One of the first things I started to think about was where the Keepers of the Broken Circle hang their hats. When The Kandris Seal was originally conceived and written, the answer was easy: the Realm of Chaos. With the advent of D&D 4th Edition, the answer’s not quite so simple.

Elemental Chaos was my first thought. It’s got the Abyss, which is kind of what I envisioned the Keepers’ backyard being like. However, they’re not really into destruction. They want to corrupt the natural world and rule it.

Corruption of forces outside of the natural world brought the Far Realm to mind, but the Keepers don’t render any being instantly insane. Still, I like the idea of the infection and aberrant aspects of it, so I’m going to find some way to hang onto that.

There’s the Astral Sea, with the Nine Hells and Shom. The Keepers’ realm could fit in there, and as the Manual of the Planes says, the “islands” in the Astral Sea are very remote, and only the most powerful of heroes would go there.

Many different things to think about, but I’m going to have to make a decision about it at some point.

There are two more campaign books planned for The Kandris Seal line, both of which are for the fantasy genre. The first has only the working title of “Fantasy Kandris Seal”. The second is The Cross, the Crescent and the Kandris Seal, which has information about running a Kandris Seal game set during the Crusades.

The outlines for the two books originally started out as an outline for a single book, created by Matthew A.J. Gregory. Given the scope of the material, I decided that it would be best split into two separate books. Fantasy Kandris Seal (or FKS) will be written first, and will contain information on how to adapt The Kandris Seal to a standard fantasy setting, along with a campaign world created as a backdrop for a fantasy game.

As I work on FKS, I’ll be posting these Design Diary entries. Some will be snippets of the book (in draft form, of course), others will be discussions about the decisions I make about the world and how things will be presented.