Let’s Make a Hexcrawl Setting

[Sanglorian]

Does anyone know how to backup Wikia wikis? I'd hate for all our hard work to be lost.

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Bloodwretches (Jahur)

Inspired by: Goblin Punch, ‘Post-Poning Empire’

Vampirism - as the Lords Sanguine could tell you - has different forms and severities. Bloodwretches are allergic to sunlight and thirst for blood, but receive no strength, speed or grace from their dark curse. They can be satisfied with ‘rosewater’, a jelly synthesised from animal blood, viscera and fat as well as sugars and salts in rough proportion as they are found in human blood.

This dependence makes bloodwretches pliable, which is why they are used in Jahur’s armies and manufactories, but each craves more than anything else to suck on the blood of the living.

Hooks

• What else are bloodwretches used for?
• Have any broken free? How do they live?
• What is the origin of the bloodwretch?
• Yet another hint that the Lords Sanguine are associated with vampirism. Are they vampires, or are there merely parallels? Different vessels, same source? Old blood in new wineskins?

Death in the Old Way (Execution in Jahur)

Inspired by: Goblin Punch. ‘Post-Poning Empire'

In Jahur, they reserve an ancient punishment for the worst criminals: murderers, kidnappers and vendors of quicksilver. It is to be hung from the walls of the city by the hands, with the feet weighed down by a chunk of lead in the shape of a giant sword.

The practice is rare these days, a disappointment to Jahur’s swordsmen and women. A sword forged from metal that once hanged a murderer (an ‘executor blade’) is considered one of the most formiddable weapons in the Shrouded Lands.

The Duke fights with such a sword, an heirloom used ever since Broderick’s sword Caledbrand became animated by that unfortunate ghost.

One criminal hangs to this day. He is a vampire, unkillable by this method. He was fortunately - or unfortunately - positioned in a nook in the wall so direct sunlight never touches his flesh. Even the ambient light is enough to blister and warp his skin.

A Viceroy will sometimes drag the vampire up to the wall’s upper edge for questioning about supernatural events in the city. His answers are always rewarded with a full meal.

Hooks

• Why are these swords so effective?
• Who else has such a weapon?
• Why is this a rarely used form of punishment? Are the alternatives even worse?
• What crime did the vampire commit? Is anyone tempted to cut him down?

 

[Sanglorian]

Blessed are the Meek

Alberon, the story goes, desired the witchcraft of the Pacharia. As a man, it was to him - as it is to all of his gender - denied.

So Alberon passed out of the sight of men and returned as the Lady of Pain. He dressed as a sturdy fishwife and went unto the Pacharia to learn their ways.

Alberon was found out, and the Pacharia strung him up from a hawthorn plant. The Green Lady would or could not cut him down, but Alberon’s first consort did - for a hideous price that has never been disclosed.

Still, Alberon has the womanly art of witchcraft, and he sometimes puts it to use, appearing as a beggar-woman and dispensing cures, love potions, talismans and hexes to those who show ‘her’ kindness.

In fact, the itinerant is one of eleven recognised forms in which Alberon appears. The others are: the newly-wed, the squire, the goliard, the handmaiden, the Doge (leading to some confusion, hijinx and paternity disputes), the elf-catcher, the mother, the father, the widow and the Lord of Pain.

The similarity of these forms to the twelve gods of the Undying Cycle has not gone unnoticed, but the conclusions vary - is Alberon coopting the cycle, or paying homage to it, or somehow influenced by it outside of his control?

Connections

• The goliards of the Sacred Foot are heterodox adherents of Alberon unloved by the Temple Indivisible.

Hooks

• How could Alberon study with the Pacharia if he cannot leave the city?
• Who are the Pacharia?

The Ocean atop the World (02.24)
The bones of aboleth and other ancient things have been found in the rocks of these mountains, turned mysteriously to stone. Surely these peaks are a dead seabed, lifted from its place of rest by some unfathomable force.

Anyone who scales these cliffs will find a seeming impossibility: an ocean, stretching for tens of miles southward, atop a plateau.

The strange force that lifted the ocean left its inhabitants unaffected, and they thrive here though they are seen nowhere else in the world. Long-necked terrible lizards snap at flying reptiles the size of horses, and armoured fish gather in great schools as protection against long-nosed hunters.

Here too, it is said, survive the aboleth, though no man alive claims to have seen them.

Hooks

• Is there an aboleth civilisation here?
• How large is the Ocean?
• Does its salt have any unusual properties?
• What else from bygone days still lives in the Ocean?

Connections

• The Least Ocean is another relic from this time (12.29), though it is much diminished.

 

[Daztur]

As everyone knows, kobolds are the things that dragons have forgotten and so they name themselves. If you want to randomly generate the meanings of kobold names translated from dragonic consult the follow table:

1. The memory of burning cows
2. The memory of soaring through broken towers
3. The memory of a flamingo hitting the left wing
4. The memory of dropping a tree on a sister
5. The memory of fangs gleaming in reflected starlight
6. The memory of rolling on new gold
7. The memory of the difficult to reach itch
8. The memory of a terrified elephant
9. The memory of afternoon napping
10. The memory of the tops of a thousand clouds
11. The memory of water steaming with blood
12. The memory of a child begging for his father
13. The memory of being awakened by a bear
15. The memory of kicking boulders off a cliff
16. The memory of an egg's first crack
17. The memory of the wind shrieking during a dive
18. The memory of worshipful monkeys
19. The memory of the sound a burning troll makes
20. The memory of stomping on trees for no readily apparent reason

The PCs are going to be running into a horde of kobolds next session in my campaign and I'm running them as pint-sized egotists with their personalities influenced by the memories that they are the manifestations of.

 

[Sanglorian]

Good stuff, Daztur - I've added it to the wiki.

All Along the Witchwater (36.07)
Old Midge is a beaver whose dam runs along the Witchwater. He’s more daring than most - Riparia’s outposts are usually fortified holes dug into the banks, but Old Midge dares slow the Witchwater’s course.

The beaver will shelter non-elves who make it this far. He avoids quarreling with the Bloodied King where he can, but will not be bullied.

Old Midge was not always a beaver. He asked for this form to escape the politics and compromise of high office. He drops hints as to where he once ruled, but not confirm anything. Those seeking artifacts or information about long ago would do well to seek him out.

Hooks

• Who or what transformed Old Midge?
• Does he still have a rightful claim to where he ruled?
• Do the elves have any plans to budge him?

Serendips
Most of the russet-haired members of the Illustrious Family of Serendip have never set foot past the Singing Wastes, let alone visited the Witch Clans of the Barrier Range. Despite this, they share both hair colour and magical power with the clans.

Many Serendips have an inherited power: to change people’s emotions with a touch. The Serendip must be touching an item of particular colour, along with the recipient of the modified mood. Some Serendips can amplify this power or increase its range through contrivances like rods made of crystal or painted rooms.

The current Patriarch of the family was actually adopted. Without any witchery of his own, he is trusted by Serendips wary of having their own emotions toyed with. He has focused the family’s efforts on a chain of casinos and dancehalls in Jahur, finding that soothing drunk customers or sore losers, and increasing the euphoria of high spenders, is very good business.

The main competition is not from outside, but within. Kari Serendip established and runs Jahur’s vast Botanical Gardens, where she inculcates changed emotion on a large and complicated scale. A rose garden, with its touches of red and white, might quicken the blood but ward off rage; laying in a bed of daffodils ringed by wisteria cleans away insecurities about becoming a parent.

Kari believes that the Serendips’ main business is corrupt and corrupting, and is leading a morality campaign to shut it down.

Hooks

• How did a Witch Clan - if that’s what the Serendips are - arise in Jahur?
• Which other famous Serendips are there?
• Who else would like to see the Serendips’ business come to an end?

 

[Sanglorian]

I've saved a backup of the wiki on my wiki.

(These hex entries not added to the wiki yet).

Thousand-Year-Old Steel (03.16)
The High King was not the only one put out by the rebellion of the Sanguine Lords. The council of advisors that the Lords displaced also lost their positions.

These disaffected lords led a rump of their vassals and retainers into self-imposed exile rather than bow to butchers. They call themselves the Hurad, or ‘traditionalists’, and continue to live on the outskirts of Gore as brigands. What they take they claim is the tithe and tribute that they are due as lords; any liberties they take are ancestral privilege.

Only in Gore do brigands fight with thousand-year-old steel; dynastic blades of exquisite craftsmanship that predate Gore itself.

Hooks

• Who forged the blades, if not Gorean smiths?
• Could the Hurad ever overthrow the Sanguine Lords?
• Do they have any supporters?
• What do the Hurad make of the Lords’ relationship with the Tarrasque?

The Grassy Gnoll (20.06)
The Bloodied King of the elves is not known for his benificence - or his love of gnolls. The outpost at the Broken Spear is a source of great aggrevation to him.

Despite this, one gnoll dwells happily and unmolested a few miles from the Holt. She is assumed mad, for she garlands herself with flowers and wears a grass skirt as she cavorts through wood and glade. She eats feathered cats caught on the wing, and raw tubers and acorns.

Travellers have sometimes been caught in conversation with her, which can take many hours and leave them dangerously close to nightfall. She seems totally ignorant of the threat that the elves pose others.

While what she talks of seems senseless and confused, those who’ve met with her and then later hear of developments in the City of Smoke wonder if she may be better informed than she first appears. The beavers of Riparia will confirm that the gnolls of the Broken Spear sometimes pay handsomely to relay messages to her up the Witchwater.

Hooks

• Who is the gnoll? Is she one of the three surviving Mothers?
  
• Who is sending her messages? Is she planning something?
  
• Does the Great Mother know about her?
  
• Why does the Bloodied King leave her untroubled?

 

[Sanglorian]

Sosaria the Brave (48.18)
The civic anthem of Sosaria, Sosaria the Brave, is remarkable both for its contents and the response that it provokes from Sosarians.

The anthem was lifted from Alexandrine, to the extent that it still refers to Sosaria’s ‘industry renowned and manufacture cunning’, does not mention cattle at all, and at one point rhymes ‘city serene’ with ‘Sosaria’.

The reaction wherever the anthem is played is mixed. The mostly-immigrant elite leap to their feet in their traditional kashik robes, and assume the daggith stance of absolute submission. The poor, mostly of old Sosarian stock, grumble, laugh or ignore the song.

The song, the kashik robes and the daggith stance are products of the Rediscovery, a Sosarian renaissance that occurred two decades ago when Sosaria justified its independence from the Bergolasti Reformation by arguing that Sosaria had a unique cultural heritage, much of which they proceeded to make up or appropriate from the customs and folkways of Sosaria’s poor, who mostly did consider themselves Bergolasti and wanted to participate in the Reformation.

These days the conflict plays itself out in feast halls, theatres and operas across the city, where first or second generation Sosarians perform ‘millennium-old’ Sosarian cattle chants while families that go back to the days of Bergolast attend the latest play from Shuttered.

Hooks

• Tell us more about the Reformation. Does it survive today? Did it have much success? Who participated?
• Was all the Rediscovery made up? Or was there some truth to it?
• What sort of plays are being performed in Shuttered?

Thring v Jack Donne (29.14)
This case making its way through Shuttered’s courts has been brought by a pretender to the throne of the Duchy of Thring against the Collector - given a default name here since his own is famously unknown.

Shuttered, as the only seat of a god in the Shrouded Lands, claims universal jurisdiction, an assertion not supported by its neighbours.

‘Duke’ Grant Birl, one of the last surviving of that Witch Clan, was apparently once secretly married to the Duke’s wife. Since the husbands of heiresses rule, this would make him the rightful Duke of Thring.

But it is not with the Duke that Birl has quarrel - in fact, he is broadly supportive of the man that he affectionately calls ‘The Usurper’. It is the collector that Grant Birl despises. According to Birl, the Collector stole most of his vast collection of Tarrasque skulls from collections around Thring, ‘unlawfully, unreasonably and without due cause frustrating, harming and causing additional material expense in the search for, hunting of and apprehension and/or slaying of the Questing Beast, a.k.a. The Tarrasque, worshipped in some parts as “Grahakzahak” (hereafter, the “Beast”, c.f. Appendix III sub. sec. A1 through B5, “Description and material analysis of the Beast”)’.

Birl wants the Collector apprehended and the skulls returned.

Hooks

• Are the findings of the court enforced in any way?
• Is the allegation true? Does it matter?
• Does the Collector care?
• Who else can sue and be sued under Shuttered’s universal jurisdiction?

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All added to the wiki.

 

[Sanglorian]

The Talking Watch of the Doge
Albus Flidge’s most sophisticated clockwork requires not just the delicate hands of his jermalaines, but actually their continued involvement in its operation. He seals them up in the mechanism so they can keep it wound and greased.


Recently, a pocket watch bought for the Doge by Count Seutorian came from Flidge’s Clockworks. It contains a philosophical jermalaine who has decided to make the best of her lot. Each night as the Doge sleeps, the jermalaine whispers advice from the watch on his bedside table.


The Doge is a heavy sleeper and seems unaffected by the watch, but not so his two wives. Eliana has developed a sudden and curious interest in statecraft - particularly labour regulations for clockwork manufacturers. Celine is convinced that the whispers come from the Whispering Sisters.


Hooks

• Will Eliana enter politics at the behest of a talking watch?
• What will Celine do if she finds out that the watch is the source of the whispers?
• How can the jermalaine survive without food or water?
• Will the Doge ever hear the voice himself?

 

[Electric Wizard]

The Only Elephant in the North (37.05)

Upon hearing that elves cannot approach a painted elephant (43.27) with a white dot on its forehead and white dots around its eyes, Harrakim ib Zuhri connived to ride one into the heart of the Kingswood and use it to demand a boon from a fey. Ever since Harrakim was a boy, he wanted an elf maiden as a wife, and he was confident that his plan would end with him marrying one.

He managed to find and capture a painted elephant with the appropriate markings, and rode it all the way to the shadows of the Kingswood. Though he was safe from elves, he wandered near the home of Zor (37.07) and became infatuated with the beautiful vatborn when he spied him cleaning a deer. Despite Harrakim's shame and confusion, he tried to engage him after some deliberation. The painted elephant's exotic beauty outraged Zor, and he murdered Harrakim where he stood.

The elephant escaped Zor's wrath, and now wanders the forest. It has grown lonely, and has tried to follow various elves only to have them shrink away. It will take a liking to any mortal that does not attack it.

Hooks
-How have other mortals won elf wives or lovers?
-Who else is infatuated with Zor?
-Do painted elephants usually cooperate with humans?
-Where are some other lost elephants?

 

[Electric Wizard]

Toadvine's Bog (30.09)

Here, the Kingswood's beauty gives way to a foul-smelling quagmire. In places, beings of water and fire boil the mud into soup and spit steam at passerby. Giant dragonflies that the quicklings (31.09) capture and use as mounts flit about. Though it's possible to avoid the mud by walking along a web of rickety platforms, various fairies claim sections of the network, and demand tolls from travelers.

A fairy named Toadvine lives in a little castle of iridescent minerals in the center of the bog. Despite his bat ears, vulture's beak, goat eyes and squat, warty body, he is one of the Kingswood's more agreeable fey. Those who brave the perils of the bog and present him a suitable gift are often granted small boons. He is famous throughout the forest for the enchanted jewelry he crafts from minerals that bubble up through the mud.

Connections
-The Bastard Prince (34.04) wears a pair of Toadvine-crafted earrings that alert him to any nearby dangers.
-Toadvine's jewelry sometimes appears in the Goblin Markets (33.04)
-Anastasia, Princess of the Seers (23.11), communicates with drow-ghosts via a jet choker crafted here.

Hooks
-Who or what created this unusual bog?
-What other creatures dwell here?
-What tolls do the fairies demand for use of their bridges?
-Why is Toadvine so ugly?
-What gifts please Toadvine? Which offend him?
-Who else wears Toadvine's jewelry?

 

[Electric Wizard]

Melda the Boneless (19.31)

This slight, fetching girl is the sorceress Noor the Asp's greatest pupil. Melda is unique among all magic users in the Shrouded Lands because she casts spells by contorting her body into glyphs. She returned to Jahur after five years of tutelage under Noor after hearing news that her mother and father were killed. Her father was Fatin was a blind priest of Iano tasked with revealing the past. She suspects he was murdered during a cover-up involving one of the Viceroys. She is seeking adventurers in the Dead Fish to help her unravel the mystery and avenge her parents.

Melda's most notable spell is the Unstoppable Thrust. When she contorts herself into this shape, she propels herself and a single person holding her forward at extreme speeds. Very few barriers or obstacles can stop Melda while under the effect of this spell. The only limitation lies in how physically grueling it is to maintain the necessary position. The contortion is so demanding and complicated that she can usually do it for no longer than several moments.

Hooks
-Who else uses unorthodox magic?
-Who is Noor the Asp? Where does she dwell?
-What other duties to the priests of Iano have? Are they all blind, or just certain ones?
-Who killed Melda's parents? Why? Where are her siblings?
-What can stop the Unstoppable Thrust?