Daztur
Hero
Let’s Make a Hexcrawl Setting
Tour of the Shrouded Lands
You’ve heard of the incredible firebirds, but this is the first one you’ve ever seen. It shimmers like the hearth in your home, like the hair of a beautiful woman, like the sun itself, and the sky and the water and the distant mountains seem to brighten in its presence.
A flying viper latches on to its head and tries to swallow it whole. The two plummet to the ground, where an ibis pecks at them.
There is a weird and sometimes funny melancholy to the Shrouded Lands that lie near the edge of the world. The gods – for all the praise of priests – are strange and inhuman. The animals – such as the mongrel dogs that birthed in whole packs like ants – are twisted reflections of what you might expect to find. The people – and note, I do not say ‘the humans’ … well, one quivers in a lonely hut, one sits motionless prophesying for her chimerical goddess and one fuses the heads of those he kills to his body, making a screaming, arguing, genius mess.
Let me be your guide to the Shrouded Lands. We shall start at the Pool of the Firebirds. To the west, the endless Ocean of Bitter Regrets. Winging east over the Draugmere Peaks, passing the relentless Grey Mountains to the north, we come to the Kingswood. Jealously guarded by the elves, it is death to walk among its trees by day but humans have cut a path beneath it – the Welt Road.
The Welt Road surfaces at the Lands of the Night Cattle, where they graze their cattle under the moon so as to keep their hides pure white and untouched by sun. The Welt Road continues north to Titan’s Skull, the great fastness of the dwarves. If we continue our passage east, we pass through the Withered Moors and come to the World’s Edge: a great cliff which stretches north and south for many miles above the jungles that lie far below.
We return now to the Lands of the Night Cattle and take the Welt Road back, this time heading south along the White Road to the City of Shuttered Windows. Its walls stand tall and unmoving, but the city itself is sinking into the ground. The Shuttered City is on the shore of the Keening Sea, and as we head south-east we come to the gnoll-ridden Burning Lands. Of these lands we will say little, except that beyond them still are the Twelve Nations, or what remains of them.
These are the great sites of the Shrouded Lands – unless you have others that you wish to tell me of?
What is the Shrouded Lands?
The Shrouded Lands is a collaborative fantasy RPG setting. It is a map of a world for use with D&D or other roleplaying games. 'Collaborative' means that YOU can contribute to it. The Shrouded Lands is awesome because contributors are required to connect their ideas to something that someone else has written about previously. This encourages people to riff off each other, producing emergent content that nobody could really see coming. As a bonus, it also ensures that the setting is tightly woven together rather than composed of discrete elements.
OK, I want to contribute. What should I do?
There's only a few rules to govern what you can and can't add to the Shrouded Lands. First and most importantly, you need to make at least one connection to a previous post by another poster. Also, you should try to make a list of 'hooks' at the end of your post for other people to expand upon. Usually a hook is a question about something in your post, which someone else can answer. Hooks are great because if you can't think of anything to write about something, then you can just let someone else do it for you.
The other rules are just organisational stuff:
-Don't write up any stats or anything else that's system-specific. For now, we want the Shrouded Lands to be equally usable for any D&D system.
-Don't place any locations outside the map. The map is plenty big enough already! (You can make reference to other places; but assume that they aren't accessible to the PCs.)
-Tie your entry to a hex on the map. This can be an uncharted hex, or one that's already been described, in which case you should consider how your entry relates to whatever is already there.
-Each hex is 6 miles across.
-All posts are to be made under the Creative Commons license (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (Unported), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 )
The easiest way to contribute is just to read some of the entries, pick one of the hook-questions and start answering it. The alternative method is to start with an idea and then try to fit it into the Shrouded Lands, which also works well.
Alright, I'm going to add something - whoa, this thing is long!
Yeah. We've written a lot about the Shrouded Lands already - well over 50,000 words. This is pretty daunting to a newcomer. However, you should know that you don't have to read every last word before you're 'allowed' to contribute. In fact, you only really need to read one entry and riff off that. If you're worried that you're going to write something that's 'wrong' or 'not canon', don't sweat it. A lot of the coolest bits of the Shrouded Lands so far have come out of trying to reconcile some sort of continuity problem. For example, a man who had accidentally been given two different first names became a man who actually shapeshifts into another man entirely.
If you are still uncertain about how your contribution fits into the Lands, then below are a series of short 'briefings' to explain the most important regions, races and characters in the setting. For a more comprehensive survey of different creatures and races, see the Appendices.
Regions
The Kingswood: A large forest inhabited by mysterious and hostile elves. An elven holt lies at the centre. Dark fairytale flavor.
The City of Shuttered Windows: Largest city in the Lands, ancient and labyrinthine. Very slowly sinking into the ground. Strongly religious. Feels like Vornheim crossed with Venice. (Also called 'Shuttered' or 'The Shuttered City'.)
The Duchy of Thring: Large Arthurian nation with knights, counts and castles. Worships the Green Lady. Bizarre laws.
The World's Edge and Beyond: Vast cliffs sinking down to an uninhabited (?) temperate basin. Many strange monsters.
Lands of the Night Cattle: The Night Men and their cattle only come out at night. Their albino cattle are used in rituals by most religions in the Shrouded Lands.
The Freeholds: Lawless region dotted with independent keeps and towns. Something of a wild west vibe.
The Welt Road: Trade route that passes through a long tunnel under the Kingswood, avoiding the dangerous elves. Connects the Lands of th Night Cattle to the Freeholds.
The Grey Mountains: Northern mountain range inhabited by dwarves and orcs.
The Bitter Coast: Western sea frequented by pirates and Pirate Kings - storm giants who ride in flying cloud castles.
The Keening Sea: Large eastern sea with ships from Shuttered and Blind Midshotgatepool.
The Barrier Range: Mountains between Thring and the Shuttered City. Inhabited by Witch Clans - inbred tribesmen with the hereditary power to cast one particular spell at-will.
Blind Midshotgatepool: Five towns that grew together into a bureaucratic nightmare of a city. Founded by Thringmen but now subjugated by the City of Shuttered Windows.
Bergolast: Ruined city which once held the Tarrasque captive, but was later destroyed. Those who drank the blood of the Tarrasque became trolls or immortals.
The Burning Lands: Hot deserts, sometimes literally on fire. Inhabited by dwarves, painted elephants and gnolls.
The City of Smoke: Gnollish city in the far southeast. Ruled by the Great Mother, matriarch who murdered and devoured her predecessors.
The Hills of Gore: Region ruled by the Lords Sanguine, former butchers who overthrew their kings and became immortal through Tarrasque blood. Mostly undescribed.
The Cornfields: Fields inhabited by tooth-stealing corn farmers. Mostly undescribed.
The Devil's Fingers: Mountains (?) with a ruined city and a tribe of cave-dwelling gnomes. Mostly undescribed.
Races
(where unspecified, assume similarity to D&D norms)
Gnolls: Gnolls are relatively civilised. A gnoll could be a PC. They have their own city, a matriarchal society, a college for bards. Still pretty violent and barbaric though. They dwell primarily in the Burning Lands.
Orcs: Also somewhat civilised, though still warlike. An orc could be a PC. They are builders as well as raiders, and dwell mostly in the north.
Goblins: Have a spiritual connection to oak trees.
Trolls: Were originally humans who drank the blood of the Tarrasque.
Ettins: Have only recently come into the world (as far as we know). Are named after Alvise Etienne, the first Ettin, created by the wizard Severard.
Elves: Are pre-Tolkien - fey, mysterious and capricious. An Elf could probably not be a PC. They rarely leave the Kingswood, and deal harshly with those who enter it.
Gnomes: (Sometimes) live inside the walls of giants' castles.
Gods and Godesses
Alberon: God of the City of Shuttered Windows. Whether he has any other portfolio beside this city is unclear. Spurned the godesses She Who Waits and the Green Lady, slew the goddess Tiamat, fought a war with the goddess Chimalia. (He doesn't get on well with goddesses, apparently.) Cults: The Temple Indivisible and the Temple Invisible.
She Who Waits: A nameless underworld goddess spurned by Alberon.Possibly the cause of the Shuttered City sinking into the ground. Tries each night to trap the sun-god, the King in Splendour, in her dark realm. Cult: The Whispering Sisterhood.
The King in Splendor: Dual-identity sun-god who rises each day as the Lion in Splendour and descends into the underworld at night to become the King in Splendor. Cult: The Lion Priests.
Tiamat: Dragon-goddess who was killed by the god Alberon. Still has a small cult. Is the mother and sister of Chimalia.
Chimalia: Goddess of chimerical (half-and-half) monsters, particularly minotaurs. Sister and daughter of Tiamat. Her symbol is a labyrinth.
Famous Figures
The Tarrasque: The Tarrasque used to be chained up in the city of Bergolast, where the citizens drank its blood to gain immortality. That turned them into trolls. Since then the Tarrasque has escaped. It doesn't ravage the land unless you make it angry. In Thring it is called the Questing Beast and they hunt it, but never manage to kill it.
Severard of the Seven Chins: Highly powerful wizard who was apparently something of a dick, though not outright evil. Is now presumed dead.
Trimoueil, Exiled Poet: Author of several well-known poems and plays. Where he is exiled from has not yet been described.
The Founders of Blind Midshotgatepool: Five heroes who founded the five towns that make up the city. One of these was Ban the Clever, founder of Banshot.
Up to date map: http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/1543/april11map.png (note the white bits in the NE quadrant indicate tentative borders of regions, not described hexes and the bits of coastline that go through blank hexes are also tentative)
Map with region labels: http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/439/shroudedlandswithhexes1.jpg (a bit out of date now)
Map with labels: http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/5796/shroudedlandshexes.jpg (a bit out of date now)
Map with labels and tentative borders: http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/1710/shroudedlandsborders.jpg (a bit out of date now)
Revised hex description archive:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6z-iUIH4P8aM1NDa0lRRDR2aWc/edit
Appendixes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RSDxh6tf8NPIVKxggHx0jYgHLJsV94sECIhs76R1Ovg/edit
Hex index: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6z-iUIH4P8aeU1WYWhqNktBSjA/edit
Credit: the introduction (the paragraphs above the line) was written by Sanglorian, one of the contributors to this project, and edited and added to a bit by me.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entry #1: The Pool of the Firebirds
Type: Hex Description (Hex 04.05)
High in the mountains, a series of hot springs feed into a steaming pool where the beautiful and elusive firebirds fly from their distant nesting grounds to splash and cavort. In a series of mist-shrouded waterfalls, the overflowing waters of the pool flow down to the valley floor far below.
As long as a firebird lives, its feathers give off a warm glow as of a bonfire just past its peak and a single caged bird can easily light an entire feasting hall throughout the night. Many of sought to brave the dangers of the mountains to capture a living firebird, but the cliffs below the Pool have proven steep and the perils many…
Hooks (I’ll include a lot for this first one):
-Who would be interested in buying a captured firebird? Who already owns at least one? Why?
-Who has succeeded and capturing a firebird?
-Can firebirds be used as a material component for any magic? Are they favored as sacrifices by any cult?
-Does the pool have any magical properties?
-Where do the firebirds nest?
-What is the origin of the firebirds?
-What dangers lurk in this hex?
-Why are there so many hot springs here?
Tour of the Shrouded Lands
You’ve heard of the incredible firebirds, but this is the first one you’ve ever seen. It shimmers like the hearth in your home, like the hair of a beautiful woman, like the sun itself, and the sky and the water and the distant mountains seem to brighten in its presence.
A flying viper latches on to its head and tries to swallow it whole. The two plummet to the ground, where an ibis pecks at them.
There is a weird and sometimes funny melancholy to the Shrouded Lands that lie near the edge of the world. The gods – for all the praise of priests – are strange and inhuman. The animals – such as the mongrel dogs that birthed in whole packs like ants – are twisted reflections of what you might expect to find. The people – and note, I do not say ‘the humans’ … well, one quivers in a lonely hut, one sits motionless prophesying for her chimerical goddess and one fuses the heads of those he kills to his body, making a screaming, arguing, genius mess.
Let me be your guide to the Shrouded Lands. We shall start at the Pool of the Firebirds. To the west, the endless Ocean of Bitter Regrets. Winging east over the Draugmere Peaks, passing the relentless Grey Mountains to the north, we come to the Kingswood. Jealously guarded by the elves, it is death to walk among its trees by day but humans have cut a path beneath it – the Welt Road.
The Welt Road surfaces at the Lands of the Night Cattle, where they graze their cattle under the moon so as to keep their hides pure white and untouched by sun. The Welt Road continues north to Titan’s Skull, the great fastness of the dwarves. If we continue our passage east, we pass through the Withered Moors and come to the World’s Edge: a great cliff which stretches north and south for many miles above the jungles that lie far below.
We return now to the Lands of the Night Cattle and take the Welt Road back, this time heading south along the White Road to the City of Shuttered Windows. Its walls stand tall and unmoving, but the city itself is sinking into the ground. The Shuttered City is on the shore of the Keening Sea, and as we head south-east we come to the gnoll-ridden Burning Lands. Of these lands we will say little, except that beyond them still are the Twelve Nations, or what remains of them.
These are the great sites of the Shrouded Lands – unless you have others that you wish to tell me of?
What is the Shrouded Lands?
The Shrouded Lands is a collaborative fantasy RPG setting. It is a map of a world for use with D&D or other roleplaying games. 'Collaborative' means that YOU can contribute to it. The Shrouded Lands is awesome because contributors are required to connect their ideas to something that someone else has written about previously. This encourages people to riff off each other, producing emergent content that nobody could really see coming. As a bonus, it also ensures that the setting is tightly woven together rather than composed of discrete elements.
OK, I want to contribute. What should I do?
There's only a few rules to govern what you can and can't add to the Shrouded Lands. First and most importantly, you need to make at least one connection to a previous post by another poster. Also, you should try to make a list of 'hooks' at the end of your post for other people to expand upon. Usually a hook is a question about something in your post, which someone else can answer. Hooks are great because if you can't think of anything to write about something, then you can just let someone else do it for you.
The other rules are just organisational stuff:
-Don't write up any stats or anything else that's system-specific. For now, we want the Shrouded Lands to be equally usable for any D&D system.
-Don't place any locations outside the map. The map is plenty big enough already! (You can make reference to other places; but assume that they aren't accessible to the PCs.)
-Tie your entry to a hex on the map. This can be an uncharted hex, or one that's already been described, in which case you should consider how your entry relates to whatever is already there.
-Each hex is 6 miles across.
-All posts are to be made under the Creative Commons license (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (Unported), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 )
The easiest way to contribute is just to read some of the entries, pick one of the hook-questions and start answering it. The alternative method is to start with an idea and then try to fit it into the Shrouded Lands, which also works well.
Alright, I'm going to add something - whoa, this thing is long!
Yeah. We've written a lot about the Shrouded Lands already - well over 50,000 words. This is pretty daunting to a newcomer. However, you should know that you don't have to read every last word before you're 'allowed' to contribute. In fact, you only really need to read one entry and riff off that. If you're worried that you're going to write something that's 'wrong' or 'not canon', don't sweat it. A lot of the coolest bits of the Shrouded Lands so far have come out of trying to reconcile some sort of continuity problem. For example, a man who had accidentally been given two different first names became a man who actually shapeshifts into another man entirely.
If you are still uncertain about how your contribution fits into the Lands, then below are a series of short 'briefings' to explain the most important regions, races and characters in the setting. For a more comprehensive survey of different creatures and races, see the Appendices.
Regions
The Kingswood: A large forest inhabited by mysterious and hostile elves. An elven holt lies at the centre. Dark fairytale flavor.
The City of Shuttered Windows: Largest city in the Lands, ancient and labyrinthine. Very slowly sinking into the ground. Strongly religious. Feels like Vornheim crossed with Venice. (Also called 'Shuttered' or 'The Shuttered City'.)
The Duchy of Thring: Large Arthurian nation with knights, counts and castles. Worships the Green Lady. Bizarre laws.
The World's Edge and Beyond: Vast cliffs sinking down to an uninhabited (?) temperate basin. Many strange monsters.
Lands of the Night Cattle: The Night Men and their cattle only come out at night. Their albino cattle are used in rituals by most religions in the Shrouded Lands.
The Freeholds: Lawless region dotted with independent keeps and towns. Something of a wild west vibe.
The Welt Road: Trade route that passes through a long tunnel under the Kingswood, avoiding the dangerous elves. Connects the Lands of th Night Cattle to the Freeholds.
The Grey Mountains: Northern mountain range inhabited by dwarves and orcs.
The Bitter Coast: Western sea frequented by pirates and Pirate Kings - storm giants who ride in flying cloud castles.
The Keening Sea: Large eastern sea with ships from Shuttered and Blind Midshotgatepool.
The Barrier Range: Mountains between Thring and the Shuttered City. Inhabited by Witch Clans - inbred tribesmen with the hereditary power to cast one particular spell at-will.
Blind Midshotgatepool: Five towns that grew together into a bureaucratic nightmare of a city. Founded by Thringmen but now subjugated by the City of Shuttered Windows.
Bergolast: Ruined city which once held the Tarrasque captive, but was later destroyed. Those who drank the blood of the Tarrasque became trolls or immortals.
The Burning Lands: Hot deserts, sometimes literally on fire. Inhabited by dwarves, painted elephants and gnolls.
The City of Smoke: Gnollish city in the far southeast. Ruled by the Great Mother, matriarch who murdered and devoured her predecessors.
The Hills of Gore: Region ruled by the Lords Sanguine, former butchers who overthrew their kings and became immortal through Tarrasque blood. Mostly undescribed.
The Cornfields: Fields inhabited by tooth-stealing corn farmers. Mostly undescribed.
The Devil's Fingers: Mountains (?) with a ruined city and a tribe of cave-dwelling gnomes. Mostly undescribed.
Races
(where unspecified, assume similarity to D&D norms)
Gnolls: Gnolls are relatively civilised. A gnoll could be a PC. They have their own city, a matriarchal society, a college for bards. Still pretty violent and barbaric though. They dwell primarily in the Burning Lands.
Orcs: Also somewhat civilised, though still warlike. An orc could be a PC. They are builders as well as raiders, and dwell mostly in the north.
Goblins: Have a spiritual connection to oak trees.
Trolls: Were originally humans who drank the blood of the Tarrasque.
Ettins: Have only recently come into the world (as far as we know). Are named after Alvise Etienne, the first Ettin, created by the wizard Severard.
Elves: Are pre-Tolkien - fey, mysterious and capricious. An Elf could probably not be a PC. They rarely leave the Kingswood, and deal harshly with those who enter it.
Gnomes: (Sometimes) live inside the walls of giants' castles.
Gods and Godesses
Alberon: God of the City of Shuttered Windows. Whether he has any other portfolio beside this city is unclear. Spurned the godesses She Who Waits and the Green Lady, slew the goddess Tiamat, fought a war with the goddess Chimalia. (He doesn't get on well with goddesses, apparently.) Cults: The Temple Indivisible and the Temple Invisible.
She Who Waits: A nameless underworld goddess spurned by Alberon.Possibly the cause of the Shuttered City sinking into the ground. Tries each night to trap the sun-god, the King in Splendour, in her dark realm. Cult: The Whispering Sisterhood.
The King in Splendor: Dual-identity sun-god who rises each day as the Lion in Splendour and descends into the underworld at night to become the King in Splendor. Cult: The Lion Priests.
Tiamat: Dragon-goddess who was killed by the god Alberon. Still has a small cult. Is the mother and sister of Chimalia.
Chimalia: Goddess of chimerical (half-and-half) monsters, particularly minotaurs. Sister and daughter of Tiamat. Her symbol is a labyrinth.
Famous Figures
The Tarrasque: The Tarrasque used to be chained up in the city of Bergolast, where the citizens drank its blood to gain immortality. That turned them into trolls. Since then the Tarrasque has escaped. It doesn't ravage the land unless you make it angry. In Thring it is called the Questing Beast and they hunt it, but never manage to kill it.
Severard of the Seven Chins: Highly powerful wizard who was apparently something of a dick, though not outright evil. Is now presumed dead.
Trimoueil, Exiled Poet: Author of several well-known poems and plays. Where he is exiled from has not yet been described.
The Founders of Blind Midshotgatepool: Five heroes who founded the five towns that make up the city. One of these was Ban the Clever, founder of Banshot.
Up to date map: http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/1543/april11map.png (note the white bits in the NE quadrant indicate tentative borders of regions, not described hexes and the bits of coastline that go through blank hexes are also tentative)
Map with region labels: http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/439/shroudedlandswithhexes1.jpg (a bit out of date now)
Map with labels: http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/5796/shroudedlandshexes.jpg (a bit out of date now)
Map with labels and tentative borders: http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/1710/shroudedlandsborders.jpg (a bit out of date now)
Revised hex description archive:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6z-iUIH4P8aM1NDa0lRRDR2aWc/edit
Appendixes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RSDxh6tf8NPIVKxggHx0jYgHLJsV94sECIhs76R1Ovg/edit
Hex index: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6z-iUIH4P8aeU1WYWhqNktBSjA/edit
Credit: the introduction (the paragraphs above the line) was written by Sanglorian, one of the contributors to this project, and edited and added to a bit by me.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entry #1: The Pool of the Firebirds
Type: Hex Description (Hex 04.05)
High in the mountains, a series of hot springs feed into a steaming pool where the beautiful and elusive firebirds fly from their distant nesting grounds to splash and cavort. In a series of mist-shrouded waterfalls, the overflowing waters of the pool flow down to the valley floor far below.
As long as a firebird lives, its feathers give off a warm glow as of a bonfire just past its peak and a single caged bird can easily light an entire feasting hall throughout the night. Many of sought to brave the dangers of the mountains to capture a living firebird, but the cliffs below the Pool have proven steep and the perils many…
Hooks (I’ll include a lot for this first one):
-Who would be interested in buying a captured firebird? Who already owns at least one? Why?
-Who has succeeded and capturing a firebird?
-Can firebirds be used as a material component for any magic? Are they favored as sacrifices by any cult?
-Does the pool have any magical properties?
-Where do the firebirds nest?
-What is the origin of the firebirds?
-What dangers lurk in this hex?
-Why are there so many hot springs here?
Last edited:
