Let’s Make a Hexcrawl Setting
Daztur
Adventurer
Seawig
The traditional duties of a wife in the City of Shuttered Windows are onerous indeed. Among these is the requirement to memorize the taboos set forth by the Matriarch and ensure that their households are in compliance with them. The larger a household a woman maintains the more difficult this becomes, which is perhaps part of the reason why the Doge has two wives.
As a result, some eligible women, when told that their parents seek to wed them to a rich man, blanch at thoughts of their harried future and seek out the Houses of Tenzerlin and Ghosta in order to buy seawig. This strange species of seaweed, when placed upon a human head, slowly grafts itself into the scalp so that one's hair is replaced with a thick mane of fine green seaweed that grows back even if shaved off.
Men wisely avoid marrying seawigged women for anyone who does so is found the morning after drowned in their own marriage bed. Attempts to avoid this fate have consistently failed as it seems that the lungs of these men unfailingly fill with seawater as the first night of their marriage wears on.
At first attempts were made punish seawigged women for attempting to shirk their attempted duties but soon tales began to spread of spurned suitors forcing seawigs on innocent maidens. And so the trade in seawigs lives on in the quiet corners of Shuttered salons and the freshest seawig is avidly sought after. This is because, while all seawigs constantly drip seawater, all but the freshest of seawigs have an unpleasant odor that is difficult to mask.
Hooks:
-Just what are these taboos? Is there any way to avoid them?
-Just what is seawig really? A parasite? A symbiote? Does it have any other interesting properties?
-Why do the men who marry seawigged women drown in their own beds?
-Some say that by donning a seawig a woman marries herself to the the jealous sea and that one day the sea will come to claim them. Is this true?
-Who are some seawigged women? Who has an especially pungent wig?
-Is there any way to remove a seawig?
-Any good tragedies involving seawig? Perhaps a man assassinated by being married to woman who he didn't know bore a seawig or a woman being kept from marrying her lover by having a seawig forced upon her?
Assignment for Sanglorian: what is the story behind the Goblin obsession with oak trees?
The traditional duties of a wife in the City of Shuttered Windows are onerous indeed. Among these is the requirement to memorize the taboos set forth by the Matriarch and ensure that their households are in compliance with them. The larger a household a woman maintains the more difficult this becomes, which is perhaps part of the reason why the Doge has two wives.
As a result, some eligible women, when told that their parents seek to wed them to a rich man, blanch at thoughts of their harried future and seek out the Houses of Tenzerlin and Ghosta in order to buy seawig. This strange species of seaweed, when placed upon a human head, slowly grafts itself into the scalp so that one's hair is replaced with a thick mane of fine green seaweed that grows back even if shaved off.
Men wisely avoid marrying seawigged women for anyone who does so is found the morning after drowned in their own marriage bed. Attempts to avoid this fate have consistently failed as it seems that the lungs of these men unfailingly fill with seawater as the first night of their marriage wears on.
At first attempts were made punish seawigged women for attempting to shirk their attempted duties but soon tales began to spread of spurned suitors forcing seawigs on innocent maidens. And so the trade in seawigs lives on in the quiet corners of Shuttered salons and the freshest seawig is avidly sought after. This is because, while all seawigs constantly drip seawater, all but the freshest of seawigs have an unpleasant odor that is difficult to mask.
Hooks:
-Just what are these taboos? Is there any way to avoid them?
-Just what is seawig really? A parasite? A symbiote? Does it have any other interesting properties?
-Why do the men who marry seawigged women drown in their own beds?
-Some say that by donning a seawig a woman marries herself to the the jealous sea and that one day the sea will come to claim them. Is this true?
-Who are some seawigged women? Who has an especially pungent wig?
-Is there any way to remove a seawig?
-Any good tragedies involving seawig? Perhaps a man assassinated by being married to woman who he didn't know bore a seawig or a woman being kept from marrying her lover by having a seawig forced upon her?
Assignment for Sanglorian: what is the story behind the Goblin obsession with oak trees?
Last edited:
Electric Wizard
First Post
Isane the Beauty's Treatise on Salt (19.31)
Isane the Beauty recently published a historical and scientific treatise on salt, drawing on her snake library to find obscure details. She starts by examining ancient poems that employ salt as a metaphor for purity. This jars the folk in the Shrouded Lands, who view the mineral with caution because they suspect it could provoke deep sorrow, strict obedience, or the loss of their deepest passion.
She asserts that salt was once the purest substance in the Shrouded Lands. It formed from angels that fell from the sky during a forgotten war. Upon hitting the ground, their bodies turned to salt and shattered. Legends tell that the first salt was pure enough to neutralize poison or halt aging. But the salt absorbed the world's impurities, and its powers became diluted. Today, common salt is only potent enough to preserve food and ward away minor demons.
Occasionally, she states, salt absorbs powerful magic and fundamentally changes. She theorizes that the salt in the Ocean of Bitter Regrets (00.06) became tainted when the Green Lady sat on the shore and wept during the Great Divorce. When Princess Agnothene, the last of Othonoi's First Dynasty, leaped off of a cliff at her father's orders, her spirit may have entered the salt that is now mined at Fallsalt (44.03). As for the salt of the Least Ocean (12.29), some believe it is merely poisoned by the Breath of the Earth, although that doesn't explain the statues sunken in the sand around it. Her treatise is hazy in this section, and she would generously reward more information about the Least Ocean.
Hooks
-How has the academic community and the public reacted to her treatise?
-What were the angels? Why did they fall?
-Does any pure, primordial salt survive in the Shrouded Lands?
-Tell me more about the legends that Isane claims changed the salt.
-What's with the statues surrounding the Least Ocean?
Isane the Beauty recently published a historical and scientific treatise on salt, drawing on her snake library to find obscure details. She starts by examining ancient poems that employ salt as a metaphor for purity. This jars the folk in the Shrouded Lands, who view the mineral with caution because they suspect it could provoke deep sorrow, strict obedience, or the loss of their deepest passion.
She asserts that salt was once the purest substance in the Shrouded Lands. It formed from angels that fell from the sky during a forgotten war. Upon hitting the ground, their bodies turned to salt and shattered. Legends tell that the first salt was pure enough to neutralize poison or halt aging. But the salt absorbed the world's impurities, and its powers became diluted. Today, common salt is only potent enough to preserve food and ward away minor demons.
Occasionally, she states, salt absorbs powerful magic and fundamentally changes. She theorizes that the salt in the Ocean of Bitter Regrets (00.06) became tainted when the Green Lady sat on the shore and wept during the Great Divorce. When Princess Agnothene, the last of Othonoi's First Dynasty, leaped off of a cliff at her father's orders, her spirit may have entered the salt that is now mined at Fallsalt (44.03). As for the salt of the Least Ocean (12.29), some believe it is merely poisoned by the Breath of the Earth, although that doesn't explain the statues sunken in the sand around it. Her treatise is hazy in this section, and she would generously reward more information about the Least Ocean.
Hooks
-How has the academic community and the public reacted to her treatise?
-What were the angels? Why did they fall?
-Does any pure, primordial salt survive in the Shrouded Lands?
-Tell me more about the legends that Isane claims changed the salt.
-What's with the statues surrounding the Least Ocean?
Daztur
Adventurer
This looks like excellent grist for the Shrouded Lands mill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lais_of_Marie_de_France
It hits the "melancholy stories of lost love" aspect head on.
It hits the "melancholy stories of lost love" aspect head on.
Sanglorian
Adventurer
Whoops, dropped the ball on this one folks. But here it is now
Quercus
The sacred oaks that skirt this sloping wood
Are dead--revive their withered roots with blood
Are dead--revive their withered roots with blood
War Song, The Poetry of various Glees, Songs. and Company, London, 1798
They call it quercus. All goblins – and only goblins – are born with it, but it can be learned and lost; just like all humans – and only humans – are born with implicit belief in gods, or all dwarves – and only dwarves – are born stonecunning.
It means a goblin's tie to a particular oak, their heartwood. It means goblinkind's tie to oaks, and forests of oak, and the animals, plants and fungi of oak forests. It means the soul's tie to the world tree. It means the spirit's quality of oakenness. It means the goblin manufacture and trade of all sorts of ingenious galls. It means mastery of “lightning”, by which the goblins call their magic.
Of course, it does not mean all of these things at once. Sometimes, when a goblin walks among the Ten Thousand Stumps, it barely means one of them. But when the blood of a sacrifice gurgles over the roots of a thirsty oak, and a storm brews behind the Grey Mountains, and the martens and magpies are chattering, quercus is strong in the air.
But the goblins' deep ties to oaks are not timeless as they may seem. Many students of history are surprised to learn that the concept of quercus arose after the fall of the goblin empire and the logging of the great goblin oak forests that produced the Ten Thousand Stumps. The dwarves and orcs toppled the trees because of the shelter that they provided goblin guerillas, because of the magic the goblins worked through them and because the goblin economy depended on oak products.
But for their part in this massacre, the orcs and dwarves alienated themselves from oaks. Druidic traditions for those races withered and died. Neither orc nor dwarf ever made it that far into the Kingswood again.
Meanwhile, the oak loomed large in the goblin imagination as the symbol of their defeated empire. More and more, to be goblin was to be oak. Crafts that worked with oak grew in prestige; oak-based magic proved destructive against orcs and dwarves; and the feeding of oaks with the blood of dissidents and cowards kept the goblins focused on revenge.
Quercus may be a goblin construct, a product of ancient trauma, but it is real. All across the north, groves thrive, druids sharpen their sickles, and goblins prepare to take back what was once theirs.
Hooks
Are only humans born with belief in gods? Are all humans really born that way?
Can quercus be learned by others?
What is dwarvish stonecunning?
What are some of the ingenious galls manufactured by goblins?
How does goblin “lightning” work?
Challenge: Electric Wizard:
Who’s the wild man in Blind Midshotgatepool? (http://shrouded-lands.wikia.com/wiki/Wild_men)
Sanglorian
Adventurer
24.17 - Wingburn
The Hallovers are rarely lauded as men of bravery or pluck, but one is - unbeknownst to most - celebrated as a hero. Tycell, squire to Sir Wayne, was born a Hallover. Like all of his family, Tycell kept close a feather that granted its bearer the power of that Witch Clan: to float lightly to the ground no matter the drop. Unlike most Hallovers, he gave it to another: Sir Wayne.
The pair first met some five or ten miles from the Hallover village, now under the Dunger yoke. Sir Wayne had travelled to the Ashberry Mountains to negotiate a loan from the Osseries, who were the bankers of the Barrier Range thanks to their lucrative Ossery Fire sales. Tycell was among the Osseries seeking the hand of a lady in marriage.
Both were spurned. Sir Wayne could not convince the Osseries that Thring would make good on its debts, and Tycell could not convince the proud Witchwomen that floating like a feather was as useful as blasting fire.
When they met on the road from Ossery lands, they exchanged pleasantries and sad stories. The Hallover had sworn that he would marry before his father's death. Each day, his father moved closer to death - subject to a strange malady that made the sufferer literally fade away into nothing.
Sir Wayne took the Witchman in his arms and explained that he knew the cause of the poison. Like the feared Dynastic Sting, its source was the quicklings of the Kingswood. They called it the Stone's Kidnap, because it fetched the subject to the poisoner but one needed the patience of stone before the abduction was complete.
Sir Wayne and Tycell travelled to the father's sickbed and the Thringman dosed the man with lilysilk. The man spoke of a floor chequered white and black, and two looming figures shifting his body and light and dark shapes, as if part of a dance.
The lilysilk had served its intended purpose, and united the man's two selves, allowing him to describe where his body was being spirited away to. Once they had those details, Sir Wayne and Tycell burst into the Chequered Room, and came face to face with the figures who needed half a father for their silent chess match.
Who the figures were, and how Tycell married before his father's death without ever feeling the touch of a woman, are stories for another time. But if you wish to hear them, you could do worse than travel to Wingburn. The village is the last free refuge of Hallovers, who live and intermarry with the Osseries to whom the land belongs.
Hooks
Paladins are said to marry the Green Lady. Is that how Tycell resolved his oath? Or did he marry someone else?
Where can lilysilk be found? How is it manufactured?
Who were the dark figures and why did they need half a man?
Why is Tycell's Hallover heritage forgotten or glossed over?
Why did Thring need a loan from the Osseries?
How did the figures get their hands on Stone's Kidnap?
Do strange powers emerge from the marriage of Hallovers and Osseries?
I thought Witch Clan powers were innate - why does the Hallover one manifest in an item?
What does bestowing a feather token on another man indicate?
---
Daztur, how's the game going? I've thought of some other NWPs:
Pointer (gnomes)
High Tongue (cantrips; talk to nobles)
Brother of Lions
Elector
Crack-Finder
Engineer (from the Hon Soc of Eng)
---
I'm not enamoured of fifth edition, but I've noticed that the paladin’s Oath of the Ancients fits the palladhyu to a tee - to the extent that their first power paralyses people!
The Hallovers are rarely lauded as men of bravery or pluck, but one is - unbeknownst to most - celebrated as a hero. Tycell, squire to Sir Wayne, was born a Hallover. Like all of his family, Tycell kept close a feather that granted its bearer the power of that Witch Clan: to float lightly to the ground no matter the drop. Unlike most Hallovers, he gave it to another: Sir Wayne.
The pair first met some five or ten miles from the Hallover village, now under the Dunger yoke. Sir Wayne had travelled to the Ashberry Mountains to negotiate a loan from the Osseries, who were the bankers of the Barrier Range thanks to their lucrative Ossery Fire sales. Tycell was among the Osseries seeking the hand of a lady in marriage.
Both were spurned. Sir Wayne could not convince the Osseries that Thring would make good on its debts, and Tycell could not convince the proud Witchwomen that floating like a feather was as useful as blasting fire.
When they met on the road from Ossery lands, they exchanged pleasantries and sad stories. The Hallover had sworn that he would marry before his father's death. Each day, his father moved closer to death - subject to a strange malady that made the sufferer literally fade away into nothing.
Sir Wayne took the Witchman in his arms and explained that he knew the cause of the poison. Like the feared Dynastic Sting, its source was the quicklings of the Kingswood. They called it the Stone's Kidnap, because it fetched the subject to the poisoner but one needed the patience of stone before the abduction was complete.
Sir Wayne and Tycell travelled to the father's sickbed and the Thringman dosed the man with lilysilk. The man spoke of a floor chequered white and black, and two looming figures shifting his body and light and dark shapes, as if part of a dance.
The lilysilk had served its intended purpose, and united the man's two selves, allowing him to describe where his body was being spirited away to. Once they had those details, Sir Wayne and Tycell burst into the Chequered Room, and came face to face with the figures who needed half a father for their silent chess match.
Who the figures were, and how Tycell married before his father's death without ever feeling the touch of a woman, are stories for another time. But if you wish to hear them, you could do worse than travel to Wingburn. The village is the last free refuge of Hallovers, who live and intermarry with the Osseries to whom the land belongs.
Hooks
Paladins are said to marry the Green Lady. Is that how Tycell resolved his oath? Or did he marry someone else?
Where can lilysilk be found? How is it manufactured?
Who were the dark figures and why did they need half a man?
Why is Tycell's Hallover heritage forgotten or glossed over?
Why did Thring need a loan from the Osseries?
How did the figures get their hands on Stone's Kidnap?
Do strange powers emerge from the marriage of Hallovers and Osseries?
I thought Witch Clan powers were innate - why does the Hallover one manifest in an item?
What does bestowing a feather token on another man indicate?
---
Daztur, how's the game going? I've thought of some other NWPs:
Pointer (gnomes)
High Tongue (cantrips; talk to nobles)
Brother of Lions
Elector
Crack-Finder
Engineer (from the Hon Soc of Eng)
---
I'm not enamoured of fifth edition, but I've noticed that the paladin’s Oath of the Ancients fits the palladhyu to a tee - to the extent that their first power paralyses people!
Sanglorian
Adventurer
The Unifying Theory of Blood (Jahur)
Inspired by: http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/on-ecology-of-troll.html
Professor Westwright is surprisingly young - perhaps 17 or 18 years old - and his appointment to the Universities Two and One in Jahur is controversial. Some say it is a deliberate snub to the Sanguine Lords; others that his findings are genuinely original and startling.
Westwright’s only publication to date is a thin monograph titled The Unifying Theory of Blood. Compiled from his lectures - for Westwright is illiterate - it supposes that the blood of the Tarrasque represents an elemental mixture. The fall of Bergolast disturbed this delicate balance, and powerfully transformed those who supped the Tarrasque’s blood.
The Bergolasti became trolls. Infected by elemental air, their bodies became malleable and they expanded. Upon exposure to sunlight (itself an elemental mixture), their bodies slowly correct by turning to stone. Likewise, vampires were infected with elemental water and draw power from the life fluids of others. In sunlight, they burn as fire re-enters their bodies.
Westwright assumes that there exist people or animals infected by elemental earth and fire, that would turn to air and water respectively in the sun. He supposes that the Medusa or Basilisk may have been infected, but is yet to test his theory.
Hooks
Two universities? Does this have anything to do with Iano, the two-faced god?
Where’s Westwright from? The name doesn’t sound Jahuri.
[3D][/3D]Does Westwright consider the Sanguine Lords to be vampires? Surely they go about in the sun!
Inspired by: http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/on-ecology-of-troll.html
Professor Westwright is surprisingly young - perhaps 17 or 18 years old - and his appointment to the Universities Two and One in Jahur is controversial. Some say it is a deliberate snub to the Sanguine Lords; others that his findings are genuinely original and startling.
Westwright’s only publication to date is a thin monograph titled The Unifying Theory of Blood. Compiled from his lectures - for Westwright is illiterate - it supposes that the blood of the Tarrasque represents an elemental mixture. The fall of Bergolast disturbed this delicate balance, and powerfully transformed those who supped the Tarrasque’s blood.
The Bergolasti became trolls. Infected by elemental air, their bodies became malleable and they expanded. Upon exposure to sunlight (itself an elemental mixture), their bodies slowly correct by turning to stone. Likewise, vampires were infected with elemental water and draw power from the life fluids of others. In sunlight, they burn as fire re-enters their bodies.
Westwright assumes that there exist people or animals infected by elemental earth and fire, that would turn to air and water respectively in the sun. He supposes that the Medusa or Basilisk may have been infected, but is yet to test his theory.
Hooks
Two universities? Does this have anything to do with Iano, the two-faced god?
Where’s Westwright from? The name doesn’t sound Jahuri.
[3D][/3D]Does Westwright consider the Sanguine Lords to be vampires? Surely they go about in the sun!
Sanglorian
Adventurer
The Horse the Daz Left
Thringish folk settled the swamps and rolling hills and pushed the Daz and other ante-Thringish folk beneath the hills and below the still waters. After the final withdrawal, a delegation of Daz visited the chapel of the Green LAdy at the camp of General Tarengael and cut a horse into the turf. They then rolled back the grass and the white chalk has shone through ever since.
What this gesture from the Daz, not a horse riding people, was meant to convey is unclear. One suggestion that survives in the folk traditions of the cunning folk of Thring is that the horse is an oblique warning of a coming flood. The outlines of horses are often seen in sea froth.
Whatever the explanation, the priests of the Green Lady have not disturbed the horse in all these years.
Hooks
So Castle Tarengael is named after the general who pushed out the Daz? Tell me more.
Is the horse really a flood warning? Or perhaps a threat?
Are there other ante-Thring tribes out there? What are they like?
Thringish folk settled the swamps and rolling hills and pushed the Daz and other ante-Thringish folk beneath the hills and below the still waters. After the final withdrawal, a delegation of Daz visited the chapel of the Green LAdy at the camp of General Tarengael and cut a horse into the turf. They then rolled back the grass and the white chalk has shone through ever since.
What this gesture from the Daz, not a horse riding people, was meant to convey is unclear. One suggestion that survives in the folk traditions of the cunning folk of Thring is that the horse is an oblique warning of a coming flood. The outlines of horses are often seen in sea froth.
Whatever the explanation, the priests of the Green Lady have not disturbed the horse in all these years.
Hooks
So Castle Tarengael is named after the general who pushed out the Daz? Tell me more.
Is the horse really a flood warning? Or perhaps a threat?
Are there other ante-Thring tribes out there? What are they like?
GottfreyUndRoy
First Post
Does anyone have the latest PDF?
Sanglorian
Adventurer
Mikhal Ward
Mikhal Ward is a bore and an eccentric these days, but few have had more extraordinary childhoods than he. According to castle gossip, at least, he was the son of an imprisoned cataphract from the Golden Realm and the Thringish sorcerer who dared creep into the oubilette and tell her of the outside world.
The cataphract’s bindings were too strong for the sorcerer to break, but after Mikhal turned two the sorcerer spirited him away to be raised free.
Unfortunately, father and son passed through the Kingswood and were set upon by the Bastard Prince. The sorcerer was known to the Prince, and had promised his firstborn son in thanks for some forgotten favour. Mikhal was handed over.
For the next ten years, Mikhal was raised by the cold Prince, who taught him the art of astrology and warned of the dangers that stare out of the stars.
There he may have remained, but for the return of his father. The sorcerer bore triumphantly a shrivelled body. According to the sorcerer, he had fathered another child two decades ago, who had died in its first month. The mother had kept the pregnancy and birth from him until then.
The Prince solemnly accepted the body, and released Mikhal into his father’s arms. A few days later, the cries of a child could be heard from the tower.
Hooks
What adventures did Mikhal have in the Prince’s tower?
Who was the cataphract, why was she imprisoned and who was keeping her?
Was the dead child truly the sorcerer’s? And did the PRince bring it back to life? It must be an adult now, if so.
What does Lord Ward think of the Prince now?
Is the sorcerer still alive? Did he ever free the cataphract?
Mikhal Ward is a bore and an eccentric these days, but few have had more extraordinary childhoods than he. According to castle gossip, at least, he was the son of an imprisoned cataphract from the Golden Realm and the Thringish sorcerer who dared creep into the oubilette and tell her of the outside world.
The cataphract’s bindings were too strong for the sorcerer to break, but after Mikhal turned two the sorcerer spirited him away to be raised free.
Unfortunately, father and son passed through the Kingswood and were set upon by the Bastard Prince. The sorcerer was known to the Prince, and had promised his firstborn son in thanks for some forgotten favour. Mikhal was handed over.
For the next ten years, Mikhal was raised by the cold Prince, who taught him the art of astrology and warned of the dangers that stare out of the stars.
There he may have remained, but for the return of his father. The sorcerer bore triumphantly a shrivelled body. According to the sorcerer, he had fathered another child two decades ago, who had died in its first month. The mother had kept the pregnancy and birth from him until then.
The Prince solemnly accepted the body, and released Mikhal into his father’s arms. A few days later, the cries of a child could be heard from the tower.
Hooks
What adventures did Mikhal have in the Prince’s tower?
Who was the cataphract, why was she imprisoned and who was keeping her?
Was the dead child truly the sorcerer’s? And did the PRince bring it back to life? It must be an adult now, if so.
What does Lord Ward think of the Prince now?
Is the sorcerer still alive? Did he ever free the cataphract?
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