Let’s Make a Hexcrawl Setting

[Daztur]

Nellisir and Sanglorian: I'm not as familiar as I should be with different licenses, but any sort of copyleft license is fine by me. If chutup agrees I'll go and spam all of the past contributors to get them to sign off on it. As for blogs, I love Monsters and Manuals insanely and I've been reading through noism's ginormous PDF version of his 2ed MM read through thread and am copy and pasting bits of it into my steadily growing "stuff to rip off for the shrouded lands sometime or other" file. As for Land of Nod, Alard of Oldstones is inspired by a snippet from his blog but I haven't used it for anything aside from that. I bought one of the Land of Nod PDFs and some others are free, so I'll mine them for inspiration once I get a chance. Really good stuff there.

Note: this one draws inspiration from this: [D&Dish] The city built around the tarrasque. discussion thread.

The Doom That Was in Bergolast
Hex 38.28

For long centuries a great city of Bergolast stood in what is now the Burning Lands, but Bergolast stands no more. The Gates of the Nine Directions have been torn down, the glazed bricks of a thousand colors crushed to dust, only jackals and fouler things walk on its onyx streets and the Tarrasque has been freed.

It was as had been foretold by Jarmond of the Knife, a priest of Alberon who went to Bergolast to preach of the glory of his god. The Bergolasti laughed and told him that they had no need for any but the Tarrasque that lay imprisoned at the heart of their city. Did not its ever-flowing blood feed them, did the flesh of its liver grant them strength each day and did not the adamantine chains that bound it protect them from its howling wrath? Before being flung down the Tarrasque’s gullet, Jarmond of the Knife pronounced doom upon the city and so it came to pass that following the death of Tiamat, the Shrouded Lands shook, the Keening Sea raged against its shores (51.12) and the Tarrasque tore free from its bonds.

The wounds of centuries healed in moments and it gleefully ravaged the great city and pursued its people from the World’s Edge to the Keening Sea to the Sartanger Falls before stalking away into the west where it has been found by the Lord Sanguine.

The men of the City and the dwarves of the north came to Bergolast to loot its treasures and claim the shattered links of adamantium that had bound it. Strangely, little gold and only a few links of the adamantine chains were ever claimed and many (51.29) claim that much of the wealth of Bergolast remains there still, hidden away by the last sorceries of its people.

Today the remnants of the Bergolasti people are the trolls of the Shrouded Lands. Centuries of feasting on Tarrasque flesh has left a mark on them that can never be erased and they are foul to behold but regenerate from wounds just as the Tarrasque does. They are an ignorant folk and have forgotten most of their heritage, but some (15.01) remember enough to reenact the old Bergolasti rites in their own crude way.

Hooks:
-How did the people of Bergolast catch the Tarrasque to begin with?
-Aside from eating it, what else did they use their endless supply of regenerating Tarrasque for?
-Eating of the Tarrasque turned the people of Bergolast into trolls. What were they originally?
-What is the Sartanger Falls?
-What happened to all of the treasure of Bergolast, especially the adamanium? Why does the Great Mother of the gnolls (51.29) think she can get it?
-How much does the Prophet of Grahakzahak (15.01) know of his ancestors? It appears that by feeding his flesh to others he is trying to play the role of the Tarrasque in his strange little cult.
-Two trolls have been mentioned (15.01 and 30.15). Are there any others about?

 

[Sanglorian]

I can do it, but not for a week or two.

That would be great if/when you get the opportunity.

Haunt of the Witch Queen (23.16)
For three generations, the finest knights of Thring have quested to destroy the Witch Queen. Whether she belongs to a witch clan is not known, but it is said that it was she who roused the clans to bar Thring from riding on Shuttered in the blockage of Blind Midshotgatepool.

By some accounts, the Witch Queen is a beautiful sorceress who lives in five towers of bone that sink and rise from the swamp like a grasping hand. According to others, she is a wizened hag who lives in a thatched house ringed by bluebells and daffodils, wearing the flayed skins of young men in the naïve belief that this lends her their beauty.

Whatever the truth of these tales, all agree that she has a cauldron of black iron, large enough for three to bathe within. Bodies placed into the cauldron reanimate, although whether they are quite the same as they were before is unclear. Many of the cauldronborn, their skin pale and waxy, wander through the swamps with lanterns, leading lost souls to the Queen.

One knight who returned ashen-faced from an encounter with the Witch Queen was exiled after he hacked to pieces the statue of the Green Lady in the Duke’s private chapel, screaming all the while that it depicted not Her, but the Witch Queen instead.

Hooks
Why did the Witch Queen rouse the clans?
Does she belong to one of the clans?
Which of the tales about her appearance are true?
What is her connection to the Green Lady?
Where do the human skins come from?
What is life like for the cauldronborn?
Which powerful person in the Shrouded Lands is cauldronborn?
What connection does this Witch Queen have with the Witch Queen of Cragsend?

EDIT: I just realised that we already have a Witch Queen! I've added a hook to reflect that.

The Questing Beast and the Jester Prince (story for 16.16)
All of you know why there is no king in the south yet a prince serves the Duke as court jester, so I will not bore you with that tale. What you may not know is why the prince has the Tarrasque emblazoned on his shield and why the Duke’s hunt so often follows the prince’s aimless rambles across the land.

To understand that, you must realise that a troupe of knights can slay most any beast. Our own Duke has run down and slain boar, fey princes, manticores and that rarest of game, a king. But we need not speak of that. There is one beast that the Duke has pursued time and time again, always to return frustrated with lance unblooded. That prey is called the Questing Beast in the archaic tongue of Thring; it is the Tarrasque of Bergolast.

The Jester Prince is the Duke’s guide on such expeditions, and always returns laughing with a song about how the oblivious Duke made camp in the mouth of the Questing Beast or rested his weary frame against the tree-like legs of the Beast. Once, the Duke had the prince beaten for his impudence – but the Sanguine Lady who nursed the bloodied prince confronted the Questing Beast just one week later, and drew blood before the elusive prey bounded away. Now the Duke dare not strike the prince lest the jester whisper the location of the Beast to another and rob the Duke of his trophy.

Hooks
Why does the Duke seek the Tarrasque so?
Does the prince actually know the location of the Beast? If so, why?
Why is the Tarrasque so recalcitrant?
How could the Duke hope to slay it?
What did the Sanguine Lady do with the Tarrasque blood on her sword?
What happened to the king in the south?

 

[Daztur]

The map has been updated, I've set up a new document for the appendixes and I've got another chunk of work done on the compilation. About one quarter of all of the content has been converted over into the new compilation, which I'll try to add a bit more to and upload tonight. The new version has a different format that has been designed to be easier on the eyes and the printer and more art has been included.

It'll take a while longer to get everything converted over and some more appendixes written (although not so long thanks to Sanglorian's work) but by the end of May it should look like a very hefty RPG sourcebook, which is just awesome.

Annoyingly Word seems to not want to put in page numbers or justify the text properly, but that's a fairly minor annoyance. I'll try to get my hands on a better desktop publishing program, one of the people in my group has some experience with that and I'll tap him.

 

[Sanglorian]

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[Daztur]

Update on the new compilation: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6z-iUIH4P8aVVNXOUhKelJGbE0/edit

Still a lot more stuff to add, but I'm adding stuff in faster than people are writing stuff so it's only a matter of time

Addendum to The Questing Beast and the Jester Prince

You might ask how the beast who tore down Bergolast and left footprints the size of villages that can still be seen across the Burning Lands could ever be elusive. The explanation is that to one filled with fear the Tarrasque will loom upwards to the sky but to one wholly without fear the Tarrasque is the size of a small but vicious dog.

The Tarrasque is not as other beasts nor is its blood like other blood, as the Lords Sanguine have learned. The first drink that passes their children's lips is Tarrasque blood that is dripped from the tip of a sword and the great among them drink nothing but the blood of the beast, even brewing a thin sour wine from it and shrink with terror from fresh water. This blood can most easily be extracted by those so brave that they have little to fear from the Tarrasque and those so cowardly that they can fill barrels of blood from it while it sleeps without it noticing such small pin pricks.

But for the Duke of Thring this is not enough and he seeks the true blood of the Tarrasque that will flow from its heart when dealt a mortal wound. It is said that is such blood is caught in a cup that cup will become the sangreal and all who drink from it will have the shadow of death lifted from them.

Hooks:
-If the Tarrasque walks in the forest and no one is around to be afraid of it, is it big enough to make a sound?
-What are the effects on constantly drinking Tarrasque blood?
-Where do the Lords Sanguine live?
-Are the stories about the sangreal true?

This Arthuriana is going strange places...

 

[Sanglorian]

Update on the new compilation: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6z-iUIH4P8aVVNXOUhKelJGbE0/edit

Still a lot more stuff to add, but I'm adding stuff in faster than people are writing stuff so it's only a matter of time

Good to see! I later added in an extra hook for the Haunt of the Witch Queen because I realised Cragsend already has a Witch Queen; it's missing from the compilation: What connection does this Witch Queen have with the Witch Queen of Cragsend?

This Arthuriana is going strange places...

The best places for it to go!

One end of the Thorny Gulch (04.30)

The Thorny Gulch begins in 04.30 and ends in 03.29.

The corn farmers throw their victims – naked and toothless – into the Thorny Gulch, a narrow valley overrun with thorns and briars. The gulch itself is a valley some hundred metres wide at its widest point, but there are many paths through the tangles. Some are dead ends, others turn back on themselves and some lead to caves in the sides of the gulch. Even though travellers can see the sky and the sides of the gulch, it is not unusual for them to get lost, turned around or trapped.

The gulch is also exposed to the sun with little shelter beyond the occasional cave in the side or a wattle that has grown to the height of a man. Water is also scarce, although seasonal flash floods will fill most of the gulch.

The farmers thrash their corn in circles around the gulch and their winnowing sends chaff falling on whatever lies beneath it. If they see travellers, they will sometimes throw stones or pieces of grain at them.

Wild maize grows throughout the gulch, some of it reaching 12 metres in height. Giant voles and mice are also plentiful, as are the giant crows and dire butcher birds that feed on them.

The shamans of the corn farmers venture into the gulch to consult with their mysterious god – the galeb duhr, whose circle of stones marks the only clear part of the gulch.

Any who have eaten wisdom-teeth tortillas instinctively know their way through the briar maze of Thorny Gulch. As such, it would not occur to a shaman that someone could leave the gulch by climbing up the galeb duhr itself. What the galeb duhr might think of that is a question of theology I am in no position to answer.

Hooks
What else lives in the gulch? Perhaps kenku, warded off by shamans dressed as scarecrows, or maize goblins driven from their plants.
Who else has been thrown down here? Are they still alive? Did they leave anything behind, if they managed to escape?
Does wisdom-teeth flour have any other effects?

And a possible explanation for why drovers would rather go under the Kingswood than to its north, and why Chimalia does not avenge the minotaurs of 18.02:

Hoth Achaar, the Returned Fortress (26.01)

One thousand years ago, when the race of dwarves was at its zenith, the dictators of the dwarves ordered five great fortresses to be built across the Grey Mountains, to keep the passes from being overrun by invaders.

Of the five, four were finished. Of the four, three were ever manned. Of the three, two survived their first siege. Of the two, one lasts to this day: Titan’s Skull.

Of the five cursed fortresses, the dwarves do not speak their names. The failure of each in turn caused deep schisms and reformations in the dwarven polity, such that the culture of Titan’s Skull today would be unrecognisable to the dictators who ordered the fortresses to be built.

After all, the fortresses were built to protect from invasion from the south, and they were built by the very orcs that now hold what they call Hoth Achaar and the dwarves call ‘First to be Returned’.

Hoth Achaar was built with the artifice of orc and dwarfkind, and it has been carefully maintained by the orcs during their occupation. Its walls are guarded by catapults and scorpions, and each of its six gates can open only when more people are inside the wall than outside it. This requirement has forced the majority of orcs to live in cramped villae in the centre of the fort, while the rich and powerful live in the seventh, outermost, least defended section.

Orc quartermasters must perform careful calculations when allocating the fort’s inhabitants to certain tasks. Fortunately – and most remarkably – the orc religion requires certain sections of the population to move to different temples around the city and these movements always seem to suit the plans of the Quartermasters.

Hooks
What is the orc religion? Is it one of the faiths also held by other races?
How did the orcs take Hoth Achaar? What caused the failures of the other four fortresses?
Why did the orcs and dwarves build Hoth Achaar together?
Orc artificers and engineers - does that come naturally to this warlike race?
What were the dwarven reformations?
What southern invaders were the fortresses built to repulse?

 

[Daztur]

The map has been updated.
Yay! Finally a post about the northern orcs, I've waited a long time for one since I didn't have any ideas for them myself, I'll add a post to them later this week. Bergolast needs some fleshing out. 38.26 is inspired by the old 2ed Monstrous Manual read-through thread.

The Boneyard
38.27

North of the ruins of the city of Bergolast (38.28) lies the Boneyard in which thousands of shards of Tarrasque bone have been driven into the ground, some small others several spans long. The pieces of bone still shine white, whiter than ever in fact due to the droppings of the flocks of vultures that nest here.

Hook:
-Why did the people of Bergolast stick all of those pieces of Tarrasque bone into the ground?

The Gibbering Hills
38.26

In its last decades the cruel lords of fallen Bergolast (38.28) made many enemies but all feared to march upon the City of the Tarrasque for eating of the meat of the great beast had made its people fearless in battle. However, one brave hero volunteered to face its might alone.

This brave soul was taken to a cavern deep under the earth and set within a great sorcerous mechanism. There the hero's flesh was preserved and replicated many times over and on the night of the new moon an army of these replicants was conveyed to the surface and marched upon Bergolast, where it was slaughtered.

Undeterred the mechanism sent another army and another and another and still today on each new moon an army appears out of the night air in the Gibbing Hills and marches. But they are not the company of brave heroes that they once were. They emerge into the world naked and gibbering with wild eyes mad with fury and lacking all understanding. Each holds a single long bronze knife in its hands and attacks any creature it meets with clumsy flailing blows.

If not killed for sport by bands of gnolls, the gibberlings march through the Burning Lands hacking to pieces anything that cannot escape them until they die of hunger, thirst or exhaustion. Their course can easily be charted by the flocks of vultures that fly above them (38.27) waiting to feast on their corpses. The gnolls also pick over them, as their bronze knives are a rare source of metal in the mineral-poor Burning Lands. This is often an occasion for squabbling between various gnollish clans, which the dwarves (31.27) sometimes take advantage of by marching in to claim the monthly crop of blades for themselves.

Hooks:
-Who was the hero who is the template for the gibblings?
-Is that hero still alive and insane locked down in a cave somewhere? Where?
-Why is the gibberling army still sent ever new moon, so many years after the fall of Bergolast?
-Is it possible to catch a gibberling and cure its madness? What would it have to say? Has anyone done this?

 

[chutup]

Oh man, connecting the blood of the tarrasque with the sangreal? That's just twisted.

And yeah about the licensing stuff, the one that Sanglorian proposes sounds fine to me.

Can't contribute anything now, it's 2:00 in the morning o_o but maybe tomorrow.

 

[Daztur]

Well the thought process went like this:

Doh there's a typo I wrote "found" instead of "bound" the Sanguine guys were supposed to have made their own city built around a tarrasque but now Sanglorian has gone and written something based on that so I can't fix the typo now, hmmm so the tarrasque is the questing beast, ummm let's see Arthur, knights that say ni! the HOLY GRAIL! Ok, so the Tarrasque is part of the quest for the holy grail, how? Well the grail is for blood so you've got to put Tarrasque blood in it. That's boring though, you want the Sanguine guys who drink it by the bucketload. OK, so it should be the heartsblood of the Tarrasque. How the hell does that work, you can just stab a Tarrasque to death. Let someone else figure that out! OK, now that gives another reason for the Thring guys and the Sanguine guys to hate each other, the Thring guys want to kill the Tarrasque (somehow) and the Sanguine guys want to milk it for its blood because drinking it does something or other. Ooh stick in a bit about them dripping some blood into infant's mouths, kind of like how historical knights fed their sons their first bite of solid food from a tip of a sword.

OK Dave, you realize what you've done now. You have a holy grail get created by catching the last blood of the Tarrasque. You know the story of why the sangreal is holy right? You know who else doesn't stay dead if you kill them? You know who else transforms people with his flesh and blood, right? Dear god, Dave you've turned the Tarrasque into a Christ figure. The goddam Tarrasque. I didn't mean to, I swear it! Kind of cool though...

For the Gibbering hills, I'm thinking of some kind of I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream kind of situation, poor hero locked up by some magic AI who insists in doing whatever it does to make photocopies of the guy/girl even though its been centuries and centuries and the poor hero has to know that his/her clones are dying by the thousand every month. Brrrr...

 

[Sanglorian]

Good use of the gibberlings - beats the Forgotten Realms version of them as yet another small monstrous humanoid.

They also remind me (in a good way) of spawned monsters in a computer game - 'who the hell is forging hundreds of bronze daggers every day?' 'Don't worry about verisimilitude - just keep hacking!'