Let’s Make a Hexcrawl Setting

[Daztur]

I'm going to be giving the Shrouded Lands a shot with the 5ed play test next month, any ideas for how to kick it in gear?

About Shrouded Land apocalypses:

chutup's right, nothing lays track for a railroad like an incipient apocalypse, so that’s something to avoid. However, our Long Nights are only a week long so that snippet doesn’t necessarily have to refer to an apocalypse (if anyone even wants to use it, I have no specific ideas for it). As for the sun god killing the night, he’s based on the Gnostic Demiurge and I envisioned his promise to end night as mostly an empty boast, but different DMs could roll with that in different ways.

One thing your comments brought to mind is just how few threats there are to humans in this setting who stay home and mind their own business. The gnolls pretty much stay on their side of the sea and all the rest of the intelligent races tend to be territorial and nasty to intruders but not really expansionist (the orcs being the main exception, but they’re more of a nuisance than a real threat). Pretty much all of the non-intelligent critters are plenty dangerous but more of a threat to travellers, not really the sort to eat peaceful villages.

I like that. To put my history geek hat on, one thing that doesn’t make sense about a lot of the implied D&D setting is that they’re a lot like Westerns with swords (roadside inns that aren’t in the middle of villages, humans all spread out without a lot of political authority hanging over their heads, lots of isolated farmhouses etc. etc.) but D&D settings are such dangerous places that that kind of organization doesn’t make any sense. Having an isolated farmhouse in an area that has to deal with D&D wilderness encounters is suicidal. What you’d get instead is something that would look like, say, the English/Scottish border during times in which there was a lot of cross-border raiding or the more bloodthirsty bits of the Iron Age: much more clustered settlement (hill forts or the sort of mini-forts you see along the English/Scottish border), much more militarized, much less individualistic and with no man’s land areas in between groups that like to kill each other, no inns or other isolated settlements standing alone and vulnerable. So you get a lot of D&D adventures about the party having to save some rural humans from some nasty critters without any logic about how the hell the humans survive in an area that poses a challenge to adventurers when the adventurers aren’t around.

Despite all its goofiness the Shrouded Lands setting mostly hangs together and makes sense. The humans are fairly tightly clustered and there aren’t a lot of mobile threats that the villages, holdings, forts, castles etc. we’ve put in wouldn’t be able to survive. But at the same time, the setting is dangerous as all hell to someone who goes and travels around it randomly or pokes their nose away from the safe areas where humans live, which fits with D&D-style adventure.

The Footprints of the Tarrasque

Hex 48.24

After the Tarrasque broke free of Bergolast (38.28) it harried its erstwhile jailers across the length and breadth of the Burning Lands, its great feet leaving their mark upon the ground. But, as the centuries passed, time has eroded away most of them so that nowhere to they remain as pristine as here where they have been impressed into the rock that lies exposed to the sun and sky.

Snakes can often be found here basking in the sun, but little grows within the footprints of the Tarrasque but small yellow flowers that cling to what little soil is found in the cracks of the bare rock. If they are collected, however, they can be made into an oil that can be smeared on blades that can then inflict wounds that trolls find it difficult to regenerate. It stands to reason that these flowers could also be used as a material component for a potion of growth.

Hooks:
-Anything interesting about the snakes?
-Who knows about the properties of these flowers?

My posting output has gone down because I've been getting work done on the compilation. I'll post a newer version of it tonight (Korean time), but it'll have everything except the northwest chunk, the grey mountains, the freeholds, the Kingswood and the City. That's where a lot of the write-up density is though, so still a lot to do.

 

[Daztur]

Here's the current version of the updated compilation: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6z-iUIH4P8aa0hVcjhfX254b00

This is proving a bit time-consuming, but it's progressing steadily

I've chopped off a few hexes into a new region called "the Lands Southwest of Thring." Which is a place-holder until that area is fleshed out enough to get its own title. I've also added the area around Blind Midshotgatepool as a region as well as a few older regions...

The next regions to be added in will be the coastal strip in the NW and the mountainous strip in the north. Then on to the core lands and much much much more art scrounging before going on to doing some more to supplement what Sanglorian has done on the appendixes.

 

[Sanglorian]

Great work on the compilation, Daztur. One thing you're missing is one hook for the Witch Queen (23.16) - "What connection does this Witch Queen have with the Witch Queen of Cragsend?"

I've updated the appendices.

The Jester Prince (additional information for 16.16.02)

Every year, the kingdom of the south would hold a festival where people traded roles for a week: freemen paraded around in their wives’ dresses, kings wore fool’s motley and – in the last year of the kingdom – twelve butchers acted as the king’s council of ministers. These were snidely called the Lords Sanguine, for they wore their robes of state beneath their bloody aprons.

When the week had passed, the Lords Sanguine realised that they preferred the work of ministers to that of butchers. They cast the king and his family from the south. No duke, chief among them the Dukes Thring and Verlime, bowed his head to the Lords Sanguine, but neither did they open their gates to the Fool King.

The Sanguine Lords keep the festival to this day, though they are careful to trade roles only with their wives.

Hooks
The Lords Sanguine gain some power from blood. Is that the same art that the gnolls practice when they eat hearts?
What happened to the Fool King?
What does the Jester Prince think of the Lords Sanguine?

 

[chutup]

The Swamp of Champions
Additional information about hex 16.16

In Thring, the Law of Blood states that blood must pay for blood - either the blood of the offender, of the monsters they slay, or of the champion who stands for them. This latter clause allows nobles to be represented by champions in a trial by battle in order to determine their guilt. Over the years, the law has been loosened to allow trial by battle to be used in other cases besides murder - mainly because nobles and commoners agree that it is damned good day's entertainment. Furthermore, tradition holds that the lord of the castle may decide the exact terms of the duel - what weapons, whether to the death, the first cut, etc. However, because of the Law of a Year and a Day, most castles have had their duel terms set in stone long ago.

At Castle Tarengael, due to the somewhat unusual predilections of the first Duke, the form of duel is known as the Battle of the Hand. The combatants are required to wear full plate armour, but have no weapons. The goal is to wrestle the opponent into the Duke's Hand - a full-size trebuchet built into the trial chamber. The victor must then pull a lever to release the trebuchet, flinging his unlucky opponent through a skylight and out across the fields. The bodies land on the far side of a ridge, in a noxious swamp where beggars dwell.

Poor folk hang about in this swamp when a duel is taking place, hoping for a chance to strip the loser of his valuable armour. Meanwhile, kinsmen of the two combatants hang around waiting to see off the looters and eyeing each other off. The law states that the disgraced loser of the trial cannot be moved from the swamp for three days after their death, during which time their kinsmen hold vigil to protect the corpse from desecration. This vigil is especially onerous in the summer months when the swamp becomes humid and the body begins to decompose inside the armour.

Hooks:
- What are the terms of the duel at other castles in Thring?
- What exactly where the strange predilections of the first Duke?
- What have the poor folk of the swamp scavenged off corpses? Any family heirlooms of special importance?
- Who has fought in the Battle of the Hand? Did they win, or lose?

 

[Daztur]

The Black Duke of Thring

Note: inspiration from The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber here.

The following sonnet was found on a piece of paper crumpled up and shoved behind a bookshelf in Trimoueil's quarters. It is presumably a precursor to the Song of Ban and Ulena and, despite its rough form, we can see Trimoueil's signature iambic quadrameter.

The Black Duke of Thring

The Duke bound Ulena because
His heart was full of tears and seams
And colder than he thought it was
His nights were spent in evil dreams

His days were full of wicked schemes
To keep Ulena bound with shackle
And her door barred with heavy beams
Always he would limp and cackle

Through the bleak halls of his castle
For he had hear the green witch say
Gone his love his clever vassal
Ban would not live a year and day

He was cold and growing colder
But Ulena still burned warmer

 

[chutup]

The Final Heresy

Long ago in the City of Shuttered Windows, not long after the Gnawbone Wars had ravaged the lands around the Keening Sea, there was formed an order named the Brothers of the Spear, who today are called the Temple Invisible. The high priest of Alberon summoned twelve of his most powerful sorcerer-assassins, and brought with him the Tome of the Forbidden, in which the darkest secrets of the City are recorded. To these twelve he revealed the true name of She Who Waits, and the story of how she came to be banished to her dark lair beneath the world. And he charged them with a task that has never been given before or since: that of the assassination of a god. This was the original purpose of the Brothers of the Spear: to find a way to slay She Who Waits once and for all.

For centuries the agents of the Brotherhood did battle with the Whispering Sisters as they sought a means to destroy the dark goddess. In time they began to consider the task hopeless, until a new and terrible possibility was raised: for it was said in those days that the sun-god, the Lion in Splendour, passed each night through the underworld realm, and that the Long Night came about because the sun-god had been waylaid by the vile temptations of the nameless death-queen. In order to achieve their sworn goal, the Brothers of the Spear were forced to do the unthinkable: to turn away from their god, Alberon, and into the arms of the Lion.

Today in some dark vault beneath the Great Temple of Alberon, there is stored the Book of Heresies, in which all the heresies from the Time of Schisms are recorded. Last of all come the heresies of the Brothers of the Spear, and the Final Heresy is that they renounced their god and chose another. It is the last and most secret of the Heresies, for, to the undying shame of the Temple Indivisible, it is a heresy that continues to this day.

Hooks:
- Is the Tome of the Forbidden still extant? What other knowledge is written in it?
- What was the true name of She Who Waits, and why was she banished to the underworld?
- How can the Sun-God help the Temple Invisible to carry out their ancient mission?
- What else is written in the Book of Heresies? Who would have an interest in its secrets being revealed?
- What will the laity think if they find out that the Temple Indivisible is tolerating a secret heretical sect within their midst?

The Testament of Weneslas Stannev

In the library at Newhill (17.07), and in the Temple of the Labyrinth (29.14), and in one other place, this record of the words of the prophet Weneslas is kept hidden. Weneslas spent his youth staring into the sun until he went blind, and thereafter spent twenty years in seclusion before he began to speak sooth. His Testament tells us that the Sun is God, and God is the Sun, and all the Shrouded Lands live and die in His glow. In distant aeons, God lived always at the top of the sky, and the world burned with purifying flame; but evil came into the world due to the cruelty of the city-god, Alberon, toward his first wife who is now nameless. In order to save the world from the goddess's wrath, the Lion in Splendor was forced to marry her, and to promise that he would visit her each night and keep her company until morning.

Now, so sayeth Weneslas, each night the Sun must become Flesh and descend into the mortal world, which is the world of sin. As He passes in His material body through the underworld, the nameless queen tempts him with lust, fine food and wine, enchanting music, and other pleasures of the flesh unknown to man. Each night he remains strong until the morning comes, and His flesh is immolated once more into the transcendent body of the Sun. But in the depths of winter, when the evil of the mortal world grows strongest, the Lion is tempted to remain with his queen, and only by the Ritual of the Horn of Morning is he returned to the sky.

Hooks:
- How much is true of Weneslas' account?
- Did Weneslas write any other prophecies or visions?
- Why did the Lion in Splendour have to marry She Who Waits?
- What is the Ritual of the Horn of Morning? What would happen if it were not performed?

The Scroll of Seven Shadows

Also kept in the library of the Temple of the Labyrinth is this scroll, though it is said the Temple Invisible possesses others with key fragments burnt out. It records certain details about the founding of Bergolast, when the Tarrasque was pierced with six spears and held fast. But according to this Scroll, there was a seventh spear, forged from an unknown metal, which if it were plunged into the Tarrasque's heart would have slain it once and for all. For a time, this spear was kept in Bergolast, but eventually the lords of that city decided it was too much of a risk that someone might use it to destroy the beast. So they sent it to the far side of the Shrouded Lands, to the Temple of Seven Shadows (37.01), where it was sealed away behind myriad traps and guardians.

The last section of the scroll is written in a different hand, terse and cryptic. It seems to imply that when the Tarrasque is slain, the properties of the beast's blood will be instantly inverted. Instead of granting life, they will bring death; all trolls and other such descendants will be destroyed instantly. Furthermore, the seventh spear will become indelibly coated in the blood and made into the most deadly weapon ever forged; a weapon with the power to slay even a god...

Hooks:
- How exactly was Bergolast founded? Where did the founders acquire these seven spears?
- Was the seventh spear forged from the same metal as the Broken Spear? Apparently the Broken Spear was used to kill Tiamat. Does that mean that the Broken Spear was also doused in the lifeblood of a Tarrasque?
- Do the Temple Invisible want to get their hands on this seventh spear? Even if they did, who would wield it? Would they give the spear to the Lion in Splendour? How exactly do you give a weapon to the Sun?
- Let's say that the Lion in Splendour does slay his nameless wife. What happens then? Do we get a day that lasts forever? What exactly is 'purifying flame'?


(Not sure about how this is going to go. Basically I'm envisioning it as an epic-level quest which involves delving into the Temple of Seven Shadows to get the spear, then slaying the Tarrasque, then sailing to the edge of the world to give the spear to the Lion, then maybe accompanying him into the underworld to do battle with She Who Waits.

The only thing missing is a reasonable motivation for the PCs to go to all that effort... especially since there's a strong implication that the Long Day is not going to be very nice. Well, anyway, it's all the ravings of a dude who stared into the sun until he went blind, so it can be up to the DM to decide how much is true.)

 

[Sanglorian]

Very interesting contributions, chutup! One possible way of using that material is that it's not the heroes but the villains who put that plan in motion, and the heroes have to stop them.

One quibble, you say that the people of Bergolast sent the spear "to the far side of the world, to the Temple of Seven Shadows (37.01)". The Shrouded Lands are about the size of the United Kingdom, so it's more like "They sent it to Wales".

 

[chutup]

Argh, that was my mistake. I meant to say "the far side of the Shrouded Lands". I guess I'll edit it now.

 

[Daztur]

chutup: wow, I love how the pantheon all ties together into a family tree that makes a Heinlein novel look straightforward. Also, the bit about the spear that can kill the Tarrasque is very interesting as that relates to not only She Who Waits but also the Duke of Thring who wants to kill the Tarrasque in order to create the sangreal.


And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.

The Hill of the Swordsage
Hex 11.20

The Tarrasque of Bergolast (38.28) is the greatest of all beasts. Those corpses that are struck by the lightning at its birthplace are returned to life, those who eat of its flesh have their bodies like those of the gods that can heal most every injury and those who drink of its blood see the world as the gods see it. After drinking the blood of the Tarrasque, one can perceive any object not only as it is but as it was and as it might be. Sadly, to most this appears as nothing but a mad smear of images and sounds and it takes long years of practice and training to tease out useful information from the visions imparted by Tarrasque blood.

The Lords Sanguine are the masters of this art and few are as renowned as Lord Kardash, the Swordsage. When he was young, he took a knife red from the forge, marked his face thrice and thrice and had his ears, mouth and nostrils sewn up. Sight is sufficient for him and he knows where a blow will land before it is swung. In his prime he slew an aboleth of the Sunless Sea and sent Lord Ward (19.04) staggering to his knees in a single blow.

Now however, Lord Kardash never ventures from his hill, where he teaches his apprentices in silence and spends long hours staring at the movements of the stars that circle above his hill. Many comes to his hill to seek out his teachings but few are chosen as apprentices.

Hooks:
-Where was the Tarrasque born?
-So, if trolls (the descendants of the people of Bergolast) regenerate because the meat of the Tarrasque has made them godlike, does that mean that you can kill gods with acid and fire? Why are trolls so ugly then?
-If his mouth and nostrils are sewn up, how does Lord Kardash eat, drink and breathe?
-Tell me more about the Sunless Sea!
-Who has studied with Lord Kardash?
-Who are the other Lords Sanguine?
-Why does Lord Kardash gaze so intently at the stars? What does he see there?

Note: basically what I mean here if that if you drink enough Tarrasque blood and then look at a rock you’ll see (and feel and touch) everything that ever happened to the rock and everything that might happen to that rock in the future. In theory this is incredibly useful, but in practice it’s like listening to 100 radio channels at once and it’s very hard for someone to focus on just one bit of information at a time, but it can be done.

 

[Daztur]

chutup: the lion-headed sun god is called the King in Splendor, not the Lion in Splendor. Let’s run with that…

O gatekeeper, open thy gate,
Open thy gate so I may enter!
If thou openest not the gate so that I cannot enter,
I will smash the door, I will shatter the bolt,
I will smash the doorpost, I will move the doors,
I will raise up the dead eating the living,
So that the dead will outnumber the living.

Addendum to the Testament of Weneslas Stannev

Inspired by the Ginza Rba and the myth of Isthar’s descent into the underworld.

The Chant of Morning

The Lion in Splendor went down through the gates of darkness and the arteries of the earth. He saw the black water of the Sunless Sea, rise up, bubbling and boiling. But he commanded the woman’s hound to lap at the water and the Lion walked on with dry feet and the hound laps still, his bitch (04.08) crying in darkness for its mate. But as the Lion passed the hound’s teeth tore away his mane.

The Lion in Splendor went down through the gates of fire and their burning glow. Enter it and you die, see it and you burn. But he seized the woman’s dragon and cast her contorted on the ground and she gnawed at the rock of the underworld and the Lion walked on with head unbowed and the dragon gnaws still and breathes flames no more. But as the Lion passed the dragon’s claws tore away his hide.

The Lion in Splendor went down through the gates of smoke and heard the chants and calls of witchcraft. Who taught the frightening ugliness of these lies? But he called the woman’s iron bull and its snorts cast away the mists and vapors and the Lion walked on free of sorcery and the iron bull snorts still and treads upon the wicked. But as the Lion passed the bull’s horns pieced his eyes.

Then the Lion in Splendor was without mane, hide or eyes and all that was left of him was a blind man lost in the place of darkness and consuming fire. The terrible woman locked his hands with manacles and placed every temptation before him but he was a king still, the King in Splendor, and denied them all. And, as morning came, he tore his chains and took up the slaver’s whip and the woman tore clumps of hair from her head as he ascended into the sky, the Lion in Splendor once more.

Darkness cannot be measured by light. The consuming fires do not light the house of gloom and the waters of the Sunless Sea have no sparkle. In darkness creatures grow and form and harbor malice in their minds. The children of darkness are nothing, but the children of light stay. The house of evil is nothing and its consuming fires die. Its sorceries die and end and have no place in the eternity of light. They come to nothing. The generations of light will stay forever. The words of light will rise and illuminate the world in everlasting light.

Hooks:
-Are the hound, dragon and bull real?
-Do any sects of the sun god cult reject this divine Lion in Splendor/human King in Splendor dualism?
-Is it true that if the mane, hide and eyes of a lion are removed in such a way, the form of a human hero can be brought forth? Have any sun priests had success in lion dissection?
-Any connection to wemics here?
-There aren't many worshipers of the Lion/King in Splendor in these lands. Where are they? The Golden Realm (my vague ideas for that country are Byzantium + Medieval Ethiopia with people who look like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1997_275-15_young_Wodaabe_women.jpg but nothing concrete, so feel free to contradict that)?