The Land, the Ice, and his brother Water and sister Snow.  Cousin Sun, Mother Moon, Trickster Sky-Lights, and Grandfather Darkness.  Each is Alive, but too vast to truly know or understand, much less bind or command.  They are the Mysteries that are Tukisinangitok.

These are the tendons that bind a people and their place--as far from the ancient Feeders as can be, although Ghosts roam throughout the tundra.

The Caribou Spirit is the most important of the Ghost Clans--providing the People with so much of what is needed in Tukisinangitok.  Smaller Ghost Clans are also friends of the People--the Grouse Clan, the Clan of the Hare, the Whitefish and his Salmon cousins.  These are the Ghosts of the Long Days.

The Ghosts of the Long Nights are very, very different.
This message was last updated by the GM at 16:56, Thu 07 Nov 2013.

Weapons and Armor:

Within the tribal place of Tukisinangitok, the available armors are:

Padded
Leather
Hide

Shields are unknown, as are all other armors.

Within the tribal place of Tukisinangitok, the available weapons are:

Simple:
Bone or stone dagger
Bone or stone short spear
Bone or stone spear
Bone or stone long spear
Bone or stone javelin
Club

Martial:
Bone or stone hand axe
Bolas
Sinew-backed bow (short bow)
Spear thrower
War club (equivalent of a heavy mace but weighing 6 lbs.)
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:22, Thu 07 Nov 2013.

<s>Available Skills:

At first level, you will have access to all skills except:

Fly is not available at this time.

Only Knowledge, Local and Knowledge, Nature are available for Knowledge skills.

Linguistics is available, but only for tribal dialects.  Anything outside of the Tukisinangitok language family will not be available at this time.

Use Magic Device is not available at this time.</s>
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:42, Sat 23 July 2016.

Available Feats:

All feats listed in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook are available at first level, although obviously there are prerequisites for many of these that will preclude them as options.  All classes start with one feat.  Humans add an additional feat.  The commoner class has an additional feat, as well.

All characters will receive another feat at second level, followed by one feat per two levels beyond that (per Pathfinder rules).  Thus, you will have at least one feat at first level, another at second level, and then at least one feat at 4th level, 6th level, 8th level, etc.


Additional non-standard available feats are:

Cooperative
Required: 1 rank in any Craft skill, any item
Effect: +2 bonus on Craft or Spellcraft checks while working creation feat together
Additionally, you may swap places with an ally if they are adjacent (within 5 feet) of you.

Enforcer/Counting Coup
Required: Intimidate 1 rank
Effect: Demoralize opponent as free action when you inflict nonlethal damage

Deeper Shaman
Required: Caster level 1st
Effect: Add one spell to list of spells known

Heroic:
Required:  Commoner class
Effect:  You may transition into a PC class as you level from 2 to 3.  All others must maintain an NPC class until 4th level.

Ironguts
Required: Con 13
Effect:  +2 on saves against nausea, sickening, and ingested poisons

Lucky
Required: Human
Effect:  You may roll a saving throw for one ally, once per day.  This is in place of, rather than in addition to, your ally's saving throw.

Shared Insight
Required:  Wisdom 13
Effect:  You grant all allies a +2 bonus on Perception checks.

Shaman's Blood
Required:  Cha 12
Effect:  Cast a 0-level spell 2 times per day as a spell-like ability

Tribal Etiquette
Required:  Charisma 13
Effect:  Grant friendly creatures a +2 bonus on Diplomacy checks

Trickster
Required: --
Effect:  +4 bonus on Bluff checks to lie or conceal motives

Well-Prepared
Required: --
Effect: Retrieve a specific mundane item from your person as a free action
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:43, Sat 23 July 2016.

The Commoner class, and only the Commoner class, has the following feature:

The character choosing the Commoner class receives one (1) Hero Point at first level.  He or she receives one additional hero point at every subsequent level of Commoner class taken, and may earn additional hero points predicated on play during the game--e.g. achieving significant goals, performing exceptionally well, etc.

Hero points may be used as follows.  Once used, they are no longer available during game play.

Act Out of Turn: You can spend a hero point to take your turn immediately. Treat this as a readied action, moving your initiative to just before the currently acting creature. You may only take a move or a standard action on this turn.

Bonus: If used before a roll is made, a hero point grants you a +8 luck bonus to any one d20 roll. If used after a roll is made, this bonus is reduced to +4. You can use a hero point to grant this bonus to another character, as long as you are in the same location and your character can reasonably affect the outcome of the roll (such as distracting a monster, shouting words of encouragement, or otherwise aiding another with the check). Hero points spent to aid another character grant only half the listed bonus (+4 before the roll, +2 after the roll).

Extra Action: You can spend a hero point on your turn to gain an additional standard or move action this turn.

Inspiration: If you feel stuck at one point in the adventure, you can spend a hero point and petition the GM for a hint about what to do next. If the GM feels that there is no information to be gained, the hero point is not spent.

Recall: You can spend a hero point to recall a spell you have already cast or to gain another use of a special ability that is otherwise limited. This should only be used on spells and abilities possessed by your character that recharge on a daily basis.

Reroll: You may spend a hero point to reroll any one d20 roll you just made. You must take the results of the second roll, even if it is worse.

Cheat Death: A character can spend 2 hero points to cheat death. How this plays out is up to the GM, but generally the character is left alive, with negative hit points but stable. For example, a character is about to be slain by a critical hit from an arrow. If the character spends 2 hero points, the GM decides that the arrow pierced the character’s holy symbol, reducing the damage enough to prevent him from being killed, and that he made his stabilization roll at the end of his turn. Cheating death is the only way for a character to spend more than 1 hero point in a turn. The character can spend hero points in this way to prevent the death of a familiar, animal companion, eidolon, or special mount, but not another character or NPC.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:43, Sat 23 July 2016.

I'm posting a set of informational previews for the campaign, if it helps with establishing a feel for the context and choices you make at first level.  I'm doing this in a pretty dry, straightforward fashion.

1.  Yours is essentially an inland tribe, with little or no access to the coast.  The caribou herds you follow are the only thing that can sustain you from year to year. Musk-oxen are also an important resource.  Hunting smaller game and gathering during the short growing season is likewise important, but cannot sustain your tribe during the long, cold months.  There are also large megafaunal species such as mastodon and wooly rhinoceros, but these are creatures not often encountered by your tribe and viewed as sources of fear rather than resources.  This is especially true of the megafaunal predators...

2.  The majority of the year is spent in treeless tundra, although some access to tiaga forests occurs when tribal members perform a wood-gathering expedition.  This is considered a necessary but dangerous task.

3.  Your tribe is considered weak and worse...considered to be cursed.  Your access to resources is quite constrained as a result.  Other tribes have more resources and, it is rumored, better tools, weapons, armor, and wealth.

4.  Malevolent ghosts or spirits are thought to follow the migratory paths of your tribe.  It certainly appears that many seasons have brought misfortune during the course of your lives.

More later...
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:20, Tue 19 Nov 2013.

5.  Your tribe has suffered from decreased trade with the other clans, due to the widely held perception that your tribe walks under an evil shadow.  Although you cannot access (and are unaware of the existence of) the coast, in the past trade items such as sealskins, whale oils, and walrus ivory had come into your tribe through trade.  This has largely stopped.

6.  During your lives, the winters have become increasingly difficult to survive due to a scarcity of fuel for warmth.  Animal dung and wood are still available, but the latter involves a dangerous foray into taiga forests.  The short summers still hold the key for obtaining as many resources as possible for survival.

Tribal Context:

Many of the more powerful tribes in Tukisinangitok are similar to the Dorset culture of the paleo-Eskimo prehistory of our world.  These tribes are collectively known as the Vesikansa to your tribe.  These tribes are nomadic, but are concentrated near the coastlines of Tukisinangitok--and the fishing and access to sea mammals that these areas represent.

Some of the interior tribes are also related to the coastal Vesikansa.  Some of the other interior tribes are derived from a different ethnic branch, similar to the Saami people of the Finno-Ugric branches.  These tribes are loosely termed Tyomiehet by your people.  There are distinct differences in physical appearance between the Vesikansa and Tyomiehet.

Your own tribe is primarily Tyomiehet, with some Vesikansa blood from past generations.  As a tribe, yours is a more motley assemblage of bloodlines...another reason underlying your dark and cursed reputation.

More later...

I'm working on a map of the region...it's slow going, but I should have something to link to within a few days...

I have a character concept, Kev, and I'd like to chat with you about it at some point. Something shamanic, etc. Where did you post the available classes again?

I'm digging the milieu. Do you have any direct inspirations from fiction I can read for flavor? Robert E. Howard, maybe?

Tukisinangitok Mythologies, Spirit Worlds, and Cultural Identity

Overworld and Underworld:  Your tribe holds to a mix of the coastal and more powerful Vesikansa peoples, and your own Tyomiehet tribal origins and affiliations.  The dead and living generally are considered to consist of three components—the life force, the personal soul, and the name soul.  The life force is the animating dynamic that distinguishes the dead from the living, whereas the personal soul is the thing that provides the individual with his or her unique set of characteristics.  The name soul is the energy associated with an individual’s True Name, and can be used to both enhance that individual if utilized correctly, or to command or compel that individual if the name soul energy can be harnessed by another.

The Overworld is the black spaces of the stars, revealed when the blue bone lid of the daytime sky is removed.  The Overworld is a place of freezing cold, famine, and unspeakable horrors.  The Aurora Borealis is the result of souls in the Overworld being devoured by its monstrous inhabitants—the flaring of soul-destroying energy and agonies kindling the eerie sky-lights.

The Underworld is a place of far more warmth and food availability, generally with better tools and attendant comforts than the mortal world.  Few dead souls are able to attain the Underworld, however, as most are sent back to the Middleworld.  Although the life force is considered lost after death and departs to the east, the personal and name souls may be and are believed to be often reborn into the Middleworld.

However, there is a host of spirit forces called Tuurngait that are unconnected with physical frames—these may be malevolent spirits of destroyed or altered places or things, the fractured personal souls of murdered or cursed individuals, or the corrupted unborn.  Then, too, there are Tuurngait that are benevolent and may be invoked for healing or good fortune.  The tribal shaman—known by the Tyomiehet as noaidi, and the Vesikansa as angakkuq—may harness the powers of the Tuurngait if they possess enough power.

Most of the rest of the Middleworld is full of spirits of animals, places, and natural phenomena, based on your tribal beliefs.

In reply to Perrato Viatomagne (msg # 10):

Hey Tara,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.  I don't have anything specific for underlying reading material to get into the game flavor, but the myth cycles for the Lapland indigenous peoples will inform our campaign to a certain degree, along with myth cycles and creation stories from other Arctic peoples.

There is also going to be a Lovecraftian feel to the world as we develop our story...primarily arising out of the shadowy tales handed down, tribal generation to tribal generation, about the Feeders in the South and the dim stories of remnant humanity fleeing to the north.

If I can find some sort of fiction that pertains to this, I'll definitely let you know.  Frankly, I've been putting this together in my head for some time now, and am excited to get things moving...albeit at a pace that I can maintain wrt developing maps, plot structure, and running a fun (but not too hectic) campaign.

KOB

Difficulties, logistic and otherwise, abound for your small tribe.

The Rivermen are a complex of Tyomiehet tribes that reside near and guard the Eatnu (literally "large river)"...the big, meandering river that descends from the glaciers into the tundra.  The Rivermen, known as the Johka Nub'be to your tribe (the Others of the River), will kill to keep their fish and game to themselves.  Stories tell of the fate of their victims:  falling to either cannibalism or some ritual flensing of flesh from bone.  Fortunately, the Eatnu is long and winding through the tundra, and the Johka Nub'be cannot be present at all reaches of the river.

To the north and surrounding an active volcano, upland and away from the Eatnu, lie the remnant taiga forests of the Upeametska--presumably a pocket of habitat sustained in part by geothermal forces in the bitter cold of the north.  When accessible during the short, short months of icemelt, these forests hold the old-fire trees...critical to your people for fuel and warmth.  The Upeametska is rife, however, with Forest Ghosts, wood goblins, and less nameable terrors.

Between the Eatnu and the Upeametska, your tribe subsists on the roaming caribou herds, small game, the hurried incursions to the Eatnu for fish during the spawning runs, and the sparse gathering of what edible vegetation is available.

Yours is a hungry life.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:35, Sat 16 July 2016.

A few words about "treasure" in this milieu.  Much of what your characters will value (and which will allow you experience points) are actually resources--and some pretty basic resources at that.  Food is a big one, especially animal-derived proteins, but high-value seasonal vegetation is also at a premium...stuff like berries, certain tubers, etc.

Bone, wood, and certain kinds of stone are also of value, and will provide your tribe with the resources to construct various tools and weapons.  As the campaign moves on, there will be additional and potentially advanced (relatively speaking) resources such as worked metal items, simple magics, and so on.

I'm working on a system, admittedly influenced by some of those European resource game structures, that will allow for a conversion of resource acquisition to experience points and possibly to some minor bonus skills.  I'm still working through that, but I have a good idea as to how I'd like to see it play out.

Your first adventure will consist of an attempt to obtain some of the old-fire wood in the Upeametska...check Skein 1 in the Skeins thread for a little background.  I will provide additional info as we move forward.

Hey all (Tara in particular),

Revisiting the question of existing literature that may inform this campaign, I still don't have any particularly relevant answers.  However, I do want to offer something up and perhaps add a couple of my own thoughts regarding fun reading (at least reading that I regarded and still regard as fun).

Something offered up:  Although the technical level of weapons, tools, etc. is really primitive for this campaign, the entire culture of your tribe (Tyomiehet derived) and the Vesikansa is based on oral traditions.  As such, the level of sophistication for discourse, discussion, and verbal interactions is pretty high.  Think along the lines of Jack Vance's Cugel the Clever/Dying Earth series, Clark Ashton Smith's work, some of Michael Shea's stuff (admittedly Vance-influenced), or some of Gene Wolfe's output.

Also, there will be a strong Lovecraftian element in the campaign as characters advance.  There seems to be something of a renaissance of Lovecraftian-influenced stories and literature in the past 10-20 years, so have at it.  I've read a number of collections of this work...some stories are good, some are execrable, but the majority seem to be OK for getting a sense of that troubling universe.  And of course, you can't beat the man HPL himself, racist warts and all.

KOB

In reply to DM (msg # 15):

Just got back from Kansas a few days ago...visiting with Bret, Tara, Scott (very briefly), and my family.  I plan on being back in Kansas in a few weeks for my neice's 18th birthday and for Christmas.  I'd like to run another adventure with Bret and Scott...possibly with Tara if we can fly her out for a few days.  I'd still like to keep with the Tukisinanitok campaign if possible.  I will be doing some work over the next few weeks to have, hopefully, a tabletop gaming session for a few hours.

Keep in touch if you can.

KOB