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Kraching
FIVE DAYS ON FOOT, WESTWARDS
Wooden posts line the road. Carved with feline forms: snarling tigers, sulking tabbies. You feel them staring.+
In Kraching, woodworking is revered. The surrounding forests are full of haunted timber, longing to be carved into masks and figurines; they want to see the world.
In Kraching, cats are revered. Scions of the god Auw, they are welcomed as equal members of any household; they hunt game and lend magic.
Sometimes a carved wooden tiger vanishes, and returns as a tom. Sometimes a woman walks into the forest, and a tabby walks out again.
Kraching is an adventure setting inspired by forest-adjacent life, Mah Meri woodworking, and the place of cats in contemporary Malaysian culture. A rules-less, 44-page gazetteer filled with characters, rural drama, and detailed black-and-white art. A sample of the mythic cycle of a regional god. Random encounter and magic-cat generators.
Part of A Thousand Thousand Islands, an RPG zine series inspired by the material cultures, lived stories, and mythistories of Southeast Asia.
Wooden posts line the road. Carved with feline forms: snarling tigers, sulking tabbies. You feel them staring.+
In Kraching, woodworking is revered. The surrounding forests are full of haunted timber, longing to be carved into masks and figurines; they want to see the world.
In Kraching, cats are revered. Scions of the god Auw, they are welcomed as equal members of any household; they hunt game and lend magic.
Sometimes a carved wooden tiger vanishes, and returns as a tom. Sometimes a woman walks into the forest, and a tabby walks out again.
Kraching is an adventure setting inspired by forest-adjacent life, Mah Meri woodworking, and the place of cats in contemporary Malaysian culture. A rules-less, 44-page gazetteer filled with characters, rural drama, and detailed black-and-white art. A sample of the mythic cycle of a regional god. Random encounter and magic-cat generators.
Part of A Thousand Thousand Islands, an RPG zine series inspired by the material cultures, lived stories, and mythistories of Southeast Asia.
40 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2018
3 people want to read
About the author
Zedeck Siew
35 books28 followersZedeck Siew is a writer based in Port Dickson. He has been a journalist, essayist, editor, and game designer. He writes short fiction in English and translates from Malay. Creatures of Near Kingdoms is his first book. zedecksiew.tumblr.com
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December 11, 2022The second entry in the A THOUSAND THOUSAND ISLANDS project and again, a place that doesn't seem like an island. Ever since I heard about this project, I've been so jealous of the name and premise, it's almost a relief to see that the creators are just doing what they want to do.
As with the first book, this is a 44-page (but really 37), rules-less gazetteer of a place inspired by Southeast Asian lives, with art and writing intertwined. That's something I maybe didn't speak to enough in the first issue, but just about every page has a drawing that speaks directly to the text, either illustrating or expanding on what's being said. That definitely lends the text some weight even when it's somewhat sparse.
Take, for example, the first two pages, which mirror the first two pages of the first book, and which I like a lot more now that I see it as a pattern: we get a landscape view of what travel and entrance to this place looks like, along with a two-ish line description of what you see. The text here simply notes
Which is, essentially, the logline for this part of the world: Kraching is a place of woodworking and of cats. But the picture we get is of this well-kept path into this valley, which both circumscribes this place (we're really mostly going to be talking about this one town in this valley) and also expands it: who keeps the path so well?
Also similar to the first zine, this one starts with the mythic history of this place and how that history lives on: people here believe in a cat-person god, and the story they tell is of how this woodcarver protected the forest from a neighbor king by carving cats that became real.
OK, for comparison, a page-by-page:
1-2: traveling to Kraching
3-4: the mythic history of Kraching
5-8: Kraching village, where carved cats still become real (7-8 is a full-page spread of a few houses, showing their carved cat sculptures)
9-10: someone to meet (a trader who is a buffalo woman) and an adventure she'll hire PCs for (her magical accountant spirit has gone missing)
11-14: craft goods of Kraching (just as the first book had forest goods, so each type of good here tends towards the weird and magical -- stuff that might tell a story, like the particular type of wood that foreign temples like to have their idols carved out of)
15-16: someone to meet, with another mission: the woodworker who's wife was cursed/blessed with infertility by a witch
17-20 : more people to meet here (note: book 1 had more places to cover, so this book seems more NPC heavy)
21-22: the politics of the land, along with mythic story about the same god as the intro, telling us how we got to this point
23: the leader's palace
24: the strange path behind the leader's palace
25: the leader
26: the councilor with a mission (which from a structural POV, confuses me: why give a leader and then a councilor if there's just one role (mission-giver)?)
27-28: random cat generator (similar to random crocodile generator in book 1)
29-30: random encounter generator (ditto)
31-32: the alternate power structure -- a house of assassins and spies -- and the mythic history that got us here
33-36: more about that assassins group -- where they live, where the boss lives, what kind of weird mission the boss gives you
37: some line drawings of typical dress and weaponry (maybe part of the above section?)
I do have some questions and critiques, but overall, seeing them do this a second time makes it more clear what they were doing the first time. (I am hoping that they keep this pattern up for another two or so issues and then throw a curveball, but we'll see.) And I really like this place and it makes me wonder: how little can creators give to readers while still giving them enough?
As with the first book, this is a 44-page (but really 37), rules-less gazetteer of a place inspired by Southeast Asian lives, with art and writing intertwined. That's something I maybe didn't speak to enough in the first issue, but just about every page has a drawing that speaks directly to the text, either illustrating or expanding on what's being said. That definitely lends the text some weight even when it's somewhat sparse.
Take, for example, the first two pages, which mirror the first two pages of the first book, and which I like a lot more now that I see it as a pattern: we get a landscape view of what travel and entrance to this place looks like, along with a two-ish line description of what you see. The text here simply notes
Wooden posts line the road. Carved with feline forms: snarling tigers, sulking tabbies. You feel them staring.
Which is, essentially, the logline for this part of the world: Kraching is a place of woodworking and of cats. But the picture we get is of this well-kept path into this valley, which both circumscribes this place (we're really mostly going to be talking about this one town in this valley) and also expands it: who keeps the path so well?
Also similar to the first zine, this one starts with the mythic history of this place and how that history lives on: people here believe in a cat-person god, and the story they tell is of how this woodcarver protected the forest from a neighbor king by carving cats that became real.
OK, for comparison, a page-by-page:
1-2: traveling to Kraching
3-4: the mythic history of Kraching
5-8: Kraching village, where carved cats still become real (7-8 is a full-page spread of a few houses, showing their carved cat sculptures)
9-10: someone to meet (a trader who is a buffalo woman) and an adventure she'll hire PCs for (her magical accountant spirit has gone missing)
11-14: craft goods of Kraching (just as the first book had forest goods, so each type of good here tends towards the weird and magical -- stuff that might tell a story, like the particular type of wood that foreign temples like to have their idols carved out of)
15-16: someone to meet, with another mission: the woodworker who's wife was cursed/blessed with infertility by a witch
17-20 : more people to meet here (note: book 1 had more places to cover, so this book seems more NPC heavy)
21-22: the politics of the land, along with mythic story about the same god as the intro, telling us how we got to this point
23: the leader's palace
24: the strange path behind the leader's palace
25: the leader
26: the councilor with a mission (which from a structural POV, confuses me: why give a leader and then a councilor if there's just one role (mission-giver)?)
27-28: random cat generator (similar to random crocodile generator in book 1)
29-30: random encounter generator (ditto)
31-32: the alternate power structure -- a house of assassins and spies -- and the mythic history that got us here
33-36: more about that assassins group -- where they live, where the boss lives, what kind of weird mission the boss gives you
37: some line drawings of typical dress and weaponry (maybe part of the above section?)
I do have some questions and critiques, but overall, seeing them do this a second time makes it more clear what they were doing the first time. (I am hoping that they keep this pattern up for another two or so issues and then throw a curveball, but we'll see.) And I really like this place and it makes me wonder: how little can creators give to readers while still giving them enough?
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