Let’s Make a Hexcrawl Setting

[Daztur]

What's been up on my end is that the word doc had gotten big enough to constantly freeze and crash very often. I tried some different word processing programs and while other ones tend to be better than word the document (especially all the art) just eats up too much RAM for my comp to be able to edit the document well. I could just break up the document into a bit of small ones but that'd kill my ability to provide hyperlinks in the document (which I really want).

So after getting frustrated and giving up for a while, what I decided to do was start uploading the whole document bit by bit into a wiki. I've gotten 90 different pages uploaded so far here: http://shrouded-lands.wikia.com/wiki/The_Shrouded_Lands_Wiki What I'd planned to do is then enter all of the hyperlinks between different documents in properly and then cut off the wordier bits into separate pages and then organize things into various topical pages dedicated to discrete NPCs, religions, races etc. etc. so we don't have weird artifacts like having most information about a major religion be sub-hexes of an obscure inn and stuff like that. Basically have the same sort of organization as in Sanglorian's Gore page.

Then I noted the CC license. It's a lot more restrictive than the one we've been operating under (no commercial use whatsoever). I don't care much about that either way (have no plans to ever do anything commercial with this) but I don't want to yank the rug under other people's feet by suddenly porting everything over to a different license as that'd be bad.

So I really want to port things over to a wiki rather than using Word doc or PDF as my comp just doesn't have enough RAM to do anything with the full word doc any more. But I'm open to either working with wikia or another wiki hosting site. Thoughts?

 

[Sanglorian]

Hi Daztur,

I think the wiki's a great idea, although I'd also like the functionality of a hardcopy ... is there a way to export the wiki entries into a DOC or PDF?

Have you changed the CC licence since you posted this? It's CC BY-SA, just like what we're using!

Also, we might be able to help you to port the stuff over to the wiki if you let us know what you want done.

Exciting stuff!

 

[Daztur]

Hi Daztur,

I think the wiki's a great idea, although I'd also like the functionality of a hardcopy ... is there a way to export the wiki entries into a DOC or PDF?

Have you changed the CC licence since you posted this? It's CC BY-SA, just like what we're using!

Also, we might be able to help you to port the stuff over to the wiki if you let us know what you want done.

Exciting stuff!

Great, I must've gotten mixed up about the license. For the offline stuff I think there are ways to download an entire wiki and have it sit offline in your comp. I'm not sure how exactly but there's a bunch of links about how to DL all of wikipedia and use it offline so DLing a single wiki should be doable.

 

[Daztur]

Or other idea: I could just copy and paste bunches of source code together into a few meta wiki pages and you could save them as HTML files that you could read offline. Checking that out in the wiki page you can do that so that it saves all of the images as well. I think that'd kill hyperlinking though...

 

[Sanglorian]

Or other idea: I could just copy and paste bunches of source code together into a few meta wiki pages and you could save them as HTML files that you could read offline. Checking that out in the wiki page you can do that so that it saves all of the images as well. I think that'd kill hyperlinking though...

Hmm, oh well I'll defer to your expertise here in deciding which course to pursue.

 

[Daztur]

I'll make sure there's some way to view the wiki offline (cobbling together big giant HTML pages or something) but the hyperlinks probably won't work.

Up to 124 wiki pages now. Sooooo... much... content... Will just get everything up then get to work seeding everything with hyperlinks, reorganizing them like your Gore chapters and putting in bunches of pages for non-hex stuff like races, critters, NPCs, organizations, etc. etc. The idea of "sub hex" is also going to go away. This'll take a while but I'm finding wiki editing soooooo much easier than wrestling with one giant word doc.

Burning Bright
Hex 47.26

Inspiration: a weird dream I had.

The gnoll clans stay well clear of this stretch of the Burning Lands were the saklas roam. These creatures resemble lions sketched in the air out of cords of bright fire. Human eyes that look upon them burn. Eyelids and blindfold do not help much as they burn away, leaving your eyes exposed. Averting your gaze will help but the saklas are swift, stalking and circling their victims until they are blinded.

The saklas can only be safely summoned and tamed by blind priests in the service of the King in Splendor. It is said that a single lion priest was on the verge of driving off an entire gnollish army with the threat of setting saklas upon them when an unseasonal hailstorm put out the lot of them. Things did not go well for the lion priest after that.

Hook:
-Do saklas do anything to their victims except for burning their eyes out?
-Is there any way to defeat them except for putting out their fires?
-Who are some blind priests that can bind saklas to their will?

The Leviathans of the Earth
Hex 46.09

Inspiration: the Crood caveman movie. The whole movie needs to be strip mined for jungle critters.

The lands beyond the World’s Edge are home to many strange creatures and some of them are the leviathans that are especially common in this stretch of jungle. They are vast creatures that hide their bulk under the forest floor and whose mouths gape wide, forming false caves. They seldom move, which allows grass and even small trees to grow over their bodies, but if roused their anger is terrible. However, they spend most of their time lying still and occasionally taking deep breaths the suck insects and small birds down their gullets.

Hooks:
-Any useful body parts?
-How big do these leviathans grow? Can any of them grow large enough to suck down man-sized creatures?

 

[Electric Wizard]

Bay of Pulgamuro (29.32)

Bergolast's principal sea port, Pulgamuro, perished horribly in the first of the Burning Land's great fires. A flaming cyclone roared in from the plains to the north and raged through the streets, incinerating houses and charring every stone on the city walls coal-black. Citizens rushed en masse into the bay, hoping to outlast the inferno. Those who could not crawl onto boats drowned, and their spirits now haunt the bay.

Gnolls use Pulgamuro's blackened ruins as day camps, but never linger after sunset. This is because every night, a ship made of roiling smoke, teeming with the drowned, appears on the bay. The drowned rush through the city, apprehending anyone alive, and drag them with bloated, clammy hands to their ship. Before the first light of dawn, the vessel departs to the west. It is unclear where it goes. It is only known that it reappears in the bay the next night without exception.

Hooks
-Where else do flaming cyclones appear in the Burning Lands?
-Who recorded Pulgamuro's nightly phenomena?
-Where does the ship go each night?
-Are the spirits of those who died in the fire at peace, or are they doing some haunting as well?
-Tell me more about the drowned.

 

[Daztur]

167 pages in the wiki now.

Way Down in the Hole
Hex 22.02

Inspired by: the Killing Machine by Jack Vance (part of the science fiction Demon Princes quintet which is quite good, really makes space feel big in the way that most science fiction doesn’t)

Clan Hagen has long dominated the quicksilver market thanks to their lands sitting on the richest cinnabar mines in these lands. However after some rather unpleasant alchemical accidents in Jahur some decades back, the bottom dropped out of the quicksilver market.

Faced with the unpleasant prospect of bankruptcy and the even more unpleasant prospect of the Hoard calling in its loans, the dwarves of Clan Hagen decided to move into the ransom brokerage business.

These days, kidnappers of all kinds can bring their charges to the Hagen dwarves for safekeeping in the Hole. If the ransom is paid, Clan Hagen turns it over to the kidnapper (minus a modest brokerage fee of course). If it goes unpaid then Clan Hagen gets to enjoy the use of another pair of hands (and various other useful parts) down in the labs. Clan Hagen tends to not be picky about who pays the ransom and will happily release its charges into the hands of whoever pays their fee.

To keep all of this working smoothly the Hole, where their charges are kept is quite secure. The first line of defense is a quicksilver moat that the dwarves cross in iron rafts and deeper down there are access tunnels lined with frozen quicksilver. To walk through these tunnels without the right gear causes the walls and ceiling to drip and soften thanks to your body heat.

Currently there are a number of prisoners in the Hole but none has attracted as much attention as an elf lady who came the dwarves and declared that she had kidnapped herself and set the ransom at ten thousand ten thousand pieces of gold. The dwarves are, however, worried about where they will keep the giant child that is in their charge if its ransom goes unpaid and it grows much larger.

Hooks:
-What kind of alchemy can be performed with quicksilver?
-What happened in Jahur that caused people to not want to buy quicksilver anymore?
-What experiments happen down in the Clan Hagen labs?
-How do the Clan Hagen dwarves keep the quicksilver from melting and poisoning them?
-Why did the elf lady declare that she had kidnapped herself?
-What’s the story with the giant child?
-Who else is Clan Hagen holding for ransom?
-Who are the kidnappers who go to Clan Hagen to hold their victims? The Hole is pretty out of the way, how do they get there?

Notes: our dwarves and elves are rather nasty, often worse than our kobolds, goblins and gnolls. Interesting our halflings seem to be cheerful and friendly Tolkien-types. I kind of like them that way. Good to have SOME group that you know isn’t going to do terrible things to you if you let your guard down.

 

[Electric Wizard]

The Silverlings of Jahur

Jahur's Imperial Academy of Thaumaturgy, once a beacon of pride that cultivated the Shrouded Lands' most learned sages and wizards, is now a shabby haven of quackery that shames Jahuris nearly as much as their accordion-loving bucket kelp addicts. The staff consists of many astrologers, alchemists and hexers, but few true magic users. Graduates often have only a charm or two, and the occasional mutation, to show for their years of study. A sad number of these mediocre, bohemian alumni turn to criminal enterprises when they are unable to find apprenticeships.

Tafud Moongrey, the half-elven headmaster who frequents the Dead Fish, drove his school's reputation into the ground when he introduced high quantities of quicksilver to cut corners in potion-making. Quicksilver emulsifies certain magical potions, but in significant concentrations, it causes unstable reactions. Those who drank these unstable potions either died or became mentally and physically twisted for life. All "silverlings", as the victims are called, share silver pigmentation of their skin, eyes or hair. They cling together in abandoned buildings and tunnels. A sane minority hustle, beg or steal for a living. Many of the latter silverlings act with an aloofness to their lunatic relatives that would make a Viceroy raise an eyebrow.

Connections
-Some silverlings are rank-and-file footpads, burglars and leg-breakers in the thieves' guild.
-Bucket kelp gives some silverlings psychic abilities. It gives others torturous stomach cramps and terrifying hallucinations.
-The Doge desires a silverling advisor, and will reward any who can bring him one with a degree of sanity. Why?

Hooks
-Tell me about some alumni of this seedy school.
-What mutations do some students develop?
-What reprocussions is Tafud Moongrey facing for his negligence?
-Unscrupulous alchemists use silverling body parts in their forumulae.
-The priests of Iano are reaching out to silverlings, with varying success.
-Silverlings are migrating north in ragged bands, searching for better lives. Some have fallen in with the dwarves of the Burning Lands, where they often are forced into menial labor.

 

[Daztur]

The Fist of Madai

Hex 34.28

Inspired by Pacific Rim

When the tarrasque broke free from Bergolast and took his vengeance on those who had imprisoned him within their city, the survivors became desperate and sought to create a monster of their own to defeat the tarrasque.

And so they called spirits of smoke and flame from the depths and used them to shape the very molten blood of the earth into a colossal humanoid figure they named the Fist of Madai. Its veins coursed with pure quicksilver which collected in a pool within its head where its master sat and issued commands.

But if the survivors of Bergolast hoped that the Fist of Madai would save them, they were fools. The golem’s great month-long battle with the tarrasque scarred the land and caused even more devastation than the tarrasque’s initial rampage.

Finally the tarrasque was driven into the west and the Fist of Madai, drained of its silvery blood over the course of the great struggle, fell to its knees and moved no more.

The gnollish cattle herders of Clan Tukraal often camp in the shadow of the Fist of Madai. They say that the great golem is a sleeping god that will one day awaken and annihilate the gnollish race. In order to forestall this day, Clan Tukrall feeds sleeping potions to captives and chains them high up on the golem’s head so that they may accompany the Fist of Madai in its dreams and distract it from its fate.

Connections:
-The Silverlings of Jahur (see above) claim that the founder of their order was the master of the Fist of Madai, who stumbled into Jahur in a cloud of noxious quicksilver fumes. Others say this is just the sort of mad lie that one can expect from the silverlings.
-The eyes of the Fist of Madai were carved out and placed over the gate of Hoth Akbir (02.05), the giants that sacked that fortress did not realize their value and left them there. The rest of the golem is as intact as anything can be after a month-long battle with the tarrasque.

Hooks:
-Who or what is (was?) Madai?
-Would it be possible to repair the Fist of Madai and have it walk again? You would certainly need a lot of quicksilver.
-What damage did the battle between the tarrasque and the golem inflict on the Burning Lands?
-Is the golem dreaming as the gnolls believe? Where do the gnolls get sleeping potions from?
-What other gnoll clans can you tell me of?
-Who was the master who guided the Fist of Madai? Is what the silverlings say true?
-Why did the dwarven take the Fist’s eyes? Why has none of the rest of the golem been taken?