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Advapced DuireeonsF/Dragons Historical Edition Reference Charlemagne's Paladins Campaign Sourcebook by Ken Rolston Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 2 tt aladins 57 Chapter 3: Character Design 11 Chapter 7: Adventures on thetth Chapter 4: The Setting 25 Saxon Frontier 69 Chapter 5: Equipment and Treasure 52 Appendix: Predesigned Player Characters ... 93 Credits Editing: Mike Breault Additional Editing: Dori "the Barbarian" Watry Illustrations: Roger Raupp Typography: Gaye O'Keefe Cartography: John Knecht Playtesting: Paul Harmaty, Anna Harmaty, Henry Monteferrante, Daria Swain, Richard Garner, Brian Cummings Special Thanks: Alan Kellogg ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, AD&D, and DSD are registered trade- marks owned by TSR, Inc. The TSR logo is a trademark owned by TSR, Inc. t0 1992 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Random House and its affiliate companies have worldwide distribution rights in the book trade for English language products of TSR, Inc. Distributed to the book and hobby trade in the United Kingdom by TSR, Inc. Distributed to the toy and hobby trade by regional distributors. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of TSR, Inc. ISBN 1-56076-393-0 9323 TSR, Inc. POB 756 Lake Geneva WI 53147 U.S.A. TSR Ltd. 120 Church End, Cherry Hinton Cambridge CBl 3LB United Kingdom Sample file

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Page 1: Charlemagne's Paladins Compaign Sourcebook · Charlemagne's Paladins focuses on the years of Charlemagne's reign. The earlier timeline provides a quick over-view of important dates

AdvapcedDuireeonsF/DragonsHistorical Edition Reference

Charlemagne'sPaladins

Campaign Sourcebook

by Ken Rolston

Table of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction 2 ttaladins 57Chapter 3: Character Design 11 Chapter 7: Adventures on thetthChapter 4: The Setting 25 Saxon Frontier 69Chapter 5: Equipment and Treasure 52 Appendix: Predesigned Player Characters . . . 93

Credits

Editing: Mike BreaultAdditional Editing: Dori "the Barbarian" WatryIllustrations: Roger RauppTypography: Gaye O'KeefeCartography: John KnechtPlaytesting: Paul Harmaty, Anna Harmaty, Henry

Monteferrante, Daria Swain, RichardGarner, Brian Cummings

Special Thanks: Alan Kellogg

ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, AD&D, and DSD are registered trade-marks owned by TSR, Inc. The TSR logo is a trademark owned by TSR, Inc.t01992 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

Random House and its affiliate companies have worldwide distribution rights in thebook trade for English language products of TSR, Inc.

Distributed to the book and hobby trade in the United Kingdom by TSR, Inc.

Distributed to the toy and hobby trade by regional distributors.

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America.Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material contained herein is prohibitedwithout the express written permission of TSR, Inc.

ISBN 1-56076-393-0 9323

TSR, Inc.POB 756Lake GenevaWI 53147 U.S.A.

TSR Ltd.120 Church End, Cherry Hinton

Cambridge CBl 3LBUnited Kingdom

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CHAPTER

Introduction

One of the greatest challenges facing a DM isto create a detailed, dramatic, and plausiblecampaign setting for role-playing. Adapting ahistorical setting like the Carolingian period of-fers some spectacular advantages for meetingthis challenge. The historical and legendary per-sonalities and events of Charlemagne's time pro-vide a wealth of epic themes for a role-playingcampaign.

We suggest you choose one of the followingthree strategies to develop an AD&D® role-play-ing campaign set in the time of Charlemagne. Asyou read this book and consider how to use it inyour campaign, keep the following three optionsin mind.

The Historical CampaignThis type of campaign should be held to the

same standards for accuracy as a historical novelor film. Such standards vary greatly, especiallyin the action-adventure genre. Often we forgiveinaccuracies so long as the tale is dramatic, but acareless disregard for detail ruins our pleasure inthe historical setting. Most significant forAD&D game players, the visible effects of magicin a historical world must be far more subtlethan those found in a more typical AD&D cam-paign.

The Legendary CampaignThis type of campaign exploits the legends of

Charlemagne and his Paladins as recounted inlate Medieval tales. Unfortunately, certain as-pects of these legends (plate armor, jousting, chi-valric romance, and others) are historicallyinaccurate. However, the sorcerers, magicalswords and rings, and marvelous fairy king-doms should be retained and adapted to the Car-olingian setting. They can enhance or expandany campaign.

In a legendary campaign, the restrictions onspellcasters and spellcasting are somewhat re-laxed. Encounters with mythical creatures, suchas hippogriffs and pegasi, and with sinister sor-cerers are standard fare. Though spells and mag-ical effects are somewhat restricted, a legendarycampaign is considerably closer to the standardADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®game than is a historical campaign.

The Fantasy CampaignThis type of campaign melds a weak-magic

AD&D fantasy campaign with various historicaland legendary elements associated with Charle-magne and his times. Except for some restric-tions on player characters and magical items,players are expected to use their PCs prettymuch like they would in any other AD&D gamesetting.

The big advantage of this is that the playersget all the abilities they are accustomed to, whilethe DM has access to abundant campaign settingdetail to adapt for fantasy scenarios (many his-torical books are available at the public library).

Historical Role-PlayingThis is not a history book! This is a handbook

for running AD&D game action-adventure cam-paigns in the time of Charlemagne. Our focusproduces a necessarily narrow and occasionallydistorted picture of the period.

Great differences existed between east andwest, north and south, in Charlemagne's vastEuropean empire. For simplicity we haveglossed over many distinctions. Historical de-tails true of one region may not be true of an-other; details true to the period in general maynot necessarily be true in various localities.

DM TipsYour task is similar to that of a historical nov-

elist. We have done the basic research for you,but the true pleasure of designing a historicalcampaign is in adapting the materials you findhere and in the library.

As your research progresses, you will quicklyrealize that we don't know very much about folkin the Dark Ages. You'll have to piece togetherwhat you've learned from books, films, and oth-er historical settings to imagine what thingsmight have been like.

Finally, remember that role-playing is primar-ily a dramatic art. When given a choice betweenfacts and drama, go for the drama. Satisfy yourplayers' desire for authenticity, but don't be ob-sessed with facts. Your main task is to capturethe feeling of the human drama and setting ofthe Dark Ages for your players.

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Introduction

Introduction • 3

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CHAPTER

A Survey of Carolingian History

"Illustrious race of the Franks, instituted byGod himself, courageous in war, in peace con-stant. . ., of noble stature, brilliant whiteness ofskin, exceptional beauty, daring, swift, and har-dy, converted to the Catholic faith free of her-esy. . . . Long live Christ, who loves the Franks."

—From the prologue to a compilationof the laws of the Franks

The greatest king of this fortunate race ofFranks, Charlemagne (or Charles the Great,Carolus Magnus), by the grace of God, byboldness in war, and by mercy and enlighten-ment in peace, brought the Dark Age barbarianpeoples of Europe together under one rule inthe Carolingian Empire. Great in history andlegends, Charlemagne and his Paladins becamesymbols of the struggle to rise from the vio-lence, disorder, ignorance, and paganism of theDark Ages toward the noble, heroic, just, andenlightened society idealized in chivalric Medi-eval romances.

Timeline711: The conquest of Spain begun by Muslimsof North Africa.714: Charles Martel (1st Carolingian) inheritseffective rule as Mayor of the Palace under aweak Merovingian king.c. 725: Probable composition of Beowulf.732: Charles Martel defeats Muslims at Battle ofPoitiers.751: Pepin, son of Charles Martel, crownedKing of Franks.768: Pepin dies and Charlemagne is crownedking.773: Charlemagne invades Lombard Italy.774: Charlemagne defeats Lombards and makeshimself their king.778: Charlemagne's Spanish campaign fails; Ro-land is killed at the Pass of Roncesvalles.782: Alcuin, Anglo-Saxon scholar, joinsCharlemagne's court and becomes head of pal-ace school.789: Anglo-Saxon chronicles record first Vikingattack in England.797: Irene becomes Empress of Byzantine Em-pire amidst doubts that a woman can legally rulethe empire.

799: Charlemagne completes subjugation ofSaxons.800: Charlemagne crowned emperor of Romansby Pope Leo III. Charlemagne builds his chapelat Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen).802: Empress Irene overthrown and succeededby male ruler.812: Michael I, emperor of Byzantium, ac-knowledges Charlemagne as his "brother" em-peror.814: Charlemagne dies; Louis the Pious be-comes emperor.840: Louis the Pious dies, dividing the Carolin-gian empire among his three sons. Viking raidsgrow in size and frequency.843: After war among Louis's sons, Charles getsAquitaine and western France, Lothar gets Italyand Lorraine, Louis the German gets Germanyand the east.870: Part of Lothar's kingdom is divided be-tween Charles the Bald and Louis the German.871: Alfred the Great becomes king of Wessex.884: Carolingian empire reunited for the lasttime under Charles the Fat.886: Alfred and the Anglo-Saxons make peacewith the Danes and establish boundaries of theDanelaw. Great Viking raid on Paris.888: Charles the Fat dies and empire is perma-nently partitioned.911: Carolingian line comes to an end in Germa-ny; Charles the Simple grants land in northwest-ern France to the Vikings (the future Normans).962: Charlemagne's German empire is revivedunder Otto I.987: The last Carolingian on the French throneis succeeded by Hugh Capet, first of the Cape-tian dynasty.

Charlemagne and His TimesThe Decline and Fall of the Romans

In the Fourth Century AD, the western Ro-man Empire had united most of what is nowmodern Europe under the Pax Romana. In theFifth Century AD that Roman Empire declinedand fell as a result of internal political strife andexternal threats posed by invading tribes of Ger-manic and Hunnic barbarians. Four principlekingdoms succeeded the collapse of the western

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Romans: the separate Gothic kingdoms of Spainand southern Italy, the Lombard kingdom thatreplaced the Goths in northern Italy, and theFrankish kingdom of Gaul (modern France) andGermany. The cultures of these barbarian king-doms were but shadows of the sophisticated Ro-man civilizations they supplanted. ManyRoman villas (large rural farms) were aban-doned, and forests sprang up amidst their ruins.Many of the great urban centers of Roman Eu-rope were largely unoccupied or altogether de-serted. After the long reign of the classicalcivilizations of Greece and Rome, Europe hadentered the Dark Ages.

The Carolingian EmpireIn the Eighth Century AD, an energetic, force-

ful, benevolent, and enlightened king bondedmost of barbarian Europe into a new WesternEmpire, the Empire of Charlemagne, or Charlesthe Great. The Carolingians, as Charlemagne'sruling family was called, sought to establish anew standard of law and Christian enlighten-ment for the people of the Carolingian Empire.They tried to secure its borders from the raidsand invasions of the pagan Vikings, Slavs,Avars, and Moors. Historians and poets of thelater Middle Ages looked back on the compara-tive peace and unity of Charlemagne's 46-yearreign with a romantic awe and reverence, callinghim the "father of Europe."

The Carolingian dynasty reigned for almosttwo centuries, from the accession of Charles (theHammer) Martel on the death of his father Pip-pin in 714 to the end of Louis the Coward's reignin 997. Charlemagne's Paladins focuses on theyears of Charlemagne's reign.

The earlier timeline provides a quick over-view of important dates and events for the entireCarolingian period, while the following histori-cal notes are presented in the style of excerptsfrom the Royal Frankish Annals. These consistof a year-by-year contemporary account of sig-nificant events in the Frankish kingdom duringCharlemagne's reign. Remarks in parenthesesadd significant details that might be known to anoble of the period. For a brief review of thelands and peoples mentioned in these historicalnotes, see Chapter 4.

For more detail on the history of Charlemagneand the Carolingian Empire (and abundant in-spirations for AD&D® game scenarios and cam-paigns), see the references listed in "SuggestedReading" section at the end of this chapter.

Adapted and Annotated Excerpts from the Roy-al Frankish Annals

732: Charles Martel (the Hammer) defeats theMoors at the Battle of Poitiers in southernFrance and turns the tide of Moorish invasionsfrom Spain.750: Pepin the Short, son of Charles the Ham-mer, is elected king according to the custom ofthe Franks. He is anointed and crowned king ofthe Franks by the hands of the Pope's delegate,Archbishop Boniface of saintly memory. (SaintBoniface was a famous Anglo-Saxon missionarywho preached Christianity to the Saxon.)754-56: Pope Stephen II travels to Pepin's villacalled Quierzy and crowns Pepin again, alongwith his sons Carloman and Charles I (the futureCharlemagne) and confers upon all three the ti-tle of Roman Patrician in return for Pepin's com-mitment to defend the Pope and Rome againstthe aggressive Lombards. Pepin and the Franksmarch against the Lombards, and by the grace ofGod and the intercession of the blessed apostlePeter, the Franks claim victory. Pepin presentsthe lands he wins to the Pope (the Donation ofPepin; these lands become the Papal States).768: Charles I and brother Carloman come tothe throne together upon the death of Pepin.769: The glorious Lord King Charles marches tosuppress revolt in Aquitaine and Gascony, andby the grace of God he gains the victory despitebrother Carloman who declined to aid him inthis campaign. (Carloman dies in 771, leavingCharlemagne sole ruler of the Franks.)772: King Charles holds an assembly at Worms,and from thence he marches into Saxony. Heseeks out and destroys the great Pagan idol Ir-minsul, the oak of Geismar, the Father Tree thatsupports the vault of heaven, worshiped by thePagan Saxons, and takes away the gold and sil-ver he finds there. He holds parleys with theSaxons, who make peace and give hostages,then returns to Francia. (The Saxons maintainedtheir pagan worship of forest spirits and sacred

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groves like the Druids of old times. Charle-magne's intent was to convert these ungodlypeoples to the worship of the True Faith.)773: Charles marches across the Alps into Italyto aid Pope Stephen against the insolent and op-pressive King Desiderius of the Lombards. Bythe grace of God, the Franks gain the victoryand besiege Pavia. The Lord Charles celebratesChristmas in Holy Rome. The savage andtreacherous Saxons fall upon the borderlandsleft exposed by Charlemagne's absence and putChristians and churches to flame and sword.774: Charles captures Pavia and returns homevictorious. He then sends four detachments toSaxony, and with God's help has the victory andreturns with much booty. (Though Charlemagnedesired that the Saxons be brought to theChurch, he also was pleased to enrich his lordsand knights with the spoils of war.)775: King Charles campaigns in Saxony, wherehe takes many hostages and much booty, andcauses much slaughter among the Saxons.776: King Charles marches into Italy and de-feats the oath-breaking Lombard Hrodgaud,then returns victorious to Francia. Then, hear-ing that the treacherous Saxons have rebelledand abandoned their hostages and broken theiroaths, he campaigns against them. Then all theSaxons came before him at the source of theLippe River, to surrender their lands to theFranks, to put up security, to promise to becomeChristians, and to submit to the rule of KingCharles and the Franks. Many are baptized andmany more are taken hostage, and fortifiedcamps are built and Frankish garrisons installedto guard them before King Charles returns toFrance.777: A Moorish Embassy headed by ibn-al-Ara-bi comes to ask King Charles's aid in overthrow-ing Abd-er-Rahman, emir of Cordoba.(Ibn-al-Arabi, a partisan of the Abbassid caliphsruling everywhere in the Islamic world exceptfor Spain, hoped to obtain Charlemagne's aid inousting the emir of Cordoba, a supporter of theUmayyad caliphate. Charlemagne hoped thatthe Christian population of Spain would rise inarms and join forces with his army once he en-tered Spain.)778: King Charles marches forth with a great ar-my of Franks, Lombards, Burgundians, Ro-

mans, Bavarians, and Goths and enters Spain.However, his campaign does not succeed, andhe withdraws. In the pass of Roncesvalles in thePyrenees Mountains, treacherous Basques pre-pare an ambush and fall upon the baggage andrear-guard. The entire Frankish force is slain, in-cluding many officers of the palace. The bag-gage is plundered, and the enemy melts awayinto the wild lands, so vengeance is frustrated.(The Song of Roland is inspired by this battle;among the fallen Franks were Roland [CountHruodland, warden of the Breton Marches], Eg-gihard the royal seneschal, and Anselm, countof the palace. In legend Oliver and the Archbish-op Turpin fell that day. Though the Spanishcampaign was a failure, the establishment of theSpanish Marches, a defensive zone north of thePyrenees, assured the security of Aquitaine fromSpanish Moorish invasion.) Learning that theSaxons are in revolt, Charlemagne returns inhaste and puts down the rebellion.779-780: Lord King Charles campaigns in Sax-ony.781: Lord King Charles celebrates Easter inRome, where Pope Hadrian anoints Charle-magne's sons, Pepin and Louis, to be king of Ita-ly and king of Aquitaine, respectively.782: The Saxon chief Witunkind leads the Sax-on tribes in an uprising, and Charles is drawnaway from a campaign against the Slavs to putdown the rebellion. The Saxons come onceagain to Charles and submit to the king, andthey surrender the evildoers who fomented therebellion—4,500 persons—who are put todeath, though Witunkind, having fled intoNordmannia, is not among them.783-84: Charles campaigns in Saxony.785: Charles campaigns in Saxony. Witunkindis forced to sue for peace, and he is baptized.The whole of Saxony is then subjugated, andtheir stubborn treachery quiets for several yearsbecause they can find no convenient occasionfor revolt. (Though minor Saxon revolts contin-ued for years, mass deportations of Saxons intoFrance and Frankish colonies established in Sax-ony achieved a final settlement of the region bythe end of the 790s.) An ambitious conspiracyamong the East Franks, led by Count Hardrad,is discovered, and its principals are deprived oftheir eyes and sent into exile.

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