It is a time of concord. It is a time of discord. Peace has finally come between the thousand warring lords of Alba, but it was not won through friendship. A warlord holds the pope for a hostage, and all the great isles hold their breath. Meanwhile, hundreds of unemployed retainers and thousands of disloyal soldiers turn to brigandry on the waves or the hardscrabble life of the wanderer, as news of wealth and horror from farther and farther lands marks a new age of conquest, expansion, and misery.
As always, I'm glad I included the little details that make the relationship between the ruleset and the world strong-- making sure to include dogs if there's a dog language PCs can learn, exc. But I could have gone a lot harder in that, and it would have gone well I think.
As a setting, Tolkenor has plenty of danger, wonder, and political-dramatic potential, but it lacks an overarching crisis that makes everything doubly precarious and animates all the best settings. A massive invasion, or outright domestic crisis of some sort.
Perhaps more overt risk to the life of piracy, or the end of nobility or something. Inspiration from the source material. Why isn't a snooty bureaucrat on the brink of gathering a massive fleet to shoot every outlaw in the head with a cannon?
Glad I have those little harbor marks on the border connections between land and ocean. That's a step over previous efforts.
There should be way more connection between regions. PCs following each lead should feel blown around.
There should be way more interactivity. More buttons that make regions explode, or move, or something. I've done better at that before.
If I was about to run a Tolkenor campaign, I'd put more work into making a generator for making regions on the fly. Like Josie's stocking procedure, but with a table of elements and themes particular to the setting.
Coming up with spirits on the fly on a per-region basis is fine, but if spirits are going to be local powers, I'd like some of them to feel as present as some of the political powers. That would give priests and religious events a feeling of actuality.
Because some find it hard to get excited about a ruleset, I've made a regioncrawl to go with this one.
I wanted to write out a ruleset that encompassed lesson I've learned and the ways my tastes have changed since writing and running Vain the Sword.
From playing B/X, I got more into the quadratic, simple leveled advancement (that OG GLOG also had) where you may get to level 4 relatively quickly and advance very slowly from there, but with a complete arsenal of class tools. I became fluent in the pace of gold-for-XP and other classic systems I was only discovering a few years ago.
From playing Traveller, I fell in love with the career character creation system and skill acquisition. I wondered if I could use a similar framework to also make a procedure of the introduction of PC families and connections to the world that I had previously attempted in slapdash ways.
From playing Lost Fable, I solidified how I wanted to do overland travel for regioncrawls.
Looking back on Vain the Sword, I do enjoy the 8 hp maximum and the risk that the Table of Consequences gives, which can be tweaked with a custom table for every campaign.
Just as knights are the flower of chivalry, so are settings the flower of nobility. Accordingly, I have a polished version with a setting integrated and a more generic skeleton in case I want to adapt it for another campaign. I hope you enjoy!
You see a lot of empty kitchens in dungeons. Often lacking any adventure-critical features, they're a great example of an "empty" room that isn't actually empty, being full of objects and substances that are useful with a bit of creativity. This kitchen goes the other direction. It's dense! This is an attempted entry into the "adventurecomponent" mode, but I'm not sure if it would quite take up an entire session of gaming. It's a bit more random, with less of a story to unfold, so it relies more on whatever dungeon you plug it into. I've pitched this adventure component at a lower target. It's a bit more mundane, less overpowering, less high-powered.
To avoid confusion when you plug this room into the dungeon of your choice, I've avoided describing the dimensions of the room or referring to any cardinal directions.
Thanks to Reneford for contributing ideas to this project
In the center of the room, a cauldron simmers over a tame fire.
Along one wall, there is a counter with three crooked cabinets.
Along another, a mounted cabinet rack sits.
Along another wall, pots, pans, and poultry hang from a rack above a long table.
Along the last wall is an old barrel and some sacks.
Cauldron
The cauldron contains a thin bone broth. It has clearly been in near-constant use for days and days, a sturdy servant to a bustling brothier.
The fire burns unfed. It is Blasegwynn, a sort of domestic and nephilonious angel with a fire-ring form and a curious eye that floats freely in her flaming gyre-body. (Stats as floating bear). Quiet unless approached, she is testy from lack of company, and feels like an Atlas, boiling this cauldron all the time. Idleness annoys her, and good work is her cheer. She defers to priestly types, embarrassed to have skipped out on Heaven's plans.
Counter
The countertop is empty except for a trio of fresh heads of cabbage; a chipped, lidded jar; and a swollen, red-stained booklet titled Pliny's Healthful Preparations.
The jar contains a trio of mundane mice, swollen from a feast that trapped them when the lid fell into place.
The book, bloodstained, is haunted by Mago's malice (see below) and will attack those who touch it without his placations (stats as ghoul). If calmed, Turned or slain without damaging it, the recipes within provide sustaining nourishment, increasing HP gained from resting by 1. Some of the simpler recipes include:
Turkey Red Wine Stew: mix a milk of ground almonds and honey. Stew turkey chunks with butter, red wine, cloves, and slivered almonds. Add pepper, allspice, salt and the almond milk, then serve.
Bonnekaal: fry beans with salt. Throw water, oats, and two finely chopped red onions in a pan, cooking until they make a sauce, then add a head of finely chopped cabbage until it crisps. Add the beans, then butter, paprika, and garlic to taste. Then serve.
Pheasant à L'oignon: melt butter, adding parsley and thyme, stirring as it separates until it forms a reduction. Rub the pheasant inside and out. Beat six eggs, mixing them with a finely chopped onion, half cup of cheese, and a pinch of salt and allspice. Place the pheasant in a roasting pan, insert the mixture into the bird, and roast for an hour. Cool, then serve.
The left cabinet contains a bag of almonds, a cup full of peanut shells, dried raspberries, and an old silver handbell. If the bell is rung while within the kitchen, it summons Mago, (stats as troll) entering through a door as though he had just stepped out. An immortal thane from long ago and intermediate step between ogre and elf, he is under a curse, compelled to prepare and serve food for any who ask, and unable to truly leave. Interested to hear of historical events of the last century, but happy to get the better of someone who doesn't understand that they can win any fight with him by asking for breakfast.
The center cabinet gently rattles in slow inhales and exhales, and shows signs of disuse. Within nest dozens of rebel silverware, largely rustic peasant knives led by two-pronged pokers and an officious spoon. Individually, an implement is no more dangerous than a big wasp. Together, use the stats of a giant weasel. The rebels are placated by food or recognition of their sovereignty, and hate daggers and tridents as class traitors.
The right cabinet contains a small jar of honey, several shriveled red onions, and most of a bottle of amateurish but lovingly made red wine.
Mounted Cabinet
The cabinet is lined with cramped shelves full of spices. In addition to a sack of salt, a small shaker of pepper, some allspice, thyme, mace, paprika (poisonous to elves), parsley, cloves, garlic, and rosemary, there is more surprising fare:
An ashy glass jar labeled "Burn-Not". Within is a miniature powdery corpse resembling a baby, an alien, or a plant root. If brought close to fire, the remains are revived, blazing to life. This humanoid princeling from the elemental plane of fire (stats as lesser fire elemental) will likely strike out, confused and disoriented, at the strange creatures they find themselves suddenly surrounded by.
Nepenthene Salt: pale blue and warm. Each dose consumed increases Intelligence by 1 and decreases Wisdom by 1. Someone who consumes two or more doses sees their eyes go neon green and finds that they can stomach (and indeed, crave) seawater, and dream of flying stones at the edge of night.. Four doses remain in the jar.
Still more esoteric ingredients, including eye of newt, spider hairs, mimic sweat, and ectoplasm. These components are useful in the creation of magic potions, and worth 1200 gp towards their creation if expended in the making.
Racks and Table
On the rack, among various pans and cookery, hangs a fresh turkey, two dressed pheasants, and a lightly wriggling defeathered bird.
Bowed but not broken, the living bird is a phoenix, subtly tied to the rack. It vainly attempts to guard ten of its eggs, which hover precariously in a hanging pot nearby. Each egg, rare and smoky-flavored, is worth 200 gp.
On the table can be found four small cooking pots, a large roasting pan, a green glazed jug, a cooking pot, a knife block, a potted plant and a butter dish.
The knife block holds a paring knife, peeling knife, utility knife, boning knife, bread knife, and chef's knife. If a knife is removed from the block, a gentle grinding sound can be heard, as the block has been enchanted to sharpen that which is drawn from it.
The plant has pale, lobed flowers and a stem covered in dark splotches and thin white hairs. It is the dreaded Lesser Hogsbane, possessed of a phototoxic sap. Save to pull your hand away before you really touch it. The affected area lightly itches when exposed, and in the sun or other bright light the pain sharply increases. When in bright light, an affected PC automatically fails rolls related to the use of any part of their body that has touched the Hogsbane. The affliction lasts for 1d4+4 months.
Laying on the ground beside the table is a spit and a disassembled stand to lay it on. The spit itself is covered in strange grooves, and careful study shows that it is a repeating message, "AROUND AND AROUND AND AROUND AND AROUND AND". If the message is spoken while the spit lies on the stand, it will summon a spectral spaniel, who will begin to turn the spit, taking commands as to the speed and direction. If sufficiently distracted or enticed from his task, Turns Pete (the name on his collar) disappears until summoned again.
Barrel and Sacks
The barrel is half-empty of sour beer. It has nails poking out of the lid, lacks a bung hole, and slightly sags. If the lid is moved, the alarum of a family of bells nailed to the underside of the lid triggers a wandering monster check. This was crudely installed as a precaution against sip-sneakers.
If the barrel is moved, a crumpled up piece of paper can be seen— a scroll containing a Panacea Countercurse. If Mago's geas is countercursed, he cries with joy and thanks the PCs. They may encounter him in the future plumbing strange dungeons and selling strange wares. If Turn Pete's service is countered, he barks and wags his tail and accompanies his new friends, serving as a kitchen dog or banksman.
Old sacks can be found containing oats, black beans, flour, millet, and another that undulates and buzzes softly.
The flour sack gently rocks. It serves as a bed and larder for Grima, a minor bogy the size and disposition of a feral cat. Amber and gaunt in a stained chaperon, he is secretive and freedom-loving, pugnacious when disrespected. He does not know what bread is or what flour is used for, and eats it raw. (1 HD, unarmored, bite 1d4. 2/day, when injured can make one of his eyes erupt into yellow smoke to take no damage and instead redirect the blow, making an attack with the same bonus for the same damage at someone else. He can regenerate an eye by eating a pound of food, probably by stuffing his mouth full of flour.)
Under a loose flagstone, Grima keeps his treasures— some pieces of glass, a pearl worth 500 gp, a pair of shaded spectacles worth 200 gp, and a treasure map.
The undulating sack contains a pack of stirges, and the mouth is improperly fastened after the last time a humanoid grabbed a couple for a quick snack. 2-in-6 chance every time it's handled that the sack will spill open.
Nestled among the sacks is a small wheel of cheese. Seemingly a passable parmesan, it is actually counterfeit and deeply illegal. This cheese carries the death penalty in many lands.
More fun playing with Loch and Louis'smonster generator. This time, I mostly went through a list of half-formed monster ideas and used the generator to flesh them out. This is why so many are humanoid in form.
Grow slowly, only reliably reaching ambulatory adulthood near cataclysms and old battle sites. Lacking the full spiritual dimension of humanoids (which they are far more closely related to than true bushes), they seek to understand the divine spark of conscious life, like anatomists from the good old Burke and Hare days. They study victims spread-eagle, eventually giving up, drinking down the blood, and moving on.
HD 4. Armor: Needles. Attack: +2 impale/impale/impale/impale. Mind like a beefeater. Moves like an octopus on land— not apt, but surprisingly quick. # 1d2
Needles: provide armor as leather, bypassed by sawblades, machetes, or fire.
Impale: On hit, the target takes d6 damage. Until the Bush is dead, the target must make a grapple check to free themself from the needles. On a failure, they must either remain where they are or make a save vs death as they slide off the branch.
Organization: tend to chase off others of their kind, but 50% chance an adult Pilate Bush is training its 2 HD offbudding. On that Treasure Type V lifestyle.
Eukaryote
Ancient pre-humanoids, chitinous guys with odd jaws and experimental shapes. Some tall and thin, others bell-shaped, others squat, and so on. Suspicious of intricate crafts, they count loyalty as the highest technology. Known for their anaugers, those who seek glimpses of the upcoming ages and help their community to plan for them.
HD 1. Armor: as chain. Attack: weapon or Friend. Mind like a first-generation business owner. Moves like an old man with a cane, swims with hesitant grace.
Friend: Once all life feared the dry, deadly land. It was lightning, dancing light, that told them "I will go with you. I will bless and better you," In one round, a eukaryote can call out a spot for their friend to strike, and the vicinity goes tense with ozone. In the next round, the friend pounces, all flame and light— save or take 3d6 damage and everyone can see your skeleton.
Lycanthropy: The moon has slain many Eukaryotes for fleeing his service in preference for the high-falutin land. A Eukaryote gets -3 reaction to all encounters found in the moonlight, and attacks against one in moonlight crit on a 19 or 20.
Organization: undirected and ad hoc. Often encountered in groups of 1d8. Their spokesfigure is usually a carpenter or warrior. Elder Eukaryotes grow fatter shells and an extra HD, and are afforded bone kama as status symbols. Communities have Treasure Type D.
Carbonifer
Claim to have invented fire, but you'd think they'd be a bit more bored of it if that was the case. Broad-faced, neckless humanoid amphibians, they are genial swamp-dwellers who have through intelligence fucked up their ancestral niche. As a species, the carbonifer mates in the hot, dark summer, but suitable conditions can be simulated with enough smoke and fire. Small wars have been fought merely to gain hold of enough dry, flammable buildings to set the mood for an army's single's night. A more enthusiastic collier there has never been.
HD 2. Armour: sometimes. Attack: as weapon, or +2 tail whip 1d4. Mind like an impatient workman. Moves like a monkey in an axolotl's body.
Coalsmoke: Groups of Carbonifers love to burn their so-special smokes, especially in exigency. Each subtle hue in the coal can be brought out by the patient screever to filter out some behavior or perception. This one filters out anger and fear, and thus pacifies. That one renders impossible the concept of an "army." When you breathe the smoke, save or have the intended concept filtered from you for 1d6 Turns.
Sluggard: Overexcitement mingles the fresh and spent blood in a Carbonifer's heart. They get -4 to grapples, physical saves, and the like.
Organization: found in crews of 1d4 x 2, always operating in even numbers to facilitate use of the butty system. Carbonifers prefer their mixed coalsmokes to most magic items, but can meet or exceed the craft of dwarves with ten times the bulk and a steady-burning power source. Treasure Type G.
Nosto
Dignified and romantic, subtle and shrill, everyone dreams of dating a bat-person who fell from the moon in a meteor. But truth is often the disappointment of our dreams. These are a stoic and cynical lot, on a reckless mission to gain their way back home.
HD 1/2. Armor: Grace. Attack: Foil 1d6 or Bite. Mind like a James Bond. Moves in brief flutters, unused to the weighty earth.
Grace: When holding still, unarmored. Otherwise, armor as plate and +3 to physical saves.
Bite: Save or be suborned, charmed by the little guy hanging off your neck or arm, their skull flattening around their mouth. Control lasts for 25 rounds, minus victim's Charisma score. If the Nosto is killed before the duration ends, the affect [sic] continues until removed, dealing 1 damage to the victim.
Organization: Nostos operate in isolated cells of 1d4+2, with a 2 HD handler. They are known to use magic wands and scrolls. Treasure Type S.
Hadean
Rocky centauroids from a world like our own volcanic past. They regard our experience of liquid water and plate tectonics as a pitiable state. Morose, cynical, and egalitarian.
HD 3. Armor: Rock. Attack: +2 (+4 when charging) Sledgehammer 1d8 or +3 Rescue. Mind like an umarell. Moves like an overladen deer.
Rock: provides AC as chain armor, and DR 2 vs attacks that wouldn't be very effective against a rock guy, like a sword slash.
Rescue: especially charitable Hadeans may try to carry off targets from their humid, soft-fleshed environs and rescue them to a nearby volcano or chasm. When a Hadean charges or rides by a foe, they can roll vs the target's AC to sweep them up. Someone who grapples their way free of a Hadean may risk 1d6 road rash damage (leather armor negates).
Avert!: Hadeans regard lithostratic inquiry and geology to be the key to avoiding liquidity on their own world, and must save or be fascinated by sufficiently interesting minerals, fossils, or stones.
Guileless: The unicameral Hadean mind is unaccustomed to flim-flammery, rhetoric, or legalism. It cannot assess whether a complicated series of logical statements are straightforward or deceptive, and thus many Hadeans regard the humanoids of our world like tottering tricksters. They get disadvantage vs. mazes.
Organization: 2d4 clades (1d6) make up a pride, led by a 5 HD mare and a 4 HD quartermaster, who has a 50% chance of owning 1d4 stones similar to our world's feather token. Instead of a tree token, for instance, it might summon a lattice of gypsum. Instead of an anchor, a lodestone. Instead of a bird, a mole. Treasure Type A.
Pangean
Four-foot-tall brightly colored vulturoids, with round teeth, slutty mynacean garments, and advanced glass eyewear. Used to be top dog before their supercontinent-spanning empire was split apart by warring successor-generals and tectonic plates. Though their society is egalitarian and still very advanced in ingenuity, Pangean society at large disdains most of the world as jumped-up former colonies and ungrateful yokels. Nabobs seek to recreate their "golden age" society in missions across the continents, never admitting that the golden age they chase is long-set.
HD 1. Armor: none. Attack: Spell or Mammalesis Staff. Mind like a Lepidopterist. Moves like a vulture.
Mammalesis Staff: used to keep servitor species in line, way back when. The target saves or grows more hirsute, spawns extra ossicles, broadens their forehead, and/or lactates. This deals 1d6 damage and 1d3 dexterity damage. If a creature is reduced to 0 dexterity in this way, they explode into a pile of live young of a new species. A staff has 2d6 charges.
Dirge: to maintain their society's haughty and exclusive customs, Pangeans are stuffed with cultural programming and a literary canon like they're foie gras. If anyone plays the Notes of Noy, or quotes other examples of the works memorializing their lost empire, Pangeans must test Morale or flee and weep, thinking only of their losses.
Organization: expeditions of 2d6 Pangeans, led by one 3 HD professor (75% chance of magic staff, 50% chance of 1d3 spell scrolls, 25% chance of treasure map) and accompanied by 1d20 non-Pangean servants. Treasure Type E.
Schioppa
Captured valkyries, left to winnow and molt in cages of armor plates, too clumsy to heal or carry, and too ill-oiled to sing thee to thy rest. Most confuse them for ensorcelled armor with plaster wings. Sorrowing weapons of war, bound to bound forward like charging destriers to break a line, and leave the souls of the vanquished for the crows. Some wander the byways now, stuck in a never-ending pilgrimage, laying strangers low for there is nothing else they can do and no one to stop them.
HD 3. Armor: plate. Attack +6 Barrel Through 3d8 or +2 Buffet 1d8. Moves like a nurse just coming off a long shift, or like a drunken bull. Mind like a rambo.
Barrel Through: with at least 20 feet of space to build up speed, a Schioppa can run straight through formations, walls, and even your scrawny ass, essentially running a path of destruction in a 60' straight line. Any hit that exceeds the target's AC by 5 or more throws them into the air, to somersault and crumple.
Angelic: though diminished and pitywauling, the Schioppa still has scruples unbroken. Children and the totally innocent cannot be Barreled Through, and the monster is careful not to harm someone who is already dying. If she somehow breaks this prohibition, she must save or become demonmail.
Bitter Fruits: A slain Schioppa's armor has a 50% chance of being cursed with one of the following: (d4) casts levitation at inconvenient times 1/day, -4 AC, frightening afterlife dreams that prevent rest, or -6 to attack Lawful creatures. Otherwise, a set of armor is worth 1,000 to a collector or 2,000 to a godi or jarl. Treasure Type U.
Breaker Guardo
The elite soldiery of and main export of Breakerland , a remote mountain nation which maintains shrines to gods of traps, gold, and lack of moral outrage, even trapping the few tunnels and passes into their land and banking for demiliches and Orcuses. There are two sorts of Breakers— those who carry a knife, and those who carry a knife and a short-hafted mancatcher. The cream of the crop are rented out to patrol and vouchsafe the bodies of warlords, dungeon masters, and most famously, the faith head of the Archdruidal States.
HD 2+2. Armor: Costume. Attack: +2 Mancatcher or +2 Knife 1d4. Mind like a child soldier. Moves like a parade ground bravo.
Costume: Pantaloons and doublets of slate grey or marbled marble flicker into braggadocious technicolorcolor right before the Breaker attacks. Ambushes on a 1-2, as long as they remain still. Protects as leather +1.
Mancatcher: On a hit, the target takes 1d6 nonlethal damage from the jostling spikes within the collar, and saves or is grappled. If reduced to 0 damage while mancaught, the victim is half-conscious and helpless, easily led and unable to defend themselves.
Ancient Enmity: goes postal in the presence of a Gessler, an explosive skeletal wheel-shaped creature known for trampling crops by night and thwarting the looting of cities and churches. And you know what? Fair enough. Also fears other tokens of their local superstition, such as the linden leaf, depictions of Lady Medusa, and the touch of a Lawful cleric.
Organization: Found in platoons of 2d4 squads of six. Like to carry magic items as a display of wealth, but tend not to use them. Treasure Type C.
Carnifex
When the wrong person is interred in a sarcophagus, especially a chamber intended for a rare and noble personage, the unrest in the ceremonial vessel and the lich can mingle together, spiraling around the unrest of lacking the proper inhabitant. Stone swells over the fingernails and tastes the gums. Bone swirls through and around the coffin. Once waiting becomes unbearable, the box-body floats up and begins to search for the right occupant.
HD 6. Armor: Lithossum. Attack: Apprehension and +6 Crash 1d8 or +4 Swallow. Mind like a starving rat. Moves like a mastiff running on ice.
Lithossum: The ornate planes of the box are easy to strike (armor as leather) but harm is only suffered when attacked with something that has a reasonable chance of damaging stone.
Apprehension: the mind of the Carnifex rubs against yours, searching for familiarity that will never come. You sense death probing you. Save vs fear or refuse to approach the Carnifex for a turn.
Swallow: the lid unhinges to engulf someone— perhaps this is the correct occupant? If it is, the carnifex immediately disanimates. Otherwise, it begins to drain the moisture and youth from the victim, 1d4 Constitution damage each turn. The Carnifex will always use this ability after crashing into a group of foes.
Vacation: The box's interior still contains the rooted skeleton of the original, erroneous occupant, the skull flickering with electrical force. When the skeleton is exposed (including during and right after the Carnifex attempts to use its Swallow ability), it can be attacked. It is unarmed and lacks the Lithossum ability, and when harmed inflicts double damage on the Carnifex. Treasure Type B.
These last two were largely the creative work of Renegade, who is very good at synthesizing a strong concept from the table results. I composed the words.
Scadu Fairies
The shadows of fairies, and some say their opposite. Rough and crass, they bring unwelcome news and unwise solutions, then demand they are enacted. They're always saying things like "So what if she gave back the ring? She can't run around with someone else!" and "You should kill your boss!" As a group, they have a raggedy hierarchy like kids playing soldier.
HD 1/2. Armor: smallness as chain. Attack: +1 needle 1d2. Speed: annoyingly fast. Mind like a tattle-tale. Moves like a dragonfly.
Things of Shadow: Live in the shadows of flowers. At night, you can't see them and therefore they disappear until sunrise. They are flammable, and if one member of a cloud of Scadu Fairies is ignited, there's a 50% chance a nearby one will be too (and so on and so on).
Organization: Frequently appear in clouds of 2d10 or more, dispersing into a spy network to sniff out wrongdoing and demand the person they imagine to be the victim to seek justice. Treasure Type U.
Melach Hashuta
Also called a Fool's Angel. This creature hides in cavern pools, turning them into deadly sludge. A golden crystalline thing that can shift from the form of a pillar to a pile to a grasping tendril. Its touch fills water with sulfuric acidic. Made by an ancient logos as a chthonic angel to protect the occulted teachings of that godhead, and gradually parasitized by pyretic structures which help it drink up the vital juices of interlopers.
HD 5. Armor: as chain. Attack: +5 slam 1d8. Moves with lumbering reproach. Mind like the scripture of an inhuman god.
Crystalline Coating: has achieved perfect, austere stillness, resembling a remarkably large but inert pyrite outcropping. Ambushes on a 1-3. Though large as a stallion, it can flow through any space large enough for a newborn foal.
Sulfuric Acid: All water touching the monster is impregnated with potent, scentless, colorless, oily vitriol. Those who might touch it unknowingly save to realize the danger in time, or take 1d6 damage, and 1d6 for each round spent in the water. Wood chars, leather suffers, metal discolors. If the water is superheated, as by a fireball, it will disperse acidic fumes in a 60' radius.
Forehead: A broken Melach Hashuta will reform over the course of 1d4 days unless the pyrite around its head is scraped away to reveal the Secret Name that animates it. As soon as it is read, the creature slow, fails, and dims.
Part of the bandwagon started by Louis and Loch. Use this generator, and make 1d2 monsters in a 1d4+1 area dungeon. -
I hear that great town Sekahii was wiped off the map, torn down by the fire of the gods. Guess nothing's certain in this bitch age. I'd avoid that cursed place myself, but there are those who would love to know what became of their loved ones, and others who wonder if anything of value survived.
"The only thing strange was that nothing was missing, except all the people."
Sekahii
Ash and fresh stone covers almost everything. Wind has started to reveal the roofs of buildings and the tops of the city walls— those defenses which once repulsed the Tribes of Gale, and which you now step over. In the center of town, the high walls of the temple reach out like a drowning man's hand, and closer, as though grinding against the city wall, is a strange tower, the ash dunes sinking down and leaving the space around it clear. Beyond the town, the fresh-faced Mount Pertumum stares down like a hung-over horse.
Tower: The Thief's Tower is trying to escape the city but finding itself penned in by the city walls. It has resorted to eating ash. This specimen is four stories tall, with windows on all but the top floor.
Each floor is decorated with stolen tables and chairs. On the third floor, fine silverware (500 gp) and a tapestry (1000 gp) hang, saliva having cleaned away any ash that would mar them. On the ground floor, a collection of pottery, jewelry, and hasty sketches (60 gp) lies in rows, the desperate offerings of refugees who tried to escape the eruption into the Thief's Tower.
Temple: Half-rubble, many ash-stains that once were people. A godstone gilded with gore.
One ash-stain clutches a set of tablets, a half completed Monster Manual. Experts will recognize this work as a draft by the famed naturalist Tutiksus, literally priceless now that he has passed away. The tablets have information on six "monstros", which range anywhere from an elf to a merchant to a beholder. A player can declare that some creature they encounter is one of the ones described, and consult the tablets about its weaknesses, capabilities, or how to get on its good side. The tablets have a 50% chance of giving specific, correct information and a 50% chance of giving specific, incorrect information.
Tunnel: Poking out of the mountain, a new, smooth tunnel leads down to the heart of the rock. Here lairs the Aasales, so fumes roll out of the tunnel as she scans for prey.
Volcano Shrine: Once accessed by a narrow path now-ruined. Now connected to the Aasales's tunnel(, a miracle ordained by the Earth god to ensure people could still worship him.) The shrine of worked iron has been defaced by graffiti— "Tefurus has a long-ass schlong. The Earth God's Schlong is soft and mediocre". There is an ash stain before the altar. If the graffiti is somehow cleared away, the Earth God will bless the suppliant, giving them immunity to lung-based diseases and the ability to safely run over lava and magma.
Bestiary
Thief's Tower
+8 Door (engulf), +4 Stomach quills 1d8. Moves 1 foot/day.
Keystone HD 3, unarmored.
- Furnace Metabolism: It gives off a pleasant aroma, like cooking meat. The result of its alien physiology, it entices victims. On a negative reaction roll, those within 100' must save or try to enter through a door or window.
- Engulf: Those who hesitate to enter outside the door of the Thief's Tower will find it splits in half hamburger-style to swallow them. Save or be swallowed. The door-mouth can be battered down as any stuck door, but see Quills below.
- Leveled Stomach: Though the exterior roughly resembles a constructed stone tower, the inside is clearly a thing of flesh. A Thief's Tower will have 1d4+2 levels, each a stomach chamber lined with walls of undulating quills, bony floors, and cartilaginous, ropy ladders ascending and descending.
- Symbiosis: The Tower will protect those who beautify and enrich it. Bringing in furniture or draping treasure about can give you a well-guarded hideout, the source of the creature's moniker.
- Quills: The quills can carefully push objects around the room, or strike at prey. Each round, it may attack as many targets as it can perceive, and will lunge out of hunger, or to punish those who try to damage it, who try to steal its treasure. The Tower has no vision. It uses its quills to feel and hidden ears to hear what happens within it.
- Keystone: On one floor is the heart-brain of the Tower, resembling an undulating piece of soapstone with veins connecting it to the cartilage and bone. The level that contains the keystone lacks windows.Damaging the keystone, in addition to incurring quill attacks, causes the tower to shrivel up like a juicebox. Save or be thrown off your feet as the tower tilts and wilts wildly, falling prone into a wall and either taking 1d6 damage or losing your next turn (your choice)
Also called a Witch's Tower or Gardinel D'Bologna, the Thief's Tower is a giant cylindrical creature with an eel-smooth, chitin-hard skin. In early spring, it appears in urban areas, the sorts of Gygaxian cities with encounter tables loaded up with vampires and wraiths. Bandits and other monstrous humanoids frequently take advantage of its refuge, and local lords are often slow to address the arrival of a Thief's Tower, as the law usually states that those who slay one are entitled to its treasures, and it's tempting to let it accumulate some booty before you fell it.
Aasales
HD 6, Unarmored, claw 1d6/claw 1d6/proboscis (see below). Fast as a starving catamount.
- Fume Cloud: constantly giving off black and neon-green volcanic fumes, giving her cover (+4 AC) vs ranged attacks. Breathing the fumes is unpleasant and painful. After an encounter with the Aasales, anyone exposed without PPE has a [round of exposure]-in-10 chance of contracting (and I swear I'm not going out of my way to shoehorn this in) Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Each day, a victim must save or reduce their dexterity by 1. If reduced to zero, their lungs turn to lava.
- Proboscis: After making her claw attacks, the Aasales can grab someone she hit and jab them with her sucking muzzle. Do however you do a grapple contest in your game, and if the Aasales wins she drains 1d4 HP from its target. An Aasales who has drained at least 5 HP in the past week is no longer slavering, and has a +1 to reactions and a -2 to morale.
- Parched: She swims through fire like water and water burns her like fire. Must test morale to attack a soaked person or cross over wet ground.
A ravenous cthonic predator. From the fiery forge that makes the world over and anew again, deep below the surface. She resembles nothing so much as a lioness or mountain cat, with a sharp, eversible needle-face and crunchy, chalky fur. Naturalists value her organs, as they are said to animate desiccated or mummified remains if sewn into them. Monks believe she is a metaphor for the fantasy covenant of their religion.
