Vilho the Vile | Radiant East Window | The Smouldering Valley | Bag of Vile Darkness | Tomb of the Yellow Blossoms
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: Dungeon Backdrop Markdown Sample
Find within five fully fleshed-out and lovingly detailed self-contained adventure sites in markdown format. Stock the dungeon with your own monsters (and—perhaps—their treasure), decide their back story, and you are good to go.
The Dread Dungeononomicon is a System Neutral book compatible with any fantasy role-playing game, particularly ones featuring dungeons and/or dragons.
For more information about Markdown visit markdownguide.org/getting-started
02: Vilho the Vile
Ashlarian Legendry (Reviled High Priest)
Braal, the Hated, the Dweller in Shadows, eternal enemy of Darlen, the Shining Light, the Noble One, works through many servants, both knowing and unknowing. The vilest, most feared and powerful of all such folk was Vilho Antero. A high priest of surpassing, profane power, Vilho stood high in his master’s confidences.
The legend of Vilho Antero yet looms large in Ashlar, although he has been dead a century or more. Many dark legends and stories cluster thickly about the high priest who earned his epithet “the Vile” many times over. Said to have kidnapped scores, if not hundreds, of people to sacrifice to his lord’s dark glory, he was buried in a secret crypt when he died.
Vilho was said to have amassed a great fortune during his life, and most sages and lore keepers believe he was buried with his hoard. Thus, adventurers yet seek his shadow-filled, ebon tomb for great wealth must lie within. Much danger undoubtably also lurks within; disturbing legends whisper that the spirits of all those Vilho sacrificed to his dark master’s glory guard his sepulchre and that Vilho was so powerful that death itself could not hold him in the afterlife.
03: Radiant East Window
Ashlarian Lore (Holy Relic)
Famed throughout the duchy for its vibrant, strong colours and transcendent use of light, the *Radiant East Window *at Languard’s Watcher’s Spire is a thing of surpassing beauty. Crafted and enchanted over a decade from a mixture of iroculum and master-blown glass, the centuries-old window is a testament to the power and majesty of Darlen, the greater god of law, order, justice and the sun.
The window comprises 13 distinct panels and runs the length of the temple. Each panel is positioned so that it catches the rising sun on the first day of the month and depicts the rising sun surrounded by various priests, saints and champions of the Noble One.
Holy magic, woven into the window’s fabric, harnesses and concentrates the sun’s powers as they stream into the temple. At dawn, the window focuses the sun’s radiance upon the temple’s holy font and can imbue the waters therein with various holy powers—bolstering the faithful in times of need, healing them of all but the most grievous wounds and so on. Some stories even tell of the font’s enchanted waters returning the faith’s glorious dead to life.
04: The Smouldering Valley
Campaign Component (Adventure Locale)
Glowering clouds of black smoke, pregnant with malice and ash, hang low over the so-called Smouldering Valley. Casting a near-perpetual gloom over the land, only the strongest of winds temporarily dissipates the soot-laden clouds.
The Smouldering Valley lies high up in a range of stark, borderland hills, and few folk dwell within a score of miles of the sinister place. Peasants believe that a terrible dragon dwells in the valley in the bowels of a deep cave. Awakened a score of years ago by a meddling band of adventurers, which it promptly ate, the dragon belches forth great clouds of smoke as a warning to others to stay away from its lair and treasure.
In truth, no dragon dwells in the Smouldering Valley, but a band of meddling adventurers are to blame for the clouds of dense, choking smoke that hang over the place. Twenty years ago, a roving band of incautious adventurers discovered and explored an ancient mine buried in the valley and long forgotten by the folk of the lowlands. The mine cut through a rich seam of coal. During a desperate battle fought deep underground, an errant *fireball* ignited the coal dust hanging in the air, instantly killing the adventurers and their foes. In turn, the explosion set fire to the coal, and the mine has been burning ever since.
As the fire continues to burn, the valley floor has begun to sag—undermined by the fire that has burnt for two decades—and will soon collapse…
05: Bag of Vile Darkness
Campaign Component (Unique Bag of Holding)
This small leather sack appears for all intents and purposes to be a normal bag of holding, but there is nothing ordinary about the Bag of Vile Darkness. This unique item, crafted by a long-dead necromancer, holds a tiny two-way portal to the Plane of Shadows in its ebon depths.
Items placed in the Bag of Vile Darkness are drawn through the portal into the Plane of Shadows. There they languish in a pile. As long as the pile is not disturbed the bag’s owner can draw items from the bag as normal, and, thus, may not notice anything wrong or different about the bag. However, of course, sometimes the denizens of the Plane of Shadows discover the pile. Some denizens may steal the items therein while sentient undead—hungering for warm and succulent life force—may lurk nearby waiting for the bag’s owner to thrust their arm into the bag to retrieve something.
Additionally, creatures, such as wraiths and shadows capable of squeezing through tiny spaces, can pass through the portal, entering the Prime Material plane when the bag’s owner opens it.
06: TOmb of the Yellow Blossoms
Campaign Component (Dungeon)
Hidden in the deep desert, amid the sand-swallowed bones of fallen Xum, the Tomb of the Yellow Blossoms lurks amid a web of legendry and superstition. Nomadic, demon-worshipping gnoll tribes wander the surrounding wastes, but rarely come within sight of the oasis surrounding the Tomb of the Yellow Blossoms.
Tall flowers, heavy with drooping yellow blossoms laden with soporific blossom, grow in great profusion in the tomb’s entrance and throughout the oasis. The gnolls regard these flowers with superstitious dread and will not enter the oasis. A field of bones—of humanoids and animals of an unknown number— and of rusting, desiccated gear litters the oasis.
The few explorers to survive a trip to the oasis tell of the pollen’s deep sleep-inducing qualities, the flowers’ aberrant resistance to fire and of the root’s suspicious length—roots that the gnolls believe burrow so deeply that they reach Hell itself. Some visitors ascribe malign and violent intent to the plants and whisper that the flowers themselves are sentient. If hacked down, the flowers regrow suspiciously quickly—in some cases, seemingly overnight.
The superstitious and violent demon-worshipping gnolls, along with the harsh environment, the oasis’s sinister reputation and the flowers themselves, all conspire to protect the so-called Tomb of the Yellow Blossoms and whatever lies within. Thus, its contents remain a mystery.
07: The Dread Laironomicon + Bundle of Holding = Epic Deal
Ends Monday, 6th October: Pay just $7.95 for the System Neutral Dread Laironomicon over at the Bundle of Holding.
The Dread Laironomicon normally retails for $21.50, so this is an epic-level bargain not to be missed!
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.