Approximate time to read: 4 minutes.
Building Yndaros with Factions, Ruins, and Fire
The Symbaroum RPG thrives on the tension between the old and the new, the wild and the civilised, the known and the unknowable. But what if you could push back even further—before the ambivalence of the Ambrian expansion, before Queen Korinthia’s rise to power—to the moment of first conquest, when the ruins of Kadizar, the jewel of the Jezora clan, were still slick with blood, ash and memory?
That’s where Gila RPG’s Loot—a Lumen-powered RPG about treasure, faction favour, and home base expansion—can shine in an unexpected way. Originally written for looter-shooter vibes and high-octane dungeon-crawling, Loot offers a fast-paced, faction-fueled framework that perfectly supports a grounded, ambitious Symbaroum game. Not just as a one-shot diversion, but as a campaign engine for world-building historical play.
Setting the Stage: Year Zero in Alberetor and Kadizar
Let’s place the campaign seven years before Queen Korinthia’s arrival, in what Symbaroum lore would describe as Year Zero. The Jezora are dead—slaughtered or scattered by the Ambrian military. The ruins of Kadizar are haunted by more than ghosts: they’re full of old Symbarian structures, forgotten catacombs, impossible relics, and the remnants of a proud barbarian culture that once called the cliffs above the River Doudram home.
And here, amid the shattered bones of conquest, the Ambrian settlers begin their work. Not just soldiers, but camp followers, merchants, mystics, adventurers, and opportunists. The city must be rebuilt. Tamed. Claimed. Kadizar and the ruins of Lindaros must become the New City—and, eventually, Yndaros.
This is where the Loot framework finds fertile ground.
Loot in Symbaroum: Factions, Influence, and Dangerous Expeditions
In Loot, characters delve into dangerous territory to retrieve treasure—literal or symbolic—that increases their standing with factions and funds their home base. That maps perfectly onto exploration into the ancient ruins of Kadizar and beyond, and even into early incursions into Davokar, as brave (or reckless) settlers push north.
Here’s how the core components of Loot can be reinterpreted through a Symbaroum lens:
Factions as Power Blocs in Early Ambria
Use or adapt Symbaroum’s iconic factions as the competing groups vying for dominance in the fledgling New City. Each expedition into Kadizar’s depths or the surrounding wilds might earn their favour—or spark their ire.
- The Church of Prios – Keen to establish the correct moral and spiritual order amid the rubble, but wary of ancient magicks.
- The Ordo Magica – Eager to claim every artefact of the Symbarian past, regardless of risk.
- The Templars / The Queen’s Army – Military remnants with strict command structures and a watchful eye on “looters.”
- Local Mercantile Guilds – Already setting up infrastructure, keen to fund expeditions for a cut of what’s found.
- Survivors of the Jezora / Barbarian Resistance – Still active in the wilderness, presenting both a threat and a tragic reminder of the cost of conquest.
- The Iron Pact – Perhaps already active, shadowy and silent, watching the return of civilisation into places better left buried. The faction works through shadowy intermediaries.
Players can build influence with one or more groups, changing their relationships and gaining unique loot to pay for services, equipment, or political power.
Home Base as the New City
The ruined heart of Lindaros and Kadizar becomes the players’ home base, where loot and influence are spent to improve defences, expand infrastructure, or gain new services: alchemists, armouries, mess halls, reliquary vaults, and black markets. Mechanically, these offer special effects, perks, expanded holdings, or even unlock new exploration sites.
As the game progresses, New City transforms stone by stone, becoming recognisable as the Yndaros players might know from the later setting. But this version is theirs—a history they helped shape.
Running the Campaign: Worldbuilding Through Play
Where Microscope allows players to define the broad strokes of a setting’s history, Loot-for-Symbaroum offers a chance to play through defining events in a shorter timeline, making the developing history of Ambria tactile and personal.
A GM could:
- Seed each expedition with remnants of past eras—Symbarian mosaics, traps, horrors, or mechanisms—and hint at wider truths about the fall of the empire, the unrest of the Iron Pact, or the impact of the Jezora massacre.
- Tie loot to lore: What happens when the players find an artefact that calls into question the Church’s version of history? Or, if they unlock access to expanded territories that provide both threat and potential bounty.
- Push faction agendas: Every recovered item has more than a price—it has political weight. Who you give it to will shape who holds power in the city-to-be and influence the stage setting when Queen Korinthia finally arrives as Ambria’s commander in chief, shining light of future potential.
- Track city evolution: Use a physical or digital map (Core Rulebook, p 59, or The Darkest Star, pp 18-19) to track expansion, although you might want to start afresh with something less structured, as these maps present the situation more than two decades later. Let the players choose what districts rise—will the city’s foundations be mystical, militaristic, or mercantile?
This campaign structure encourages both dungeon crawl exploration and social gameplay, which are tied together by the evolving power struggles of a city in flux.
Conclusion: Making Symbaroum Your Own
In adapting Loot to Symbaroum, you invite your players to become the architects of history, not just scavengers of it. You provide an organic, emergent way to explore the power structures, beliefs, and myths of Ambria—before they were set in stone.
You don’t need to contradict the canon. You just need to play out the part that history books don’t write down. The arguments in smoky tents. The backroom favours. The blood and glory of every fallen temple stairwell.
Before there was Yndaros, there was your New City.
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