Let’s Make a Hexcrawl Setting

[Daztur]

I do like the anti-temptation workouts. Fits right in.

Hmm, another thought just struck me - what about deliberately making incomplete gazetteers to reach out to new contributors? If every gazetteer had three or four unfilled hexes, there'd be a low entry point for contributors: there's three or four hexes just waiting to be filled, and here's a manageable-sized gazetteer of the stuff around them.

Yes, good idea. It also prevents putting a stamp on certain regions as "done" that you were worried about earlier.

So if we do a write-up covering eastern Thring and Witch Clan inhabited areas (avoiding hexes dominated by Shuttered-connected religions as they'd require a lot of info dumping) we could have a page each for 19 or so hexes (including some blank pages for blank hexes for people to fill in themselves), some one page dungeon-style locations (I'll FINALLY buy Hexographer for the dungeon mapper feature so if you sketch some stuff out on graph paper I'd be able to make a map out of it, of course if you have actual artistic skill unlike me then so much the better), an introduction with basic info about the Barrier Range and Thring, a critter listing in the back and I'm thinking a random Witch Clan generator. Random generators are fun, popular and a good way of communicating a setting. Anything else? Should be pretty simple to make a 36 page PDF out of that.

 

[Daztur]

Let's FINALLY finish stealing hexes from: http://www.rolang.com/archives/444 (ideas changed around a good bit and all text mine but rolang is awesome I really wished he blogged more often)

Smuggler's Isle
Hex 17.16

Note the fangbeast is a gorgonopsian (http://www.maropeng.co.za/images/mediagallery/evolution_gorgonopsian_evolution.jpg) not a dinosaur. Sailbeasts are dimetrodons. For lizardman pets grab anything theraspid or from the Permian or anything big and scaly that isn't a dinosaur. Big giant scary crocodiles would also be fine, they probably have some grass-eating big scaly beasts of burden as well. Maybe dinodontosaurus (not a dinosaur despite its name).

The Duke of Thring charges a heavy toll on merchants seeking to cross the River of Crystal Waters and the raft trade up and down the river is a jealously-guarded monopoly. As a result, many merchants seeking to avoid paying such annoying costs have sought smugglers to take them across the river.

But the Duke is a cagey man and he has instructed some of his peasants to pose as smugglers and offer to make merchants a pontoon bridge out of fishing boats from one bank of the river to a small island in the middle and then move their boats over to the other side of the island to take them the rest of the way across (they patiently explain that they don't have enough boats to bridge the entire river at once). However, when the merchants are all on the island in the middle of the river they are abandoned by the "smugglers" and left stranded there until they pay the Duke a heavy fine.

However, the most recent caravan that the Duke played this trick on was a lizardman caravan (41.24). However instead of paying the fine the Duke demanded they have fortified the island, taken up fishing and have become a major nuisance to the raftsmen who ply the river thanks to their vicious amphibious sailbeasts. Now the shoe is on the other foot and the lizardmen are refusing the leave unless the Duke pay them reparations. An attempt to land a force of knights and convince the lizardmen of reason at sword point was repulsed by a pack of fangbeasts which ripped the unfortunate knights into tasty morsels.

The Duke is at his wit's end thanks to the smell of roasting knight that is even now wafting over his castle but is reluctant to swallow his pride and pay up.

Connection:

-The mud around Smuggler's Island is especially sought after by the Society of Engineers (29.14.49) as an ingredient in their cement. This is not because it is especially strong but because it has a weak magical resonance that slowly fades with time, allowing the engineers to keep track of how old a certain piece of construction is. This is of especial use to the Department of Obscure Annexes as it allows them to detect suspicious new construction that may hide secret rooms.

Hooks:
-Who monopolizes the raft trade?
-What other beasts do the lizardmen have? Where do they get them?
-What is the lizardman caravan carrying? Who were they planning to trade with?

 

[Daztur]

The Bite of the Bogswine
Addition information about Hex 17.16

Adapted from here: http://www.rolang.com/archives/133

The bogswine is an amphibious pig-like creature with buck teeth and long quills that line and back which contain no poison whatsoever. However those who are pricked by the bogswine's quills become convinced that they have been poisoned and soon display psychosomatic symptoms. This magical confusion is so powerful than anyone asked to about the antidote will have a different answer. Perhaps they will proscribe profuse bleeding, ogre spittle, huge amounts of hobgoblin shroomwine, complete inundation in a barrel of Thringish brandy, bardic singing to regulate the heart and avoid palpitations or become convinced that the victim's blood will coagulate into silver before they die.

As a result of this Thringish raftsmen give the bogswine a wide berth, which is just how the creatures like it.

Hooks:
-What sort of pratfalls have resulted from bogswine "poison?"
-It is possible to weaponize the stuff?

 

[Sanglorian]

So if we do a write-up covering eastern Thring and Witch Clan inhabited areas (avoiding hexes dominated by Shuttered-connected religions as they'd require a lot of info dumping) we could have a page each for 19 or so hexes (including some blank pages for blank hexes for people to fill in themselves), some one page dungeon-style locations (I'll FINALLY buy Hexographer for the dungeon mapper feature so if you sketch some stuff out on graph paper I'd be able to make a map out of it, of course if you have actual artistic skill unlike me then so much the better), an introduction with basic info about the Barrier Range and Thring, a critter listing in the back and I'm thinking a random Witch Clan generator. Random generators are fun, popular and a good way of communicating a setting. Anything else? Should be pretty simple to make a 36 page PDF out of that.

Sounds good! I've been jotting down some stuff for a Witch Clan generator. So far I've written down some names, some spells, some quirks and some types of relationship with other clans if you folks want to chip in.

If you're after more public domain art, you could do worse than the 20,000 entries in LACMA's archives: http://collections.lacma.org/


Flicking through an old notebook I found a suggestion written down for the Shrouded Lands: setting bibles like Magic: the Gathering does. These are heavy on illustrations and light on text; the text that they do have sketches out key themes and emotions rather than detailed geography, sociology and history. Anyway, I think the gazetteers are great and we should stay the course - just thought I'd share an older idea.

One thing I've been thinking about recently is how great it would be to have a book of short stories set in the Shrouded Lands. You could frame them all as being stories told by knights to make Princess Elandra cry.

Anyway, expanding on Princess Elandra:


Two Suitors of Princess Elandra


Sir Mimslet



One suitor to the fair princess is Sir Mimslet, the brutish Thringish knight of harlequin chequer. More suited to ribald jokes than sorrowful tales, the knight has little inspiration and is waiting at court until he can bribe or cajole someone into suggesting a story. The daughter of Ser Gareth Lemarr is cutting her hair in the Glade of Womanhood (07.18) at this very moment because she knows a story that will bring tears to Elandra and hopes that if she shares it with Sir Mimslet while disguised as a boy he will accept her as his squire.


The woman Lemarr will tell not a fable to Sir Mimslet, but the truth. Six years ago, the daughter of the Duke of Thring played with a daughter of the knight Ser Lemarr. The girlchild Lemarr had been left as a hostage to ensure peace between Gore and Thring. The two children grew close, and the Gorean girl soothed Elandra whenever the hardness of the world wet the princess' eyes.


The Duke could not have this, and one night seized Lemarr's child and delivered her up to her father. Ser Lemarr was ill-pleased and the custom of hostage-keeping between the nations ended. More importantly to the Duke, sapphires of the finest water tumbled from Elandra's eyes for weeks on end.


The Gorean girl becomes a woman today, and in the Glade of Womanhood will become a man. Disguising her voice and figure, she will come to the court, tell the story to Sir Mimslet, and hope to make Elandra cry tears of recognition.



Hooks:

Is the woman Lemarr's only motive love, or is she cognisant of the Duke's plan to invade Gore?
What is the woman Lemarr's first name?

The Sparrow Knight


The Sparrow Knight is a rogue who fights in moon elephant leather and keeps a feather token around his neck. His notoriety comes from losing the Battle of the Hand, and yet surviving – indeed, floating gently to earth just as Sir Waine once did.

The connection runs deeper than this: he claims to know Sir Waine's secrets and the source of the feather token. More traditional knights consider the Sparrow Knight's irreverent style an insult to Sir Waine, but the knight contends that Sir Waine was a radical in his day, creating the customs that are now considered timeless.


The Sparrow Knight claims to have answered the mystery of the Haunted Statue (10.09) – a tale of woe so acute that the princess will have no choice but to fall to weeping.


Hooks:

Where do the feather tokens come from? Is the Sparrow Knight truly associated with Sir Waine?

Does the Sparrow Knight truly have an explanation for the Haunted Statue?

 

[Daztur]

Sanglorian, few quick notes:
-I noted it way back when but the basic idea for Witch Clans comes from: http://www.amazon.com/Gifts-Annals-Western-Shore-Ursula/dp/0152051244 I like a lot of Le Guin's older stuff a great deal but this and a lot of her newer stuff seems like "ha ha, you like my really interesting premise do you? Want exciting stuff to happen? Well screw you, this isn't escapist fantasy, this is SERIOUS! I'm going to write a bunch about relationships and feelings and goats and taking care of goats!" Still, very interesting premise.
-Interesting ideas about the art and the short stories. There are a lot of bits that we have that could be expanded into one. The problem with an art-focused setting book is that it's much much easier to put together an art-heavy setting book when you can pay people to make the art that you want. It's pretty tough to do it when you've got to rely on public domain stuff. Still, I'm pretty proud of the stuff I've put together so maybe that's an option, especially when I have time to troll through some more public domain art.
-For an updated compilation (like we talked about earlier) maybe easier to update stuff one chapter at a time, starting with the smallest ones. Trying to yank out, say, all information about the religions in this setting is a bit headache inducing probably, maybe better to take it one region at a time and build bit by bit saving Shuttered for last sort of like when I converted the old no-region document into the current one.

Edit: one more thought, since melancholy runs through the setting pretty strongly, people trying to tell stories to Elandra would work well as a framing device for a Shuttered (very) short story anthology. Good challenge for PCs as well, they get to be an heir of a Duchy if they can make the poor girl cry...

 

[Electric Wizard]

Castle of Dances (15.18)
Connected to Hex 3.13

This small castle sits atop a hill covered in special flowers called dancer's blooms. These small yellow flowers can be brewed into a tea that enhances the drinker's dexterity and sense of rhythm. Although dancer's blooms are sought by many in the Shrouded Lands, the lords and ladies of the castle guard them jealously. They award them only to exceptional dancers during their annual Maiden's Day festival. Hopefuls must complete a series of grueling dances with tea-enhanced courtiers of the castle. Past winners include Dust Men (40.20.01) and the infamous Giles Chosard (9.06) as well as lords and ladies of Thring. If someone who is not a lord or lady of the Castle of Dances dares pick a dancer's bloom, his or her limbs will begin flailing in a grotesque dance that lasts until he or she dies of exhaustion.

Kolfrosta of the Temple of the Dead God (3.13) has kidnapped young Baron Hawace's sister Hleid. The priestess took great risks kidnapping the Thringish lady because Hleid is dragonblooded. She could be a potentially powerful sorceress and receptive to dark ways. It is true that Hleid has the traces of dragon's blood that surface in her family every few generations, but her life of indolence has left her capable of little more than cantrips. Still, Kolfrosta believes that followers of Tiamat will venture across the lands to rally around a dragonblooded priestess.

Connections
-Lady Maratan's snickersnees (07.17) have managed to smuggle dancer's blooms from the castle.

Hooks
-Why do dancer's blooms grow only here?
-The Castle of Dances must have exceptional duelists. Who are some memorable ones?
-Who has won the dance contests? Who has lost them?
-What are the Shrouded Lands' most fashionable dances?
-Who else is dragonblooded? How do humans become dragonblooded?
-Does the Temple of the Dead God ever clash with the Tiamatan Revival?

 

[Electric Wizard]

The Two Adders
Additional information about Hex 40.20

Hyfalls' largest tavern, the Two Adders, is built from the hulls of two overturned ships. In their lives, they were proud war-barques of the August City. The peeling, faded black snakes painted on the gunwales mark them as ships of Blindsnake.

The Two Adders' landlady is Jaustina, a scowling, iron-haired Shuttered woman who behaves like she is in the tavern against her will. Despite her attitude, her delicious alligator pies and nightly pot of death games keep her business brisk. Pot of death is a game unique to Hyfalls that involves shuffling around a number of long-necked clay pots. One or more pots contains a venomous centipede, while the rest are empty. Restless caravan guards and sailors place bets on whether or not the players will get bitten when they stick their hands in the pots.

Jaustina helps the hobgoblins beneath the city smuggle artifacts out of Hyfalls. For an uncomfortably long time, she has held a great talisman made of Tiamat bone shards (3.13.01). The talisman is shaped like a woman, and is almost too large to be worn by a human. It was supposed to be picked up by an agent of the Tiamatan Revival (29.14), but he died during a drunken pot of death game before he could retrieve it. The Tiamatan Revival, however, suspects that the Temple Invisible has interfered with the delivery and are biding their time.

The talisman is known as Tiamat's Nurse. A woman who wears it during her pregnancy will give birth to a dragonblooded child. First-generation dragonblooded children are magical prodigies, and are inclined towards evil. Tiamat's Nurse, locked in its chest beneath the inn, sends intense dreams to the pregnant women of Hyfalls. Some of these women have been awakened while sleepwalking through the Two Adders with great urgency. The women all awaken violently, going as far to wield stray mugs or knives. Jaustina knows the talisman is behind the disturbances, but she fears casting it into the Keening Sea.

Hooks
-What remains of the August City's fleet?
-Are deaths common in pot of death? How do the authorities view the game?
-Who buys the smuggled artifacts?
-Tell me about the history of Tiamat's Nurse. When was it created? Who has worn it in the past? How did it end up in Hyfalls?

 

[Sanglorian]

Sanglorian, few quick notes:
-I noted it way back when but the basic idea for Witch Clans comes from: http://www.amazon.com/Gifts-Annals-Western-Shore-Ursula/dp/0152051244 I like a lot of Le Guin's older stuff a great deal but this and a lot of her newer stuff seems like "ha ha, you like my really interesting premise do you? Want exciting stuff to happen? Well screw you, this isn't escapist fantasy, this is SERIOUS! I'm going to write a bunch about relationships and feelings and goats and taking care of goats!" Still, very interesting premise.[1]
-Interesting ideas about the art and the short stories. There are a lot of bits that we have that could be expanded into one. The problem with an art-focused setting book is that it's much much easier to put together an art-heavy setting book when you can pay people to make the art that you want. It's pretty tough to do it when you've got to rely on public domain stuff. Still, I'm pretty proud of the stuff I've put together so maybe that's an option, especially when I have time to troll through some more public domain art.
-For an updated compilation (like we talked about earlier) maybe easier to update stuff one chapter at a time, starting with the smallest ones. Trying to yank out, say, all information about the religions in this setting is a bit headache inducing probably, maybe better to take it one region at a time and build bit by bit saving Shuttered for last sort of like when I converted the old no-region document into the current one.[2]

Edit: one more thought, since melancholy runs through the setting pretty strongly, people trying to tell stories to Elandra would work well as a framing device for a Shuttered (very) short story anthology. Good challenge for PCs as well, they get to be an heir of a Duchy if they can make the poor girl cry...

[1] I've added the book to Appendix N.

[2] If you post the DOCX for version 2.0, I'll make a start on a few of the shorter regions.

[...] I agree with the other things you said.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to say: rather than start on the shorter regions, why not start on Thring and the Barrier Ranges, to be ready for our gazetteer project?

EDIT 2:

1. I've updated the appendices.

2. I forgot the main reason I was posting, which was to share what I have of the Witch Clan random table so far. Everyone, post some ideas!

The Witch Clans
Quirk
Can only cast the reverse of the assigned spell
Almost extinct
Have the spell of another clan
Stole the spell from something or someone else
Invented the spell
Are from outside the Barrier Ranges
Itinerant
Populous
Have a taboo against using the spell
Can only cast the spell on their selves and their possessions
Can only use the spells on others
Presence allows others to cast the spell but cannot cast it themselves
Can only cast the spell in the presence of magical beings


Spell
Feeblemind
Knock
Hold person
Waterbreathing
Web
Word of recall
Heat metal
Locate object
Predict weather
Time stop
Hostile polymorph
Wall of stone
Faerie fire
Sticks to snakes
Fake memory
Uncertainty: each time a creature looks at the target object, it has a 50% change of existing or of not existing for that creature
Psychic limb
Breath giant bubbles: can float inside them, trap people inside them, obscure self
Animate shadows
Sticky skin: Can turn ones own skin and the skin of those one is in contact with highly adhesive.
Colour ward: The target is immune to anything of a particular colour and anyone wearing that colour. (Thanks D&D w PS)


Relationship with another witch clan
Intermarriage
Slavery
Neighbours
Debtor and financier
Terror
War
Trade
Mutual cooperation
Ignorance
Colonisation
Alliance
Ancient rift


Name
The Bunkums
The Milligrubs
The Rawmaish
The Pappekaks
The Barmpots
The Moiders
The Davenports
The Druthers
The Kittywumpuses
The Mazads
The Stupnagles
The Megrims
The Fantods
The Blatherskites
The Pluguglys
The Sennights

 

[Daztur]

A Being of Salt and Chalk
Hex 09.09

The builders of the Forgotten City-State (22.25) were a cunning race, some even say that they were the race of god-men who lived before elves and orcs were sundered (17.17.05 see “The Beauty of Olga Pignose,” this entry isn’t in most recent compilation but will be in the next) but that is a pack of lies. Their magic was great for their very homes were built from the bodies of sandlings and clay golems served their every need. But their city was dry and spare for they had no soul for beauty so to acquire artists they built a great seawater fountain and drew from it being of salt and chalk (briefly mentioned in 33.04) from the cold realms of the demons down under sea.

These elementals of salt and chalk were masters of art and plucked from the peoples of the earth the most beautiful maidens and most handsome youths to adorn their masters’ city, their skin turned to alabaster and their forms molded and refined to bring out beauty that never existed in life.

When the old forgotten city-state fell, the beings of salt and chalk crumbled to dust or lurked in brackish pools but the greatest of them broke free after some few centuries of effort. One of these was blowing across the lands that are now the Freeholds, seeking out the ocean it had been severed from so long ago when it caught sight of a human girl more beautiful than any statue. It blew out of a cloud that night and with the voice of the south wind the being of salt and chalk called out to the girl, granted her heart’s desire and won her love. But when her lover came to embrace her it cringed away from her soft damp flesh, her gaping pores and her wet fishy eyes. If only she had the skin of true alabaster and the grace of an elemental, then it could love her.

And so the being of salt and chalk took thirteen great lizardman shamans and bound them to the drinkers mouth (04.02) and had them cry out in voices that only children and secret things can hear (see 50.26) for a year and a day until a being of soot and ash emerged from the fire of the earth. There they bargained in elf wings and dinosaur feathers, in dead men’s love and innocent hate, in the hearts of kindly elves the spleen of cowardly orcs until at last a bargain was struck and the being of salt and chalk won a heart of black diamond.


This it placed within the chest of its love so that she would live even after it turned her skin to alabaster. And live and sing she still does, but even a black diamond heart cannot turn a human into an elemental and as her limbs turned to stone they stiffened and moved no more (see is now the “haunted” statue of 10.09). The being of salt and chalk stays nearby in a quiet woodland pool from which he occasionally emerges to tear apart beautiful things.

Or at least so says the Sparrow Knight, but he has been known to lie (see Sanglorian’s entry above).

Hooks:
-How much of the story is true? If it is true why has nobody broken the statue open and taken the black diamond heart?
-Who were the people of the Forgotten City-State anyway?
-There are demons down under the sea?
-Who was the girl and how did the elemental win her love?
-The voices of lizardmen are too high-pitched for (adult) humans to hear. What does this have to do with them being able to call elementals? I thought elves were the ones who usually summoned them?
-What does all this have to do with the art of packmaking (33.04)?

General thoughts about elementals: what are elementals in this setting anyway, it seems to have become a convention to refer to them as “being of X and X,” we have Sanglorian’s pactmaking post and old references to elves summoning bunches of them to beat down the Verlimes but not much else. Here’s some elemental ideas: http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.kr/2013/03/on-ecology-of-elementals.html What I’m leaning towards is having them be bits of the world that are alive rather than interlopers from another plane but if you have another idea feel free to run with it.

Responses to Sanglorian:
-1.17 and 2.0 are the same thing, the only difference is that 2.0 has the art moved around a bit to reduce white space. Version 2.01 will be up by the end of the month with this month’s batch of hexes and more art. I can post what I have now if you want, I’m a bit behind but not THAT much (just entered in the Pactmaking post). I’m planning to get cracking on new compilation/gazetteer come April which gives me some time to get caught up on entering stuff into the compilation and do another sweep-through for art (still a lot of stuff from the F**k Yeah Vintage Illustration tumblr that I haven’t entered in yet).
-Thring and the Barrier Range would be fine. To do the Barrier Peaks will have to rope in a bunch of Chimalia/Alberon/Tiamat stuff though since the eastern fringe of the Range hits on them.
-For the generator I like what you’ve been doing and we might have to raid even more bizarre spells from D&D with PS. I might tweak it a bit, would want to allow people to use their own spell lists to maybe some entries like random spell of 1^st level etc. Maybe also we could have a random inbreeding table…

 

[Electric Wizard]

Last Laugh (27.16)
Connected to Hexes (26.15) and (29.14)

Loguiso's Wall, a massive fortification that began in the foothills of the Barrier Range and ended in the tepid tide of the Keening Sea, rose here before Shuttered's conquest of the August City. Starting with Loguiso II, doge after doge poured gold into building a wall that would prevent an invasion from the south. Of course, during the war of conquest, the armies of the August City never came within sight of its turrets.

A clan of gnomes, now known in Shuttered as the Backbiters, were hired to carve the dungeons beneath the wall. Their contracts guaranteed that they would be given rights to own the tunnels if ever the wall was ever rendered obsolete. Unfortunately for the gnomes, the Templars of Canes Sanguis (26.15) immediately claimed ownership of the wall when the city's secular armies abandoned it. The templars were to use the passages and chambers, and they evicted the gnomes. The gnomes packed their belongings onto donkeys, gathered their children and trudged south. When they were out of sight of their old home, the tunnels collapsed. The earth swallowed the wall and every templar on it.

The catastrophe left a fissure that impedes travel to this day. Overgrown with grass, trees and shrub, it zig-zags across the land like a scar. Delvers descend into the fissure hoping to recover lost treasure, especially the mitril and adamantine spears. But the outraged spirits of the templars haunt what remains of the dungeon. The parts of the complex that have been exorcised and hallowed become homes for undesirable creatures. Several trolls, a crazed minotaur and an ogre are known to keep lairs here. The minotaur is believed to possess an adamantine spear, on which he skewers and roasts adventurers.

Connections
-Many of the Backbiters settled in Azurnay (24.26). The few who ventured on and weren't devoured by gnolls or the wyvern stopped in Grasthifal (48.33).

Hooks
-Why were gnomes hired to dig the tunnels?
-How did the Backbiters make all of the tunnels collapse?
-What did the templars want to do with the wall?
-Were the templars able to achieve any vengeance against the Backbiters?
-Who exorcises the angry spirits?
-From where did the monstrous inhabitants come?