Garden of the Dead | The Flaming Lady | Xum | The Hawkstone | Silent Death
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: October’s Inner Cover
October's inner cover presents 20 more cool words and the names of 20 isles and islands for your game.
02: Garden of the Dead
Ashlarian Legendry (Forest Site)
This ancient place, buried deep amid the alien rock pillars of the Forest of Gray Spires, is a place of legendry, mystery and death. Here, the trees grow hoary and tall, flowers of strange hue and intoxicating blossoms bloom, and centuries worth of bones litter the forest floor. In many instances, the trees have grown around these bones, seeming to consume them, and have—over the long years—raised them high into the sky as they have grown.
Many lurid stories telling of the Garden of the Dead circulate in the Duchy of Ashlar’s taprooms. Some say the garden is sacred to worshippers of the Mother who yet practise certain ancient, primitive rituals, while others say that the trees themselves have developed a perverse taste for blood.
Whatever the truth of the matter, while the Garden of the Dead is replete with flora, fauna is curiously absent. The few explorers to reach the site report strange, oddly-hued lights bobbing among the trees and a deathly silence broken only by the wind sighing through the trees. The more imaginative explorers report it feels like the forest itself is breathing and that when the wind stops, the forest is holding its breath—as if something terrible is about to happen…
03: The Flaming Lady
Ashlarian Lore (Gloamhold Locale)
Otherwise known as the Lady’s Light by delvers, this part-sunken caravel—the Lady’s Kiss—was once a smugglers’ ship. Dragged deep into Gloamhold’s depths by the Murkwater’s capricious and uncaring spring tides, Lady’s Kiss became wedged in a deep notch cleaving the unforgiving rock of the Murkwater’s channel.
Its crew survived for a few desperate weeks, huddled together on a nearby ledge until—one by one—hunger, thirst and (ultimately) madness—claimed them all. Before he died, one of the doomed band wreathed the ship’s warrior woman figurehead in permanent, but heatless, writhing flames. Although the priest—and all his comrades—are long dead, the flames live on, and the battered wreck has become a well-known waymarker for explorers and adventurers.
Although its crew are all dead, the Lady’s Kiss isn’t abandoned. Pounded by waves, picked over by scavengers and ignored by those that know better, it is home to a small, but growing, colony of lacedons. Led by two powerful specimens—once crew on the Lady’s Kiss—the colony prey on the weak, the incautious and those venturing too close to the wreck.
04: Xum
Campaign Component (Ancient Kingdom)
Wicked and ancient Xum flourished a millennium or more ago in the arid lands of the far south until the encroaching desert and increasingly violent infighting between the kingdom’s religious factions spelt its doom. Now, Xum’s once-proud walled cities are choked with sand, and its people are long-dead or fled to more clement climes.
Where once nobles and priests squabbled and fought, now tribes of gnolls—the descendants of Xum’s mercenary companies—fight for survival and pick over the bones of a once proud kingdom. The tribes yet worship Xum’s pantheon of demon-gods, and the fighting between them is savage and without quarter.
But even after ten long centuries, glimmering treasures and potent magics yet lurk amid Xum’s sand-choked bones, and a steady trickle of adventurers heads into the sand’s trackless wastes. Many fall foul of the demon-worshipping gnolls—suffering unspeakable fates at their hands—while others succumb to the harsh desert environment. Some adventurers, however—lucky, cunning or powerful—reach one of Xum’s olden, sand-swallowed cities and return laden with strangely wrought jewellery and curious artefacts of otherworldly origin.
05: The Hawkstone
Campaign Component (Woodland Feature)
A craggy, precipitous hill thrusting skywards through a series of ridges dominates the surrounding ancient, borderland forest. Here, far from civilisation’s endless hunger for lumber, the trees grow tall and strong, and the forest’s denizens are rarely troubled by more than the occasional hunter.
The hill is the Hawkstone, and it is aptly named for here dwells a colony of unnaturally large and intelligent red-tailed hawks. Descendants of the favoured animal companions of the long-dead half-elven druid Arnallae Malninnir, the hawks watch over a certain elder citadel of curious design that squats at the centre of a zone of twisted and dying forest. A contagion once flowed from the ruin—the fortress of the necromancer Nisaba Lutha—and corrupted swaths of the forest. Arnallae slew Nisaba but was killed in the battle. The descendants of her loyal feathered companions watch over the area and battle the necromancer’s foul crow servants that yet roost among the crumbling ruins. Thus, although Arnallae and Nisaba are nothing but crumbling bone and fading memory, their servants yet fight on.
06: Silent Death
Campaign Component (Atypical Gelatinous Cube)
Many strange and terrible things lurk in the dark places of the Underlands. Few are as weird and alien as the humble gelatinous cube, and even fewer are weirder than a sentient and aware gelatinous cube.
Centuries ago, an unremarkable gelatinous cube consumed an adventurer careless enough to blunder into its reach. The unknown adventurer died quickly, and his body and equipment were consumed by the cube’s powerful acid. However, the adventurer carried something remarkable in his pack—a large chunk of brownish/black stone with a beguiling lustre, shot through with an ebon streak of darker stone. This stone—a magically enhanced lodestone—has proved a great boon to the cube.
The lodestone emits a powerful magnetic force that makes it extremely difficult for an armour-clad victim to escape the cube. The cube, now sentient as a result of its long life and numberless “meals”, has grown unnaturally large and has learnt to position itself in areas—such as in pits, around corners and the like—that suit its unique power. Thus, the cube—dubbed Silent Death by the few to escape its attentions—offers a much greater threat to dungeon delvers than a normal gelatinous cube.
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.