Let’s Make a Hexcrawl Setting

[Daztur]

What system you thinking of running this setting with chutup?

Here's two hexes, I'm working on two more that I'll try to post later today:

The Cave of Sinda the Cursed
Hex: 22.15

During the day this cave is carefully concealed by a massive boulder that is rolled in front of the entrance. Each night, the great ogress Sinda moves the boulder aside and roams the nearby lands in search of food before returning to the cave each day.

Sinda never emerges from the cave during the day, for when the sun rises her powerful body shrinks and weakens until it is barely stronger than that of a human. However, her daytime body is pleasing to look upon, seeming to combine all of the most beauteous features of her orcish and dwarven ancestors, having the cutest possible upturned nose and only the barest wisps of a beard.

Each day Sinda huddles in fear within her cave, knowing that when the sun shines she is far too weak to defend herself from any intruders. She has much hate for the curse that has been laid on her that robs her of her strength each day and wishes to see it broken.

Hooks:
-What caused Sinda’s curse? I s there any way to break it?
-Has anyone (a knight of Thring?) fallen for Sinda after somehow seeing her daytime form?
-Is there any connection between Sinda and the nearby ogress Ushcka (21.15)? Are they sisters?

The Tower of the Bastard Prince
Hex 34.04

Those who walk the paths of the Kingswood at night, for the most part, safe from the elves of the seelie court, who gather in the Holt of the Bloodied King (29.07) each night. But they are not safe from the bastard prince, a strange elf whose left half of night black and whose right half was as white as cream.

He, and a collection of mirror images, will often walk up to bands of travellers and ask if he may perform an augury on one of them. If they agree, he will bind one of them still with magic and slash them just so with a silver knife. As the blood pours down he will mark how the blood falls on the ground in relation to the position of the stars above and learn something of what the future holds. While their compatriot lies bleeding, the prince will excitedly tell them of his augury and perhaps give them rich gifts. The prince is a temperamental being and if those he meets react unfavorably he will either stalk off, continue his augury without giving their actions any heed or kill them all. Those who attempt to fight the prince will find doing so difficult due to his mirror images, mithril mail and various defensive charms. He has sometimes been known to chat pleasantly about star alignments with humans trying to kill him while his fingers drip with blood.

After each of his auguries he retreats to his tower in the northern edge of the Kingswood and consult his volumes of curious lore. He believes that he is the heir to both the seelie and the unseelie courts and if he pries just the right secrets from the stars he will be able to bind the elven courts together and rule over both as their true king.

Perhaps there is some truth to his claims. Barely a day before the unseelie court went off into exile, the unseelie’s queen favorite daughter bore him. Some say that the father was the Bloodied King’s eldest son and that this bastard child’s birth was the last straw that led to the departure of the unseelie court.

In any case, as the half-blooded prince grew to manhood he wished to see the stars that he had heard so much about. So he told the Bloodied King that as he had the blood of unseelie elves, he should be able to walk under the stars as his mother had done. The Bloodied King agreed and allowed him to walk under the stars as his mother and under the sun as his father, but forbade him from ever entering the Holt of the elves again. Since then he has kept away from other elves, his dreams growing ever stranger and grander.

His tower is cunningly designed to appear much older than it is. Only the top floor is occupied and that is shrouded in illusion while the rest of the tower appears to be a hollow gutted ruin. The bastard prince enters his home by walking to the middle of the rock-strewn floor of the tower and levitating up to a trapdoor that gives entrance to his rooms on the top floor. Those who attempt to trespass in his tower will find many dangers that appear to be natural hazards but that have actually be placed there by the prince: strange molds, loose stones in just the wrong places, a nest of stirges and several other surprises.

Hooks:
-What has the prince learned from the stars so far? What is he trying to do that he believes will unite the sundered courts under his rule?

 

[Daztur]

The Dryad’s Bridge
Hex 32.05

Here, not far from Olmstead Keep (31.04) lies a stream that rushes down from the Grey Mountains to pour into the Witchwater. It is spanned by a great fallen tree that is the home of a dryad. The tree just barely hangs to life and its hollow-eyed dryad sustains it by eating ravenously. Usually the dryad can be dealt with by giving her bribes in the form of food, enough of which will even induce her to allow travellers to use her tree as a bridge. However, if she is especially hungry she may attack.

As for the stream itself, except in the spring when it is swollen with melting snows pouring down off the Grey Mountains, it is easy to ford. Doing so may not be wise since, although its magic is far less potent than that of the Witchwater itself, it induces a strong drowsiness in mortals that are immersed in its waters.

Hooks:
-Is it possible to set the dryad’s tree upright and heal it?
-If this small stream can put you to sleep, what can the far greater Witchwater do?

The Rhyming Bear
Hex 35.04

Here within the Kingswood lies the log cabin of the nordabjorn bard Arinlag Fivefish. As he is a bear and not a man the elves tolerate his presence, if just barely. Although few travellers venture this deep into the Kingswood, Arinlag welcomes those who do, provided they pay him well with songs, stories and tales from home (14.00). Those who bore him are required to amuse him in other ways that they may not find so pleasant. If the elves notice that Arinlag has visitors, they will attempt to lure them out into the Kingswood where they may be freely killed or captured. The bear cares little if his visitors fall for elven wiles and lets any foolish enough to do so go to their fates.

Although Arinlag lives alone (except for several mules), there are three sets of everything from plates to chairs to beds in this house, one seeming to have been designed for a lady bear and another for a child. The story behind this is that Arinlag and Kavanjr were once rivals for the love of Karsta the Slender, the favorite daughter of the bjornajarl himself.

They fought for Karsta first with rhymes (Arinlag singing of a single eye that was too tired to look up at the moon) and then with claws and teeth. Foolishly, Arinlag let Kavanjr choose the site of their duel and the older bear chose the middle of a nearby lake. The rangy young bear had difficulty keeping his head above water while the older bard was kept afloat by his great paunch, which let him rain down blows on Arinlag. Following his defeat, which he barely survived, Arinlag Fivefish was exiled from the Marche of the bears and has been biding his time until the day of his return when he will be able take back Karsta Thoreksdottir and the cute cub that he believes to be his. While he waits, Arinlag has been eating well and sports a most impressive gut.

Hooks:
-Why is Arinlag called “Fivefish”?
-What are the “other ways” that boring travellers are required to amuse Arinlag?
-How to elves try to lure traveller’s out of Arinlag’s cabin.
-Are the mules intelligent? Why does Arinlag keep them?
-There’s got to be a way to work porridge and Goldilocks in here somewhere…

Some potential random encounters for the Kingswood stolen from the Secret Santicore article “Encounters in a Dark & Spooky Forest” by Danny Peck, tweaked a bit (or a lot in some cases) by me to fit better with the Kingswood:
1. Flowering vines whose scent causes a feeling of great happiness and wellbeing that makes it very difficult do anything violent (including defending oneself).
2. A tree bearing several hanged bodies on which mushrooms grow in great numbers. These same mushrooms are a popular ingredient Sundial Inn cooking and are not usually seen elsewhere.
3. Along the course of a small steam, all of the trees bear leaves that are a strange sickly yellow.
4. Chirping vampire bats fly out of the night. They will focus their attacks on larger targets (for example pack animals).
5. Dozens of large rats scurry past the feat of the party, squeaking happily.
6. A dappled cat begins following the party and refuses to be driven off, if killed the dapples on its back will spell out the name of its killer in elfish.
7. A great white hart is seen grazing on some grass, if approached it becomes clear that the deer is feasting on the remains of a human hunter.
8. An elf bearing a human infant.
9. If near the Welt Road at night: a small caravan trundles through the woods. There is a blockage of some sort in the Welt Road tunnel and they are seeking to bypass it by going aboveground.
10. A band of travelling performers have made a camp and invite the party to join them. They say that they are on the road to Lanford-on-the-Zann and have never heard of the City of Shuttered Windows or any other location in the Shrouded Lands.
11. A ragged human with clothes made of freebark grins at the party through bloodstained lips. He holds meat of some sort in his black-nailed hands.
12. A beautiful youth or maiden runs heedless through the woods, already covered with bramble scratches. In the distance a hunting horn sounds…

I’ll use these and a few others to seed my Kingswood night and day encounter tables. Any simple ideas that you guys have would be enormously appreciated. There’s a few more in the book that I’ll adapt over later but have to get to work now. I think that’s a good start.

 

[Daztur]

Some mundane encounters and then more weird ones (some mine some from Santicore, which is cool and free you should go track it down):
13. Lots of tics live here. The PCs might not notice them until a few hours later.
14. Lots of poison ivy here, going around it will take some time.
15. Several bodies have been buried shallowly here and chained together. Disturbing the ground here will lead to them rising angrily.
16. If near the edge of the forest a handsome and honest-looking man who claims to be a wood cutter invites the party home to rest in his cabin. If they come with him they learn that the ax is not for cutting trees...
17. An elf passes with several glassy-eyed humans or human-like creatures following in his wake, their feet bleeding and leaving red footprints that they do not seem to notice. Perhaps one of them is someone known to one of the party.
18. Along the side of the Witchwater a woman of indeterminate race asks the party to dive in an search for her baby. When they turn around she is gone.
19. The rain slowly grows salty and a strange feeling comes over the party...
20. A thick fog rolls in, obscuring sight. A hazy figure speaks the name of one of the party and disappears.
21. The weather becomes strangely out of season, hail falls in summer and a warm wind blows over the snow in winter.
22. The ground seems solid but if walked on it opens up into a sinkhole the leads to a cave that lies below...
23. At stream blocks the party's path. If they came the same way before and there was not a stream before it's there anyway.

These are pretty tentative, mostly a lot of ideas to throw at the wall.

 

[Daztur]

And the Westmarches (the NW bit that was filled in at the start of this thread) added in as well. At the end of the PDF are a few pages of Shuttered stuff but that hasn't been edited yet: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6z-iUIH4P8aNTJCMWhqVFFVUUE

 

[Sanglorian]

The Glade of Womanhood (07.18)
Connects to 07.17

The people of Gore hold their coming of age rituals in this lush glade. Here, boys become men, girls become women and girls become men.

It is the fourteenth birthday of the daughter of Ser Gareth Lemarr, her coming of age. She has not seen him since she was four. He was a brave snickersnee of Lady Natala, and she has used his razor-like sword to cut her hair short. Such is the way of the people of Gore, that girls will be girls and boys will be boys, but a woman may be a man whenever she needs.

For all their common blood and low station, the snickersnees are brave and ruthless knights. Upon entering Lady Natala’s service, they paint their shields black and tear all heraldry from their clothes. Each kill that they make in the Lady’s name allows them to add a band of red to their shields. Gareth’s shield was entirely red, but it was lost alongside him.

The circumstances of Ser Gareth’s death are unclear, but include a brutish Thringish knight called Sir Mimslet. Heis known by his harlequin chequer and kite shield. The daughter of Gareth plans to become the man’s squire and discover more about the death of her father.

Hooks
Can men be women whenever they need?
What does it mean for a maid of Gore to be a man? Is it just a change in behaviour and dress?
What happened to Ser Gareth and what did Sir Mimslet have to do with it?
What other famous snickersnees are there?

 

[Daztur]

New map:
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/3671/shroudedlandsjune14.png

 

[Daztur]

The Air Down There
General information about the lands beyond the World's Edge

Perhaps you have climbed Mount Scroshia and felt the air grow cold and thin so that you must fight it for breath. We can see from this that air is chained to the earth by the works of ancient elementals and nowhere do the chains bind tighter than in the jungles that lay in the sunken lands beyond the World's Edge.

There the air is thick, so thick that you can almost feel it gripping you with its damp fingers. While barely breathing a man can draw enough wind to feed his lungs and the great beasts that grow large in this jungle gasp and wheeze and often die if taken into the upper world. Just as the thick air seems to feed the beasts of this land, it feeds any fires that are started which would rage with a fury to rival those of the Burning Lands if it were not for all the wet.

But enough of all this talk, I know what you want me to tell you of. About how I strapped canvas wings to my arms and flew above the trees. You see, when the air is thick enough you can fly like a bird...

 

[Daztur]

The Gems of Stolen Fire
Additional information about hex 03.04

The dwarven monks (03.04) are fools for they have been blinded by their greed. The orange gems that they have been gathering from the pool of the firebirds (04.05) and selling are the tears of the being of smoke and fire that they have imprisoned. They are motes of stolen fire and function as delayed blast fireballs. The elemental is slowly weakening due to the spring water that pours over it and keeps it trapped and when it dies all of the necklaces, rings and bangles that the dwarven monks have sold will explode into fireballs.

The wizards of this land have had difficulty identifying theme gems for what they are since they are not the work of wizardly artifice and so they have been slowly spreading east and south into Thring and the Freeholds. Recently they have been seen in the City of Shuttered Windows itself and Amanita Tenzerlin (see chutup’s write-up a few pages back) has been seen wearing a beautiful necklace with a full dozen of these fiery gems.

Hooks:
-Does anyone know the true nature of these gems?
-How long does the imprisoned being of smoke and fire have to live?
-Who else owns some of these gems?
-Just how powerful will these fireballs be when they finally go off?

 

[chutup]

The Mounts of Thring

Since the horses went out of the world, the question of the best mount for riding upon has been an eternally unresolved question. Today in Thring, the most valiant knights (cynics would say the richest) ride upon the resurrected horses of old, but most are forced to find other means of transport. Each castle generally chooses a different form of mount, and the lords often bicker about which is the best choice.

At Castle Dinivar, northmost of the Thringish holdings, the knights ride upon black ostriches bred for their prodigious size. These beasts are fleet-footed and vicious with their beaks, but they are also prone to madness and early death; the sages say their bodies are too large for their souls to animate.

At Castle Steadfast the knights ride on mules. Despite the derision heaped upon them by the other lords, the mules are steady and reliable, and many are the stories of a Steadfast man who was pulled to safety by his faithful mount.

At Castle Tarengael the mounts are enormous bad-tempered boars. They are faithful to strong owners, but may unexpectedly devour a rider who does not take them in hand. Recently the Foolish Sages attempted an experiment to transmute the Duke's cattle into 'cowhorses', promising a new age of easy riding. The results were less than satisfactory.

At the Forked Castle, they ride on enormous lizards captured from the Devil's Fingers. These beasts are swift over rough terrain and can even climb steep slopes; however they are notorious cowards.

It is said that some individual knights have their own forms of transport. The Spellknight uses his magic to summon a ghostly charger. Lord Spiriwen the Cruel is known to ride on a horse-shaped palanquin carried by six stocky slaves.

Hooks:
- What other weird mounts are used by the Knights of Thring and others?
- What happened to the cowhorses?
- Tell me more about the Spellknight or Lord Spiriwen.

(This makes me wonder what happens when an AD&D paladin reaches 5th level and sees a vision of his warhorse. Does it appear in a someone else's posession, and he has to go steal it? Or does he have a divine right to it once he's had the vision?)

 

[Daztur]

cutup: there is one thing missing in your post

Castle Karandur
Hex 13.17

Inspired by Korean myth, that picture and Derinkuyu Underground City - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As an western outpost of Thring that defies the Lords Sanguine, Castle Karandur is engaged in almost-constant low level warfare with its neighbors. Due to this, many visitors are surprised that the "castle" is little more than a wooden palisade.

But, despite this, Castle Karandur has never fallen for behind its simple above-ground defenses lies a dense network of caves, some recently excavated and others based on far older construction. These caves hold storehouses, halls, chapels, paths towards alternate exits and many many bears.

Unlike the knights of the rest of Thring who pine for horseflesh, the warriors of Karandur want nothing better than a good strong riding bear. These beasts do not enjoy much popularity elsewhere because they are difficult to tame, have ravenous appetites, sleep much of the winter and do not have the endurance for long campaigns. In the face of these arguments, the men and women of Karandur confidently reply that they ride bears.

In fact, it is said that the line of the Lady of Karandur can be traced back to a bear. According to legend, there were once three bear sisters who looked upon a Thringish knight, were smitten with his beauty and sought to marry him. They called out to the Pacharia (27.19) to be turned into human women and were told that do to so they must stay in their face and eat nothing but wormroot (11.03) each day for a year and a day. The eldest sister ate and ate the bitter root, but soon grew tired of it and went outside to hunt and found a succulent young fawn to eat. The second sister ate and ate but as winter approached she slept away the days. But the youngest sister kept awake all winter long by planting her paws the waters of a cold spring and was kept alive by the warmth of the wormroot that she ate that warmed the very heart within her and made her long for the sweet face of her knight.

When spring came, the thick coat of the youngest bear sister fell away and she emerged from it a beautiful lady. She chose Yelga as her human name, married her knight and founded what has become Castle Karandur in the very cave where she spent her miserable sleepless winter.

Today the people of Castle Karandur still remember her, or at least her legend, and there is a great bear skin displayed above the hearth of their greatest hall that they say was the first skin of Lady Yelga herself.

Compared with the inhabitants of the rest of Thring, these people are quite clannish, with the Lord of the castle often being a distant cousin of his Lady. The people of Karandur rely strongly on each other in the face of the dangers that the Lords Sanguine pose and there is less of a division between the men who marry nobly and the men who marry commonly, while many of the women of Karandur wear mail more often than skirts.

Hooks:
-What is the "far older construction" in the cave system?
-What interesting rooms can be found within the cave system?
-Who was the knight that the three bear sisters loved?
-What else is known about the Pacharia? (note: this legend takes place before Ulthar founded the Duchy of Thring when it was still ruled by a series of petty kings see 27.19).
-Why would staying in doors and eating strange roots turn a bear into a woman?
-Is the bear skin really Yelga's? Does it have any magical properties?
-Who are the current Lord and Lady of Karandur?
-Any interesting bear-riding men or women that we should know about?

For the AD&D paladin's warhorse, I'm imagining that that would depend on the intentions of the Green Lady. Maybe they're told to take a horse form someone unworthy of it, or find a dead horse and bring it back to life (leading to them having a colt but oh well) or getting some other kind of animal that's not a horse. I'd probably make a mini random table