Ilathyel | The Ishandrenn Shard | Karath | Grottoes of Ezer-Karn | The Velvet Buccaneer
Welcome to the Sunday Supplement, Raging Swan Press’s weekly email for GMs. This week, we have one free download, one piece of legendry, one piece of lore and three miscellaneous campaign components for your game.
Should we develop any of these idea further? Comment below.
01: Slaughterford
The hamlet of Slaughterford has a foul reputation. Water spirits drowned a company of marauding orcs at the ford a century ago. Since then, lights of unwholesome hue, indescribable noises and other odd doings around the anniversary of the orcs’ destruction have driven timid or superstitious travellers to seek safer, less haunted routes. Rumours also suggest that the bulk of Slaughterford’s populace is in league with bandit gangs lurking in the southern woods, which gives prudent travellers another good reason to avoid this place.
02: Ilathyel, the Shining Kingdom
Ashlarian Legendry (Ancient Kingdom)
When the world was young and fresh and primal, Ilathyel, the legendary first forest kingdom of the elves, flourished amid the innumerable boughs of the World Wood. A shining beacon of goodness and lore, the elves dwelled in a world untouched by humanity’s artifice and greed.
The elves were mighty in spell and battle-lore and ever fought to push back the waves of vile goblins and orcs seeking their destruction. Long were the wars, uncountable were the orc and goblin dead and glorious were the elves’ victories.
But vanity and arrogance lurked in some of the elves’ hearts, and a shadow slowly grew deep within Ilathyel. A small cabal of debased and corrupt elves—progenitors of the hated and feared shadow elves—opened an Abyssal gate, and an elder spider demon steeped in hatred and malignity scuttled through. A horde of demons followed, and terrible, merciless war engulfed shining Ilathyel.
The war raged for a century; thousands of elves and uncountable demons were slain. Ilathyel did not fall, but it did not swiftly gain victory. While the elves strove against and slew the demons, the shadow elves gathered themselves and fled, taking with them much lore and magic, including the legendary Silver Tablets of Tragator. By the time the demon horde had been eradicated, Ilathyel was but a shadow of its former self, and slowly the Shining Kingdom frayed and fragmented. The shining glory and power of the elves was broken, never to be restored.
See Also: Silver Tablets of Tragator
03: The Ishandrenn Shard
Ashlarian Lore (Magic Item)
Discovered in 464 NR poking from the glistening ooze of the Svart’s northern bank, by the curious fisherman Otava Ishandrenn, the so-called Ishandrenn Shard has baffled sages and wizards alike since its discovery.
Tiny petroglyphs of unknown, but undoubtedly immemorial, pre-human origin decorate every face of this man-high shard of weathered basaltic rock.
A persistent and powerful arcane ward defeats all known attempts to magically decipher the shard’s runes. Thus, their meaning and origin remain unknown. Even the elves—the longest-lived of all the mortal races—declare the thing to be ancient.
The current location of Ishandrenn’s Shard is a secret known to only a few trusted folk. Duke Arndul Nenonen’s soldiers dragged the black rock from the Svart’s sucking mud and carried it away to Castle Languard shortly after its discovery. Only a few wizards and sages—uniformly baffled by the stone’s strange markings—are known to have examined the object before it disappeared. None of the folk who examined the stone is known to have put down any of their observations in writing, and thus the Ishandrenn Shard remains an intriguing but mostly forgotten mystery.
04: Karath
Campaign Component (Ancient Kingdom)
In ages past, strange and inhuman civilisations raised queerly-wrought towers and cyclopean temples to the sky and venerated alien powers of unknown, primordial origin. There, upon indescribably stained altars, they practised blasphemous and abhorrent bloody rites and sacrificed countless victims to venerate and placate their otherworldly patrons.
But as with all things mortal, such civilisations eventually fell, and their cities and monuments crumbled into ruin and decay.
Eventually, mighty glaciers crept down from the north and swallowed whole the remnants of one such civilisation—the pre-human kingdom of Karath. Until recently, nothing dwelled amid the frigid and frozen remnants of Karath. But now, as the glaciers begin their slow, inexorable retreat, a few fragments of this once-proud kingdom are emerging into the modern world.
The folk of ancient Karath were powerfully built, shaggy-grey-haired ape creatures, powerful of build and cunning of intellect. They built in stone and incessantly warred against their neighbours living in the warmer lowlands. Degenerate remnants of the race yet dwell amid the densely forested hills below the glaciers, but they have reverted to a primal, atavistic state. Driven by primitive lusts and base emotions, these ape creatures have grown larger and even more violent than their progenitors but have forgotten all of civilisation’s secrets.
05: Grottoes of Ezer-Karn
Campaign Component (Dungeon)
This ever-wet series of caves and grottoes stretch deep into the hills rising steeply behind an otherwise unremarkable and nondescript human village. The outer caves have sometimes served as a bandit hideout—their graffiti cut into the caverns’ walls is still evident—but an earthquake decades ago opened up access to a deeper network of living caverns.
These caverns—the Grottoes of Ezer-Karn—are cold, dank and dark. A sluggish river meanders through the caverns, and vast fields of mushrooms grow upon its banks. The villagers, with the aid of their decidedly unhuman allies, tend and cultivate these fields.
The humans’ allies—sentient mushroom folk led by the towering Yellow Queen—are a peaceful, gentle folk content in the main to live out their quiet lives in the caverns. A few adventurous mushroom folk, however, sometimes venture forth to gaze up in wonder at the stars and to explore the village and its surrounds. Such expeditions occur only at night, and the humans are well-used to encountering the shambling mushroom folk after dark. (Visiting adventurers arriving after dark, however, may be somewhat surprised and disturbed to encounter a wandering six-foot-tall mushroom; so far, however, there have been no “incidents”.)
06: The Velvet Buccaneer
Campaign Component (Infamous Pirate)
Effete and foppish, the Velvet Buccaneer would be a figure of mirth and derision if it were not for the shocking depravities heaped upon his name. A scourge of the seas and a bogeyman to ship captains throughout the Bitter Sea, the Velvet Buccaneer has preyed upon merchant shipping for almost two decades. When his flotilla of three triple-masted ships appears on the horizon, the wise ship captain flees if they are able or heaves to and surrenders if they cannot. The Velvet Buccanner sails from a point unknown, and many wealthy merchants and rulers would give much to know the location of his secret pirate lair.
The Velvet Buccaneer is not who he seems, however, for the Velvet Buccaneer is actually Vilutar Viljari. A noblewoman and scion of an ancient house, Viluitar is a master of disguise and a master swordswoman. She supports her hedonistic, comfort-filled lifestyle with mercantile doings, along with the proceeds of her reaving. Vilutar maintains her alter-ego so that she may dwell openly without suspicion. Only her two captains—her most trusted minions—know of this deception and of her true identity, and they are bound to her with terrible, unbreakable vows of loyalty and fealty.
Such is her cunning that she even preys upon her own merchant vessels—but her crews have standing orders to heave to and surrender if the dreaded Velvet Buccaneer should appear; thus, at least in these encounters, loss of life is kept to a minimum.
Vilutar only sails in the summer, when she ostentatiously “retreats to her more southerly estates”. When she is not reaving, she maintains contact with her trusted servants via sealed letters written in indecipherable code. While at home, she throws lavish parties, funds various charitable organisations and donates to several churches; thus, she buys influence, friends and protection.
Ashlarian (proper noun) of Ashlar; Campaign (noun) a connected series of adventures; Component (noun) a constituent part; Legendry (noun) a collection or body of legends; Lore (noun) knowledge and stories about a subject
Thank you for reading the Sunday Supplement; I hope some of the above material makes it into your game or sparks your creativity.
Remember, Everything is Better with Tentacles!
Want the Markdown Files? Every member of our Patreon campaign gets the markdown files for the new-look Sunday Supplements to make it even easier to add them to their campaign.