Basic Information
Nestled somewhere in the mountains of Tibet, lies the valley of Shangri-La; a peaceful valley of serene harmony. It's a happy land, isolated from the rest of civilization, whose inhabitants are seemingly immortal.
The place was created by author James Hilton in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon. It tells the story of a group of travelers whose airplane goes down in the Himalayas and who find refuge in the lamasary of Shangri-La. Hilton based his story on the mystic city of Shambhala from Tibetian Buddhist lore. It is believed that he modeled his tibetian utopia after the Hunza valley in northern Pakistan, which Hilton visited shortly before writing the book.
The novel became very popular in the 1930s and Franklin Delano Roosevelt named the presidential retreat, now called Camp David, "Shangri-La" after it.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- Adventure seed: Oasis in the Ice
- The PC's have heard legends of a land of immortality up in the mountains and mount a quest to find it.
- Or perhaps they arrive there by accident, as the characters in Lost Horizon did.
- Do they want to stay there, or escape?
- Perhaps they need to protect the valley from unscrupulous NPCs who want to exploit it.
- Hey, we're talking about PC's here. They probably want to exploit the valley themselves!
