A cancelled playtest leading to new ideas

Due to an unforeseen medical emergency with a friend tonight's play test involved the party moving five squares further into the mines of Razor Hill... And that's OK, real life comes first. But after having driven my wife to said friend's house to babysit while she went off to hospital, I had a sudden burst of creative energy, and plowed an hour or so of planning into Nectar, the sandbox module I have planned for Solum... And here is some more info, in the absence of a play test report.

Nectar - a sandbox in progress for Solum

Image from Wikipedia (Copyright Boberber)

 I've been fiddling with a sandbox for Solum, a sort of campaign setting with a solid introduction, a plethora of interesting locations (that's the sandbox part), and a semi fixed ending.

It's still early days, but suffice it to say that it revolves around bees. Yes, bees. And accompanying them are creatures such as Myconids, the giant Ants, the Flower people, Troglodytes, the Ember druids and the Iron dwarves.

The whole thing takes place in and around the village of Honeytop, a place where the humans try to capitalise on the abundance of bees (and thus honey) in the area. But deep in the mountains hides Apoidea, the bee archetype trapped here in times lost, and she has plans of her own that, you might say, will sting the adventurers and in fact the whole region...

Here's a draft for the very introduction to this thing:


The swarm
The characters are closing in on the remote mountain village of Honeytop. It’s the height of summer and the light woods are verdantly blossoming. The mountains and cliffs are thoroughly warmed up. The high air is cool and the breeze is strong, but the sun is warm.

In the distance they can see the mountain Two tops, the first of many mountains in the Gray mountains, and on a smaller cliff halfway there they see the goal of their trip  - the village with it’s golden brown pointy roofs.

Suddenly the sun seems to darken for a moment, and it appears as if a dark cloud passes over it.

A while later they all sit down by the side of the road to have lunch. Around them is a meadow full of forest flowers and berries. In the distance they can hear a stream.

A faint and almost not noticable noise makes itself heard. It’s a constant sound that slowly increases in strength. Before they have time to react it grows into a deafening buzz, and a huge swarm of bees appears over the tree tops!

The bees descend on the meadow like a rug, but doesn’t seem unusually aggressive. They are large (but not gigantic) and the characters might get stung once or twice.

A few minutes later the swarm lifts as if by command and flies off. One can see that it flies off towards the mountains...