Let’s Make a Hexcrawl Setting

[Daztur]

Map and compilation have been updated (up to but not including the following post).

This hex is inspired by the first entry in the random table here: The Dungeon Dozen: Yeah, But THIS Troll...

The Monolith of Grahakzahak
Hex 15.01

The troll known as the Prophet of Grahakzahak (a troll god whose name means "he of 99 heads" or, more figuratively, "he who has grown a 99th head after the first 98 were chopped off") is a strange troll indeed. He wanders these lands carrying a bastard sword in one hand like a scalpel (the pommel of which resembles a mouth opened in a a never-ending scream). He asks all travelers who he encounters to join him in prayer to Grahakzahak and consume a slice of his flesh, which he helpfully removes with his sword, so that the glory of all of the heads of his god may enter. Those who eat of a troll's flesh find themselves changed by this experience...

Those who refuse to worship Grahakzahak enrage his prophet, but combat can be avoided if one is clever and polite. Any rudeness will result in sudden violence in which the Prophet attacks with the sword in one hand while biting and grabbing at his enemy. He will focus his attacks on whoever he judges to have been least respectful for Grahakzahak.

The Prophet maintains his home around a great monolith that he has raised and inscribed with rough troll runes (at 15.01) at the foot of the Grey Mountains. The monolith is surrounded by a rude village in which worshipers of various races live under the protection of the Prophet. The Prophet pays tribute to Thorek Ironhide (14.00), as he believes that this is necessary to keep his village safe while he is away proselytizing, but resents doing so.

Hooks:
-Where did the troll get his sword from? Is it magical?
-What happens if you eat troll flesh? What change has come over the villagers from having done so repeatedly?
-What is the Prophet planning to do to get out of having to pay tribute to Thorek Ironhide?

 

[Daztur]

The map and compilation have been completely updated.

There are several random encounters/wandering NPCs in the compilation. What I will do now is connect each of them to a specific hex so that they can be slotted into the compilation more easily. See above for information about each of these NPCs or look up the entry for these hexes in the compilation to see a full write-up for each.

Dagmar
The Dwarven Cairn
Hex 06.06

Rising out of the plain of the Westmarches is a small stone cairn that was raised by the dwarf Dagmar for his brother. Although Dagmar made sure that his brother's body was stripped bare after his death, the bones still remain. Dagmar, although hardly the sentimental type, occasionally returns here to brood over his brother's bones, get raging drunk and scream curses at them.

Hook:
-What was the cause of the death of Dagmar's brother.

Tehaar the Huntress
Tehaar's Hunting Grounds
Hex 29.10

Although Tehaar ranges widely across the Kingswood in search of intruders, where she can be found most often is at the far southern border of the Kingswood where the forest approaches the City of Shuttered Windows (29.14). Here is where humanity swarms the thickest and where is must be watched the most closely.

Sir Alard of Oldstones
Sir Alard's Bower
Hex 23.10

Sir Alard, the cursed knight, wanders widely across the Kingswood, but he often finds himself back where he incurred the curse of the elf lady: a secluded leafy bower in the southwestern reaches of the Kingswood.

The Mockingbird
The Nest of the Mockingbird
Hex 25.07.

Although its strange cries can be heard throughout the Kingswood the mockingbird nests here at (25.07).

The Ancient Gardener
Her entry has been merged with the Garden of Amelar (36.04) entry.

The Isle of the Heget
Hex 46.15

Note: this post was inspired by another excellent post at the Monsters and Manuals blog, but some details have been added and changed and the text is mine.

The nameless crayfish god (48.13) is not the only danger of the chill grey waters of the eastern end of the Keening Sea. Far from established trade routes is a hilly isle that the local fishermen are careful to avoid where the Heget and her sons live.

The Heget, a webbed and withered female humanoid, emerges from her cave at night and creeps about her isle searching and searching for any sign of passing ships or foolish travelers. If she finds any she attempts to enchant the most handsome male she can spy with a powerful enchantment that causes her to become irresistible. Inflamed with lust, all but the most strong-minded males are drawn to her and after having sex they are eaten by the Heget.

Nourished by their father's flesh and blood, a new son grows rapidly in the Heget's womb and is born three months later. These sons grow quickly into creatures that are much like their fathers, but stunted in mind and body. The Heget ignores her sons completely and the island is often filled with their hungry moans.

A small percentage of these sons (perhaps 10%) grow true, resembling their fathers almost exactly and often even gaining fragments of their fathers' memories. One of the Heget's healthier sons looks eerily similar to old paintings of the Doge of the City of Shuttered Windows (29.14).

Hooks:
-Why does one of the Heget's sons look like the Doge? Is he the father? How could that be if the Heget eats each of her mates?
-Who else has the Heget eaten?

Courier Bats
Additional information about Hex 40.06

This entry is adapted from one by "chutup."

Most of the creatures that lurk beyond the World's Edge (42.07) are terrestrial, but the courier bats are an exception to this. As the name implies, they bear a resemblance to regular bats, but they are much larger, with a wingspan of around 10 feet. Those who have studied them up close can also attest that their heads have a more canine appearance, and from their chests protrude a pair of limp, almost vestigial paws. The Courier Bats emerge from the savage forest more or less at random, though they are seen more often during the time of the new moon. They fly west from the cliff-face, past the Broken Spear, and circle around the Kingswood before proceeding on toward the west. None have ever been sighted on a return journey.

Their curious name comes from the bats' habit of carrying objects, not in their weak forepaws but in their strong lower legs. These objects are usually parcels wrapped in paper or cloth, and may contain any number of items - useful, valuable or simply bizarre. Where these items originate from is a mystery. However, it is known to certain well-travelled men that the roses from the Garden of Amelar (36.04), when burned, attract the attention of the Courier Bats. The kobolds of the Broken Spear take advantage of this, setting ambushes atop the tower to kill the bats and steal the objects they are carrying.

Rumor has it that recently, the kobolds retrieved from a Courier Bat an item of great value, perhaps even one with mystical properties. If this is true, it is doubtful whether they will understand its true significance.

Hooks:
- Where do the Courier Bats come from? Is someone sending them?
- Where do the Courier Bats go, and why do they never return?
- What did the kobolds find?

 

[Sanglorian]

I think that's a good way of handling wandering encounters.

The other option I was thinking of is having empty hexes, and then a random table to fill empty hexes.

For example:

The Kingswood stretches from 25.07 to 29.10, all forest. If a hex is 'empty' (doesn't have a designated encounter), roll on the Kingswood encounter list:

1. The Ancient Gardener
2. Tehaar
3. Etc.

This would make it easier to fill in the map, since there's plenty of empty hexes still on the map

 

[Daztur]

I think that's a good way of handling wandering encounters.

The other option I was thinking of is having empty hexes, and then a random table to fill empty hexes.

For example:

The Kingswood stretches from 25.07 to 29.10, all forest. If a hex is 'empty' (doesn't have a designated encounter), roll on the Kingswood encounter list:

1. The Ancient Gardener
2. Tehaar
3. Etc.

This would make it easier to fill in the map, since there's plenty of empty hexes still on the map

Yeah, I'm planning something along those lines. Here's my plan:

I'll continue adapting stuff from the rpg.net thread, which should take another two or three weeks, while continuing to add more new stuff. Then I'll hack up the map into regions, write up at least starts of random encounters (more or less as you describe) for each region, write up region overviews and sort hexes into regions. I'll edit the hex descriptions and change the format around a bit to make them flow better.

With the compilation getting so long now, hacking things up into regions will make it better organized and less intimidating to new readers. Once I've finished with that (will take a while, am shooing for some time in April but it might take into May) I'll post the compilation on a couple different forums, like (un)reason does with his Dragon read-through project.

I'm in this for the long haul, I'll get the hexes filled up eventually, it'll just take a while

 

[chutup]

The Old Delasar Mansion (08.03)

Several decades ago, the Delasar family dwelled in their ancestral abode, a sprawling and decaying mansion in the midst of an overgrown parkland. However, they grew envious of the larger and more imposing castle nearby, inhabited by the monks known as the Poor Brothers. One night, all the Poor Brothers vanished together, leaving a rather suspicious deed which signed over all their lands to the Delasars. The rotting old mansion was abandoned, and the Lord and Lady Delasar moved into their current apartments.

Since that time, the woods around the mansion have grown even more wild, and the mansion itself more decayed. It is not entirely uninhabited, though. The Lady Delasar's demented brother, Ogwyn Egglurs, refused to quit the home where he had lived most of his adult life, and he dwells there still. To keep him company, his sister has conjured up a tribe of homonculi, half-man and half-beetle, created in the Beetle Badlands (06.05). Each homonculus is roughly three feet tall, vaguely insectoid, and vicious when provoked. Ogwyn has even taken a she-beetle to be his wife. Part of the Delasar's sumptous vegetable crop goes to feeding this population.

The mansion is large and old and some branches of it have not been properly explored since long before the Delasars left. Rumour has it that the Lady uses the place to store her more esoteric treasures and spellbooks. However, the beetle-men will fight to defend the mansion and their master.

Hooks:
- How did the Delasars get rid of the Poor Brothers, and where are they now?
- From where does the Egglurs family hail?
- What other secrets lurk in the Delasar family history? Does dark sorcery come from this side of the family, or from the Egglurs'?

 

[chutup]

The Lair of the Grey Worm (46.06)

Deep in the forests beyond the World's Edge, there lies a lake warmed from beneath. In a watery cave by the edge of this lake, hung around with vines, one may find the lair of a terrible monster known as the grey worm. Though not as large as its purple cousin, it is known for its rapacious greed and animal cunning. It sometimes enters the lake, where it will ambush the su-giraffes who drink there. One such beast, swallowed whole, will satiate the grey worm for two weeks.

There is a special warrant for the capture - not the killing - of the grey worm, issued by one Divinio Ambersmyth of the Shuttered City. Divinio is a would-be boss in the Wedding Band (30.15), and a rival of the ruthless Bogarus Bolger. Divinio does not have much money or reputation, but he does have one thing: a live specimen of the burning eagle, a monster that is related to the firebirds but is much more vicious. A legend, popularized by the exiled poet Trimueil, claims that the burning eagle and the grey worm represent the opposing elements of fire and water, and that the two creatures have been mortal enemies since the dawn times.

A battle in the Wedding Band between the burning eagle and the grey worm would draw unprecedented crowds. Divinio is under pressure to display his eagle in combat, but he insists on waiting until he has the grey worm as well. However, to capture the worm and carry it all the way back to the Shuttered City would be a difficult task indeed.

Hooks:
- Why is the lake heated from below?
- Su-giraffes? What the hell are those?
- Who is the poet Trimueil, and where was he exiled from? What other poems has he written?
- Are the burning eagle and the grey worm really ancestral enemies?

 

[Daztur]

The compilation and map do not include this post and the two above by chutup. It will be brought up to date tomorrow (probably).

The Creche of a Million Young: additional information relating to 29.14
Inspired by some snippets at rolang.com, but the text and most of the details are mine.

In a dark back alley near the Gnomish Quarter of the City of Shuttered Windows (29.14) one can find the Creche of a Million Young. Almost completely obscured from sight by criss-crossing walkways, the only entrance is what was once an upper window that leads down into the halls of this temple.

Inside the Creche of a Million Young, the buzzing of flies almost drowns out the droning of the priests who surround a deep pit, the Creche itself. Within the pit is a vast swarm of insects and other things that creep and crawl. The priests draw these out of the pit and give one to each worshiper who approaches. Some release their gift, others consume it, while others take it home to burn it while composing a prayer or do stranger things. Some worshipers, in a display of devotion, leap down into the pit and sink into the Young.

Until recently the Creche was a marginal temple with a small knot of regular worshipers and a few aging priests. Soon it seemed that there would not be enough funerals to keep the creatures of the pit fed. All of that changed when a strange man, veiled and robed in black, stormed into the temple. When he was challenged by the surprised priests, he cast their leader into the pit and took his place.

The new High Priest claims to be Dormond of the Crooked Oak (see 04.31) but, as he never removes his veil or cloak, who can say? A supporter of the old High Priest once claimed, before being found in bed with his blood drained dry and the marks of ten thousand mosquitoes on his skin, that he is in fact Ogwyn Egglurs (08.03, see chutup's post above).

Whoever the High Priest is, he has certainly been active. The Creche now throngs with worshippers, so many that the press of their numbers occassionally knocks one of them into the pit and, while the Creche of a Million Young looks as dingy as ever, its worshipers have established a strong presence in the Undercity. Many still mock the Creche of a Million Young as the "bug pit" but they now make sure to do so quietly or they could end up like Armond Sauvaughn a proud man who mocked the "bug eaters" but who now refuses to leave the well-netted gondola of his balloon for wherever he goes his very presence draws thousands upon thousands of insects that crawl over his skin with no regard for their own safety.

To his most dedicated followers, the High Priest speaks of the final researches of Severard of the Seven Circles (13.08) and how his final and greatest work was never completed...

Hooks:
-Just what were Severard's final researches? What is the High Priest planning to do?
-Who is the High Priest anyway? Dormond? Ogwyn? Severard's lich? Someone else?
-What other practices does this cult have?

The King in Splendor: additional information relating to 25.04

The King in Splendor, the Sword that Slays the Night, is a sun god. He is usually portrayed as a muscular man with an eyeless lion head, a whip grasped in one hand and a manacle chained to the other. However, in his most ancient temples he is sometimes portrayed as a snake with a lion’s head and gems in the place of eyes. He promises his faithful a day that never ends, when all things that creep in darkness will be rooted out and when the fields will never be fallow.

While popular across the waters, the King in Splendor has few followers in these lands. But those few followers are uncommonly devout. In his temples and in the homes of the faithful, an opening is always left in the ceiling for the light of noon to pour down through, in order to be a reminder of the blessings of the King and of the need to perform the Threefold Rite. The hole that lets in the light of noon into the Sundial Inn (25.04) was surely built by a devotee of the King in Splendor, no doubt Pork Pie Stannev, the previous owner of the Inn who was abducted by the Whispering Sisters (see 29.14) some years past.

The Lost Lighthouse was once maintained by the "lion priests" of the King in Splendor but due to the actions of Nikos Farver, this is no longer the case (see 46.10).

Hooks:
-What is the Threefold Rite?
-How did Regulus Verlime secure ownership of the Sundial Inn after the abduction of Stannev?
-Anything of interest about the cult of the King in Splendor?

 

[Daztur]

Still no map/compilation update, will do it tonight (Korean time).

The Gardens of the Sea
Hex 29.15

The Doge claims that he rules the City of Shuttered Windows (29.14), but it is truly ruled by its belly. If the city does not eat, how long can even the mightiest live before the mobs haul their palaces down? Therefore the Electors of the city do all they can to keep the mob well fed and, while the cattle and ostrich drives down from the Freeholds (18.07) are certainly important the true bread basket of the City are the Gardens of the Sea.

Most farmers bring water to their fields either by praying for rain or digging ditches, but the practical people of the City bring their fields to the water. In the shallow waters of the coast of the freshwater Keening Sea they mound cartloads of dirt to make artificial islands (surrounded by posts driven into the mud to slow erosion) in which corn and other crops grow in well-watered abundance. These artificial islands are connected by a thousand wooden bridges, as it would not be wide to wade in these waters and risk losing a foot to the giant snapping turtles.

The great fear that grips the gardeners of the sea is that a storm will come and wash away their crops. Thankfully, a great breakwater rises from the sea (roughly from where 28.16, 29.15 and 29.16 meet and extending to the northeast past the Wedding Band (30.15)). The gardeners say that the breakwater was there even before the City and it certainly looks old enough. It is a massive belt of statues that the waves of centuries have washed smoothed but strangely entwined inhuman forms can still be made out.

Other gardens exist up and down the coast but they are at the mercy of the storms that blow in off the Keening Sea so they are few fewer than those behind the breakwater.

Hooks:
-Where else does the City get its food?
-Why so many snapping turtles?
-Who built the great breakwater and what do the ancient worn-down statues depict?

The Election of the Doges
Additional information about hex 29.14

Whenever a Doge of the City of Shuttered Windows (29.14) dies, the Electors of the city meet deep in the bowels of the Old Council Tower and thirty of their number are chosen randomly. Then nine of these thirty are randomly selected. Then these nine elect forty Electors, of whom twelve are chosen randomly. These twelve elect twenty-five. Then nine of these twenty-five are selected randomly who then elect forty-five. These forty-five, in turn, are randomly reduced to eleven. These eleven then elect forty-one and these forty-one then finally vote to elect the new Doge, with twenty-five votes being needed rather than a simple majority. Some foreigners have tried to subvert the elections with bribery and blackmail but ended up giving up in befuddlement.

Note: this is how the Doges of Venice were really elected, well except for the bit about meeting underground. When you want weird history is often the best place to look.

Hook:
-What method do the Electors use to choose some of their number randomly?
-What interesting things lie in the Old Council Tower?

 

[chutup]

The Isle of Dolyeades, the Sacred Grove (33.16)

In the midst of the Keening Sea, some way distant from the City of Shuttered Windows, lies a small forested island named Dolyeades. Here there is a small monastery inhabited by an ascetic order of the Temple Indivisible. This order, the Brothers of the Grove, spend most of their time praying quietly and fishing in the nearby Alphic Current. They are also charged with the sacred duty of interpreting the will of their God Alberon, specifically with regard to the election of the Doge.

When the new Doge is chosen, at one point forty Electors must randomly be reduced to twelve. When this happens, the Electors send out a message to the Isle of Dolyeades and begin fasting as they await the reply. At the monastery, the names of the forty Electors are inscribed upon holy parchments, which are tied around the necks of forty albino cattle (from the Lands of the Night Cattle). The cattle are set loose to wander the isle and graze. Meanwhile the most senior monks travel to the Sacred Grove and wait. The first nine cattle to arrive in the Grove represent the nine Electors who will progress to the next stage of voting, back in the Shuttered City.

This method generally works well, save for the unfortunate case several years ago when three cattle entered the Grove simultaneously, tying for ninth place. The resulting events, which involved the legal and bodily recombination of three Electors into a single person, are still controversial to this day.

Hooks:
- What's the Alphic Current?
- Is it possible to fiddle this part of the selection process? Hell, is somebody fiddling it already?
- What happened to the three Electors combined as one, and where are they/he now?

 

[chutup]

The Chasm of the Hounds
Additional information for hex 04.08 (The Plains of Dogtur)

Few know why the shamans of the Dogtur choose to move their camp constantly around the plains. However, if they were ever to set up permanent residence in the area, they would soon learn. An evil curse was placed upon these plains, which takes the form of a massive sinkhole opening up suddenly beneath one's feet. Though it can appear anywhere, the sinkhole is most often drawn toward large concentrations of human activity, especially if they stay in one place for too long. None have settled for longer than a month in this place before they draw the attention of the terrible chasm.

Those who approach the chasm from the side, or somehow survive its initial assault, will find it possible to descend into that place and visit the tunnels beyond. No matter where the sinkhole appears, the same tunnels will be found, right down to the items (and skeletons) left there by previous delvers. The tunnels are inhabited primarily by dogs. Some are harmless, while others are vicious. The most dangerous are the enormous wolfhounds, big as boars, who can bite a man in two.

These tunnels are the source of the Dogtur Plains' profusion of dogs. However, nobody is sure where the dogs originate from. Rumour has it that deep within the catacombs there resides an ur-dog, an enormous bitch with a hundred teats, constantly suckling one brood while she swells up with the next.

Hooks:
- What otherworldly treasures are to be found in the chasm?
- Who placed the curse on the plains originally? Did it target the Dogtur, or are they just unfortunate bystanders?
- What other types of dog-monsters dwell here?
- Has anyone tried to settle these plains and been swallowed up by the pit?