can be plenty of drama and adventure wrung out of the sharp elbowed scramble to grab a piece of this new action. Two rival regional traders face off in the main market but those are outsiders bringing outsider trouble. The young queen "grants amnesty to rival claimants to local thrones - recognising that true peace among her neighbours would be bad for prosperity." Yet all is well among the locals it seems.

I liked the long term trouble being stowed away in the background - the spirit-puppets are mentioned often - the wealth of Ngelalangka springs from the new temple master agreeing with the young queen that the sacred art of puppet making should be turned to the needs of the village for cheap labour. On the the last page gives the feral runaways lurking in the woods - a minor issue, for now. I would be tempted to run a speed run of the perils of rampant petroleum extraction but any 'gold today, trouble tomorrow' tale could be fitted here.

As ever the art is exquisite and the pull out centre page is a map of the trading village with its major players and inhabitants along with some more crumbs of intrigue. The hook of 'newly opened wilderness beachhead' is a perfect fit for campaigns and adventurers.

"Drawings (Part Two) - Sea battles, spirit masks, centaurs. An art zine, inspired by the SEA." This is a second pure art-zine with a more nautical theme than Drawings Part One. There are some beautiful ship designs - typically engaged in ferocious sea battles - lots of interesting characters and 3 very interesting descriptions of items and their surrounding customs. First is the fire piston, second the finger knife and lastly betel nut chewing. The fire piston is fascinating - I never knew such a thing could work, it is a treat to see such fire-starting technologies described.

I also greatly appreciated the betel-nut chewing piece as it gives the kind of great setting detail that makes a thing feel different and still real. Should my players arrive to a location and their host pulls out a box and starts preparing betel nut for them all it both drops into that social space where serving coffee or tea fits - a thing to facilitate negotiation, diplomacy, perhaps to buy time while something else happens - but it is also something that more firmly affixes the setting. This is memorable and has the depth of detail of a true thing. I really like this window into the culture of A Thousand Thousand Islands.

Where Drawings One is the players handbook for a land-campaign, Drawings Two is for your seaborne campaign. If I were to broadly group the zines to date, you could put #1 MR-KR-GR, #2 Kraching, #3 Upper Heleng, #4 Andjang and #7 Ngelalangka together as the 'forests season' with Drawings One as the intro guide. Once the players had worked through those, amassed fame and fortune sufficient to win or be trusted with a boat (possibly back at MR-KR-GR), you could cue up the 'seas season' with Drawings Two and launch into #5 Stray Virassa, #6 Korvu and #8 Hundred Red Scales. Of course, any of the first #1, #2 or #4 could be islands encountered at sea as well, mix and match as you see fit.
As ever, a treat - get yourselves the Everything Bundle direct from the source or through Exalted Funeral. I want to see this setting succeed so we can have more of it.