Barrow Road | Death Lake | Frost-Forged Weapons | Kamaiavel | Naitheror’s Vale
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: High City at a Glance
Download
Set upon the Svart’s northern bank, High City rises above the stink and muck of the rest of Languard. Here dwell the great and the good (or perhaps just the wealthy) of Languard.
Grab this free download to explore Languard’s High City.
02: Kamaiavel
Ashlarian Legendry
Delicate, light and supremely well balanced, this curved two-handed sword of glimmering mithral is of elder elvish artifice. Forged long ago in Ilathyel—the legendary first forest kingdom of the elves—and imbued with mighty magics, Kamaiavel is a dragon slayer.
The blade is an artefact from the Old World; a thing of beauty and singular purpose from a mythical time before humanity rose to dominate the world. Such is the power of the sword’s enchantment that it appears as if it were forged yesterday; no nicks or markings scar its glimmering silvery blade.
Through countless centuries, many legendary heroes have wielded Kamaiavel, and the blade has tasted the blood of innumerable foes. The sword was last seen in the possession of the holy warrior Eljas Ilmarinen. Eljas was a brave but prideful man intent on his own advancement and aggrandisement. In his hubris, he decided to slay the wyrm Othimaeros Aghalskarr in single combat. The dragon lurked somewhere in the hills west of Dunstone; its death would cement Eljas’s status as a legendary hero of Ashlar and make his ascension through the ranks of the Order of the Watch Eternal a certainty.
Sadly, Eljas, along with Kamaiavel, disappeared in 520 NR while questing after the dragon. His fate and Kamaiavel’s location remain unknown.
03: Naitheror’s Vale
Ashlarian Lore
Naitheror’s Vale lies about a mile north of the dismal village of Coldwater. Heavily wooded and filled with ancient, gnarled oaks whose twisted branches drip with moss, it is an isolated, peaceful place. Here, the air is fresh, and the feeling is primal. In a few places, fabulously rare, quasi-magical greenheart trees—thought to grow nowhere else in Ashlar—stand amid the oaks. The vale is alive with the sounds of animal and bird life.
Naitheror’s Vale is deep and steep. In places, explorers must literally climb between the trees, so precipitous is the valley’s descent toward the Bitter Sea.
The elderly half-elven druid Naitheror dwells in the vale’s depths in a small part-sunken drystone-walled cottage that stands near a low waterfall—one of several that punctuate the river’s course. A river rushes over the waterfall and rushes down through the valley to eventually tumble into the sea.
Naitheror has dwelled in the vale for centuries and is nearing the end of his long, well-lived life. He is the vale’s protector. He fears not death, but worries what will happen to his beloved home when he is no more. A terrible blight savages the land to the south on the fringe of dismal Coldwater. Slowly, it expands northwards toward the valley, and only his prayers and druidic might keep it at bay. He seeks a successor to preserve the valley’s untouched, primal purity and drops tremendously unsubtle hints to any suitable visitors he meets.
04: Barrow Road
Campaign Component (Wilderness)
Barrow Road, also called the Old Road and Peddler’s Way, is a lingering memory of a distant time when no busy town dominated the surrounds. Barrow Road is an ancient hollow way, ill-suited to carts and wagons. Worn narrow and deep by countless feet, it is a peaceful and calm sheltered path that wends its way through a swath of time-worn mounds covered in wildflowers and stands of hoary oaks, silver beaches and hornbeams. Fringed by trees that cast deep, cool shade, it is now little used, and yet it quietly endures. Locals still sometimes use the road, as do travellers desirous of peace and quiet or who wish to avoid the prying eyes of the local lord’s tax collectors.
A few houses hidden deep within the mounds hold strange and insular folk who rarely come to town. The townsfolk view such folk as odd and backwards and have as little as possible to do with them. These folk, sheep farmers, hunters and the like, dwell along the road’s fringes, and some of them remember the old traditions. They tell of druidic circles atop the greatest mounds, of great primal rites and of the terrible, barbaric practice of humans sacrificed in raging fires. But the circles are no more, their stones have long since been pulled down and dragged away for more modern building projects, and great fires have not blazed atop the hills in generations.
05 Frost-Forged Weapons
Campaign Component (Magic Item)
Forged by the lore-steeped dwarves smiths who dwell within the icy peaks of lofty, snow-capped Kalipurna, frost-forged weapons are imbued with the intense cold of the deep mountains. Comprised of magically hardened ice, these weapons radiate an intense chill and can deliver bursts of supernatural cold when used in battle. They protect their wielders from fire and heat and are often used to battle the dwarves’ traditional enemies—red dragons. Adventurers planning to fight such foes sometimes make the arduous trek to the dwarves’ frigid home in hopes of securing frost-forged weapons.
The dwarves are not the first to practise frost-forging weapons. Such weapons have appeared sporadically throughout history, wielded by the heroes of various ancient peoples and civilisations. Occasionally, adventurers recover such elder weapons from old treasure hoards, frozen burial mounds and the like. Time has not dulled their powers, and the weapons are as deadly as the day they were forged.
06 Death Lake
Campaign Component (Wilderness)
A lake of terrible and fell legend lurks high up in the hills overlooking a swath of borderland dotted with small villages and hamlets. Fed by subterranean sources, Death Lake’s placid waters are often surprisingly warm and pleasant to bathe in. The lake hides a terrible danger, however—a danger that can spell death to all those living in its vicinity.
Occasionally, a faint, low-lying mist rises from the lake and silently drifts downhill. It gathers and swirls amid the many valleys cutting their way down through the hills, and where it seeps, death follows. This mist kills almost everything in its path, and the ruins of several villages and two small castles bear mute testimony to its terrible efficacy.
However, the soil in the valleys is incredibly fertile and thus a patchwork of fields runs up all but the narrowest of such places. Nearby villages and hamlets now all perch atop the valley’s high flanks—to live too low invites silent and near-invisible death.
The locals keep a watchful eye on the lake. Three tall, windowless watchtowers set with warning beacons gird the lake. Locals know that when the fires blaze, they must flee to higher ground. Those who are too slow or inattentive die.
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!
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