Holy Blades, Three | Dagon | The Devil’s Garden | Cragthorn Keep | The Crown
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: Fishshambles at a Glance
Download
Fishshambles sprawls along the waterfront north of Cheap Street. Here, a tangled, reeking labyrinth of narrow, tenebrous alleys—punctuated by a few wider roads—runs down to the Svart and the rickety wharves and jetties jutting from its southern bank.
This week, we continue our exploration of Languard: City of Adventure by venturing down to the reeking docks. Fishshambles is no better than the Shambles, but it is infinitely better than the Wrecks.
02: Holy Blades, Three
Ashlarian Legendry (Holy Swords)
Long ago, the celestial power Darlen (LG greater god of law, order, justice and the sun) gifted three holy swords of surpassing power to his followers. These three shimmering blades forged from the very stuff of the Heavens, Heaven’s Glory, Heaven’s Mercy and Heaven’s Fury, have ever been in the vanguard of the fight against evil. Wielded by the faith’s greatest heroes, they have kept the ever-creeping darkness at bay.
Darlen’s followers have long dreamed of reuniting the three blades—now scattered across the Known World—to usher in a new golden age. With the three swords united, they dream of unleashing a grand crusade against the elder evils of the world.
Disastrously for the faith, all three blades are now lost, however. Of the three, Heaven’s Fury was the last known to be wielded by a hero of the faith. The paladin Kal Voren, dead three centuries, wielded Heaven’s Fury and used it to banish the fiend Bala Sygax, Despot of the Smouldering Hills, and to utterly destroy the Lord of the Nineteen Obsidian Steps, the lich lord Namtar Anshan. The blade’s location, like that of the hero-paladin’s final resting place, remains unknown.
See Also: Kal Voren
03: Dagon, the Shadow in the Sea
Ashlarian Lore (Demon Lord)
CE demon lord of deformity, the sea and sea monsters
Dagon is one of the oldest and foulest powers worshipped in the world. Dagon rules an Abyssal ocean dotted with strange and terrible islands and scarred by deep ocean trenches filled with impossible sunken cities groaning with impossible horrors. He and his followers are sometimes allied with an even more ancient and alien power—the Great Old One Cthulhu.
Dagon’s symbol is a disk inscribed with sinister runes around an open octopus eye. It is a hateful thing. His worshippers greatly prize ancient examples of his symbol—some are laden with terrible, elder power.
His worshippers primarily comprise heretical sahuagin, deep ones and degenerate or insane coastal dwellers of the foulest sort. Many of his worshippers are horribly misshapen, deformed individuals who interbreed with strange aquatic creatures. Others are warped by Dagon’s own foul influence or by the proximity to certain sites sacred to the Shadow in the Sea. Dagon’s worshippers follow no set doctrine. Dagon cares not exactly how his aberrant followers worship him as long as they worship him.
His deranged human worshippers often wear ragged, dirty and torn clothes of unwholesome hues. Priests wear strange golden crowns and torcs wrought into odd, fantastical shapes seemingly better suited to non-human heads. In battle above and below the waves, they wield tridents.
Dagon’s holy places are always in or near the sea. Therein, his worshippers engage in strange and abhorrent practices and often also venerate Cthulhu and the other Great Old Ones. No public temples dedicated to Dagon exist in Ashlar or its surrounds. However, some of the degenerate Takolen venerate this ancient, profane power in hidden and secret shrines buried deep in Languard’s noxious Wrecks district.
04: The Devil’s Garden
Campaign Component (Adventure Locale)
The remains of a noble’s estate lie a half-day’s ride outside the city. What was once a place of power and privilege is now nothing but a shunned pile of charred rubble surrounded by a garden that has grown wild and strange.
Wild accusations of missing children and devil worship brought the Lorel family low. In one terrible, wild night, a mob of peasants, whipped into a religious frenzy by the local priest, descended upon the estate. They barred the house’s doors and burned alive everyone within. Those who tried to escape were thrown back into the flames.
Vague rumours of strange things dwelling in the garden, carnivorous plants that can move about, devil-worshipping ghosts and a miasma of evil that rises from the ground on certain nights of ill-aspect keep all sane folk away from the curse-haunted ruin. Thus, the devilish reputation of the house and its garden lives on.
And yet, every now and then, children dare each other to sneak into the garden or brave adventurers poke about the ruin in search of fame and fortune. Most report finding nothing, but some are never seen again. But for all these expeditions and explorations of the ruin and the garden, no explorer has yet survived finding the hidden cellars buried deep beneath the house or confronted the ultimate horror of what lurks within…
05: Cragthorn Keep
Campaign Component (Borderland Keep)
Part dwarf-hold and part human citadel, Cragthorn Keep is cut into and perches atop a craggy hill amid a range of borderland hills. A great mass of black-thorned bushes grows around the craggy hill’s base from the soft, glutinous soil of an extensive bog. But a single twisting causeway of oft-replaced timber wends its way through the mire. Beyond the hills lie the numberless boughs of a vast, primal forest. Cragthorn Keep commands excellent views of the surrounding territory and is an important place in the kingdom’s affairs.
Centuries ago, dwarves lived here in an extensive hold cut deep into the hill’s roots. Eventually, though, a tide of bloody, ruinous war that the dwarves could not stem engulfed them. The few survivors fled, and thus did their hold languish, empty and forgotten—a mausoleum to the doughty folk who once dwelled within.
When humans began settling the hills, they found the old dwarven hold and built their lofty castle atop it. They used the hold’s upper levels as the (wondrously impressive) cellars and final redoubt for their fortress. But humans are not adapted to dwelling underground and fearing what could lurk in the deep dark of the lower levels, they sealed up much of the hold behind stout doors and thick portcullises.
It is well that they did, for the hold is very old and very deep. Where once dwarves mined and crafted, now alien, formless things lurk and slither and totter through the endless dark. A few of the keep’s occupants have a dim understanding of what may lie far beneath the hilltop. Studying fragmentary ancient records left behind by the dwarves, they have a loose grasp of the ancient mine’s vast extent and the presence of even deeper and wilder caverns where even the dwarves dared did not tread.
06: The Crown
Campaign Component (Traveller’s Inn)
Thirty years ago, a vicious band of orc marauders ambushed the duke and his bodyguards on an isolated stretch of road. The Crown, a large and well-maintained traveller’s inn more akin to a fortified manor house than a traditional inn, now stands on the site of that skirmish.
Legend has it that during the skirmish, the duke was unhorsed and lost his crown. After the fight, one of his bodyguards found the gold crown dripping with jewels hanging from a bush. He returned it to his liege, who offered him a reward for his service and honesty. The bodyguard idly mentioned that he had always wanted to own an inn, and the duke commanded that an inn be built for him on that very spot. The Crown is the result.
Many rumours hang about the Crown. Some say the duke yet visits in disguise or that the inn is built upon the charred and burnt bones of all the orcs slain in the skirmish. Yet other people declare that the inn has a suite of secret rooms the duke uses for secret colloquies.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the Crown is well run, the welcome is warm, the beds are soft, and the ale is strong. There are far worse places on the road to rest.
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.
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