2. Choosing a Setting - Albion

While I knew that I really wanted to do this project, I was stuck on where in The Old World I wanted to have the main setting. I didn't want to do Mordheim proper as I felt that it was too much of the same vibe with ruined town/city/urban sprawl. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I just wanted something different environmentally - maybe something that was more than a ruined city, something grander. 

My first thought went to the southern region for something tropical, something Ghost Archipelago-ish in nature. I was thinking steaming jungles, Lizardmen, Estalia, etc... but I thought that maybe it was too limiting (more likely my imagination was too limiting) so I looked at a map of The Old World and spied Albion siting up there in the corner of the map. I knew some of the lore of Albion in Warhammer, but not much. As it turns out, after a deep dive on the internet, Albion is largely unfleshed, so-to-speak. For me this felt like Albion could be the sandbox I was looking for - I could lean in to the Celtic/Arthurian/Misty/Druid island vibe while creating regions and places that were not canon, and would not conflict with established lore - for the most part. 

With my area of conflict chosen, I set about reading what I could of Albion and getting the general idea of what was about. I read that Albion disappeared at times and re-appeared during great troubles. I can't remember where I read this at, and it is more likely that I just imagined this in my head as it fit my need - regardless, I used this as a jumping point for using Albion.

Disconnecting from Chaos

One thing I knew that I wanted/needed to do was to separate any connection Albion had to Chaos - either by proximity or by nature. While Demons are prevalent in both Frostgrave and The Old World(ToW), I did not want to have that type of influence or familiar imagery present in Albion. While Khorne, Nurgle, etc..are well known and present in ToW, they are very familiar and canonical - they are expected to behave in a certain way and are not just stumbled upon. This conflicts with Frostgrave's concept which has demons present in many scenarios or can be encountered randomly. 

In order to keep the frequency of demons appearing in Frostgrave, and removing the connection to the Ruinous Powers, I elected to rename all "demons" from Frostgrave as Primeval - something that belongs to the First Age, or possibly The Old Ones. This was an easy way to keep the mechanics and creatures whole in the conversion process, while breaking the connection to known demons in ToW. 

Spells, weapons, tags, abilities, etc...that impacted or influenced the tag; Demon were simply renamed to Primeval. I think this was the easiest part of the whole conversion process!

Further Development

In my next post I will provide more information on "What Happened" in Albion, and why warbands are now flocking to its shores.