Sceptre of the Dead | Black Hill | Castle of Good Hope | The Weeping Giant | Six Foul Things to Find on an Altar
Sceptre of the Dead
Singular Magic Item | Necromancy
Carved from the thighbone of an ancient pre-human lich and studded with the fangs of no less than four elder vampires, the Sceptre of the Dead is a foul item redolent with darkness, evil and death magic. Crafted long ago, its sinister shadow looms large over the doings of necromancers and the like. Its history is long, fell and steeped in unspeakable horrors.
To necromancers and their ilk, the sceptre is akin to an unholy relic birthed from the blackest zenith of their art. Only the most powerful of such folk can wield it without suffering certain side effects. Despite this, it is much sought after as both a status symbol and a repository of great power and learning.
The sceptre’s powers are wide and diverse and are reputed to include the ability to bend any lesser undead to the possessor’s will. Using the sceptre, a skilled necromancer can also possess such creatures, see through their eyes and act through their bodies in the same way that a wizard can interact with their familiar. Finally, the sceptre has certain death-dealing spell-like abilities that make the wielder an even more formidable opponent.
Black Hill
Hill | Cairn
Hemmed in on all sides by pockets of cloying peat bogs, Black Hill is an exposed and isolated place. Dismal and wet, it is a little-visited landmark visible for miles in all directions. In summer, coarse grass grows thickly in the surroundings, hiding the sucking bogs and holes lurking to waylay the unwary traveller. A profusion of aggressive venomous snakes also dwells in its environs, making Black Hill even less attractive to the casual visitor.
Surmounted by an impressively gigantic heaped cairn of fieldstone, Black Hill is flat-topped, some say unnatural so. Stories, old before the nearby land was settled, speak of a giant slumbering beneath the stones amid the glittering treasure-hoard of his ancient reavings. Most view these tales as nothing more than fanciful legends told to spellbind children and to keep bards in ale and adoration. However, other more thoughtful folk point out the great effort required to harvest such a prodigious amount of stone, while those steeped in nature question the odd behaviour of the snakes nesting in the surrounding bogs.
Castle of Good Hope
Island | Harbour | Castle
Perched upon the southern end of Windrift Isle, the Castle of Good Hope overlooks the sheltered waters of Brightwater Bay. Here, from their impregnable granitic fortress, the Knights of the Blinding Light sail forth to check the navy of demon-worshipping Icuthar. The Knights of the Blinding Light are a militant order of Darlenites intent on scouring evil’s taint from the world. Never numerous, but fabulously wealthy, for several mines on the island, seemingly producing diamonds, amethysts and topazes without end, the order is influential and powerful.
Windrift Isle is the southern-most island in the Evenisles, a cluster of four wind-blasted, dusty and mountainous islands standing several hundred miles off the coast of Westerland. Westerland claims and administers the Evenisles, but Windrift Isle is in practise a theocracy ruled over by the half-elven High Sunlord Baelsan Tymus and his advisors. Outside of several ports, the Evenisles are sparsely populated—their people surviving on fishing, sporadic farming and mining—and would have no bearing on the world at large save for their advantageous position astride several trade routes and prodigious mines.
See Also: Icuthar
The Weeping Giant
Caves & Caverns | Subterranean
Experienced delvers know that the appearance of the Weeping Giant is a harbinger of rain above and flooding below.
This sedate, subterranean waterfall of slick, smooth stone bursts into noisy life after heavy rain. Tall and slender, the Weeping Giant feeds an oft-tranquil pool filling much of the cavern at its base. When the Weeping Giant is but a trickle of sussurant water, this is a good place to camp.
Great danger lurks here, however, for in mere hours when the Weeping Giant bursts into cacophonous life, it can flood the surrounding caves and passageways, turning them into a watery deathtrap. These floods can take weeks or months to drain, meaning that even if delvers escape the raging floodwaters, they can find themselves trapped in one of several small, elevated cave systems. Several expeditions have come to grief in such caves, and opportunistic delvers sometimes come here to search for such lost groups—some hoping to find survivors and some hoping to recover their loot.
Six Foul Things to Find on an Altar
Six Things | Dungeon Dressing
Skull Pile: A ragged pile of skulls, all showing signs of violence, sprawls across the altar; a few skulls have fallen off and are scattered across the floor.
Dried Wax: Foul-smelling smears of dry black, red and yellow wax cover the altar and have dribbled down its sides. Here and there, stubs of candles emerged from the mess.
Winged Demon Idol: A hideous and foul idol depicting a primitive and demonic winged ape-thing squats on the altar. The idol is a hateful, odious object likely sculpted by an insane master artisan.
Bronze Dish: Streaked with dried blood and lumps of congealed viscera, this large, flat disk also holds a matching sacrificial knife. Both are worn from much use.
Unholy Text: The dark faith’s holy book lies open on the altar; the much-thumbed book venerates the altar’s patron and contains a ritual designed to summon one of its avatars!
Bloody Skulls: Deep grooves scoured into the altar are designed to catch and funnel a sacrifice’s blood. The grooves lead to several horned skulls embedded in the altar top; dried blood coats the skulls’ open mouths, and the stone beneath them.
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!
Get all of 2025’s Sunday Supplements in One Handy Download
Members of our Patreon campaign pledging as little as $5 a month got this download as just one part of their rewards. Join today.
The Miscellany of Many Things comprises almost 200 Campaign Components—personalities, items, adventure locations and more—taken from Raging Swan Press’s Sunday Supplement.
If you need a starting point for your imagination and inspiration, the Miscellany of Many Things is for you.
The Miscellany of Many Things is a System Neutral book. The download for this book comprises the Miscellanies PDF and the individual markdown files for all the Campaign Components featured therein.