Vänni’s Climbing Rope | The Legend of Sir Ozloc | Necrotic Gems | The Starless River | Six Odd Rock Formations
Welcome to the GM’s Sunday Supplement! Behold four campaign components and a handy d6 list to add to your campaign and GM’s toolbox.
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.
Vänni’s Climbing Rope
Campaign Component | Magic Item
Tightly coiled and in immaculate condition, this slender, enchanted ebon rope is 60 feet long. Gossamar spiderwebs harvested from deep in the Underlands are woven into the rope’s fabric.
Vänni’s Climbing Rope is, unsurprisingly, a rope of climbing, but it has the additional power of being able to shed all manner of stains and dirt when coiled, appearing pristine when next used. The rope belonged to the master thief Vänni Koveri, who recently both terrorised and excited Languard’s citizenry with a string of daring robberies and escapades. Vänni was eventually caught—some whisper with aid from Languard’s Shadow Masks thieves’ guild, who resented the independent thief’s exploits—after an epic crime spree. Shortly thereafter, he was tried, found guilty and publicly executed in a most horrible, drawn-out fashion. His mangled remains were hung from Languard’s Traitor’s Gate as a warning to all. Ironically, many of Vänni’s possessions went missing after his arrest.
The Legend of Sir Ozloc
Campaign Component | Ashlar | NPC
Brave Sir Ozloc of Mossvale, the impoverished last scion of a noble house from a distant land, is a divisive figure. Loved by Dunstone’s peasants as a hero and reviled by the nobles of the same town as a rabble-rouser, tales of Sir Ozloc’s doings have spread throughout Ashlar. Some say he is a daring hero cut from the same cloth as the legendary figures of Ashlar’s early days. Others see him as an abject coward who abandoned his friends after a foray to the Nameless Monastery went horribly wrong when the party encountered. Red dragon of “fearsome might and ravenous hunger”.
Dunstone’s commoners have begun to celebrate Sir Ozloc and his heroic doings on the anniversary of his return from the Nameless Monastery. The Festival of Sir Ozloc involves foot races, games of hide-and-seek, dramatisations of the hero’s most incredible escapes, and so on. Heavy drinking and merriment ensue.
Sir Ozloc’s current location is unknown, but the wizard Vilizim Eskola claims to have met the dashing hero (briefly) in Languard earlier this year.
Necrotic Gems
Campaign Component | Magic Item
Akin to the better-known elemental gems, necrotic gems are altogether a more odious and foul creation. In the same manner as an elemental gem holds a bound elemental within, necrotic gems bind a spectral skull swarm within. (A spectral skull swarm is an incorporeal undead creature with the statistics of a large air elemental.)
When the gem is crushed, broken or shattered, the spectral skull swarm appears. The skull swarm is under the command of the creature that broke the gem, and if not directed to another target, attacks the nearest living creature. If not destroyed, after ten minutes, the magic binding the spectral skull swarm together unravels, and the undead horror fades away.
Necrotic gems radiate moderate necromantic magic and look like a misshapen, palm-sized smoky grey-black onyx.
The Starless River
Campaign Component | Caves & Caverns | Subterranean
This vast subterranean river flows for hundreds of miles deep below the foundations of many surface kingdoms. Wide and powerful, and fed by dozens of tributaries, the Starless River flows through a succession of dark lakes and over several notable lightless waterfalls—questing ever deeper—until it flows into the black waters of the Darken Sea.
Adventurers daring the illimitable dark of the Underlands often use the Starless River as a highway to swiftly travel downstream. Travel upstream, hindered by a swift current and waterfalls, is far slower, tiring and dangerous. After sustained heavy rains, the river can rise rapidly and transform into a raging torrent, making travel far harder. Wise adventurers keep an eye on the weather before descending into the Underlands.
An oasis of life amid the cold, dark and dead subterranean world, explorers report discovering many strange settlements perched upon the Starless River’s stony banks. Troglodytes, degenerate humans, deep dwarves and even dark elves all dwell on or near the Starless River. Some adventurers even report fighting packs of mighty, homicidal scaled “fish men” along the river’s deepest reaches.
Six Odd Rock Formations
Campaign Component | Six Things
This large rock juts forth high up in a wall; from certain angles, the formation looks like a half-melted giant’s head.
A field of melted holes of various shapes and sizes forms a quasi-path of sorts through the cavern. The edges of some of the holes appear slightly melted and discoloured.
A forest of glistening stalactites and stalagmites grows toward one another in this wet cavern; several of the largest examples almost meet in the middle, and slick mud covers the floor. The sound of dripping water is a constant here.
A jumble of rocks, encased in smoothed, hardened mud, seems frozen in mid-tumble as they emerged from an almost choked side passage.
Suggestive of a humanoid somehow caught within the stone, a faint outline caught in the floor seems to waver and shudder in the characters’ lights.
Growing from the floor, this stone formation is suggestive of a sarcophagus’s lid with a figure recumbent in relief upon it. Chips in the floor show where someone has tried—and failed—to pry the stone loose.
Campaign (noun): a connected series of adventures; Component (noun): a constituent part
Thank you for reading the Sunday Supplement; I hope some of this week’s Campaign Components make it into your game or sparks your creativity.
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.
Remember, Everything is Better with Tentacles!