Nameless Monastery | Imar, the Living Plague | Grey Friars | Labyrinth of the Lich-Priest | Sweating 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: The Wrecks at a Glance
Where the ramshackle and slimy, sagging wharfs redolent with decay cluster thickly along the Svart’s muddy and slick southern bank gather the ferociously independent and inbred Takolen. This is the Wrecks, the foulest place in all of Languard.
This not-for-players At a Glance gives you a flavourful overview of Languard’s foulest district.
02: The Nameless Monastery
Ashlarian Legendry (Ruin)
The humanoid-infested ruin of the Nameless Monastery sprawls across a high hill amid the Carmine Hills’s rugged and densely forested western reaches. Much dire legendry hangs over the monastery—that the place was old even when Ashlar was founded, that its priests and adherents performed blasphemous rites in front of blood-stained altars for unknowable purposes to unknown demon powers and that the deep caves below the place hide a connection to the Underlands of the Ebon Realm.
Those who have gazed upon the rambling ruin of the Nameless Monastery tell of its obvious great antiquity. A crumbling outer wall surrounds the squat monastery ruin itself, a mephitic pool of uncertain depth and a mausoleum of grim demeanour. The place is now an armed hobgoblin camp claimed by the Skull Breaker tribe led by their mighty warlord, Grod.
A fearsome red dragon, Othimaeros Aghalskarr, dwells in the deep caves below the ruin. Until last year, he slumbered upon a vast hoard of glittering treasure, but the trespass of a certain band of adventurers, most of whom he promptly cooked and ate, awoke him from his years-long slumber. Several groups of adventurers have gone missing in the monastery’s vicinity over the last few years; only one survivor, the brave Sir Ozloc of Mossvale—noble of countenance and fleet of foot—has dared the place and survived to tell the (heroic) tale.
03: Imar, the Living Plague
Ashlarian Lore (Lesser God)
CE lesser god of sickness, decay and corruption
Imar, the Living Plague, lesser god of sickness, decay and corruption, is a minor power worshipped only rarely in Ashlar (and, indeed, all civilised nations.) Most offerings to the Living Plague are made in a desperate attempt to ward off and deflect his merciless, terrible attentions and not to glorify or venerate him.
Only the mad willingly hold Imar as their patron. His deranged cultists worship him by spreading disease and contagion. Some travel, bringing plague, disease and illness everywhere they visit. Other worshippers are more subtle and use their lord’s gifts to slowly and surely destroy a community from within.
Sacrifices to the Living Plague are gruesome and drawn out—victims are cast into sacrificial pits and repeatedly infected with multiple diseases over the course of weeks or, in rare cases, months. Death is slow, agonising and, eventually, a blessed relief.
Epithets: The Living Plague, the Unlooked For, the Unwanted, the Great Pestilence
Symbol: A rotting skull
Domains: Death
Favoured Weapon: Dagger
Raiment: Dirty grey robes smeared with burial soil
Worshippers: Deranged, mad folk
Teachings: All is corruption and corruption begets corruption; the souls of those succumbing to disease or pestilence serve Imar ever more in the Mottled Lands
Holy Text: The Living Plague’s faith holds no single book as sacred; the faith is not organised or numerous enough. Instead, each worshipper venerates Imar in their own (foul) way.
New Spells: lesser contagion (2nd-level necromantic cleric spell), greater contagion (5th level necromantic cleric spell)
See Also: The Sweating Death (below)
04: The Grey Friars
Campaign Component (Monastery)
This minor religious order worships Conn, greater god of community, family and rulership. The friars believe that peace and happiness can only be attained by following the 48 laws of its founder, Robeene Grert, the patron saint of knowledge and learning.
The Grey Friars’ monastery is an isolated one, but the order is wealthy. The order owns much of the surrounding land, gifted to them by a wealthy benefactor who had grown tired of temporal pleasure and simply craved peace. In their monastery, Greyfriars Abbey, the friars live quiet, tightly structured days as prescribed in the book, *The Daily Tenets*.
The friars are not troubled or interested in doings beyond their high walls. Instead, they spend most of their time at prayer or reading in the Great Library. This does not dissuade a steady stream of visitors and pilgrims visiting the place, however. (These folk are politely welcomed, for the pursuit of knowledge is sacred to the friars.) The former come to speak with the monks for many of them possess specialist knowledge on a par with the most sagacious sages, while the latter visit to pray at Grert’s tomb in hopes of receiving quasi-divine inspiration on some vexing issue or another.
05: Labyrinth of the Lich-Priest
Campaign Component (Dungeon)
Of vast extent, this convoluted labyrinth-tomb of near-infinite complexity has lain hidden from the world for centuries uncounted. Filled with traps and patrolled by deathless, animate guardians, the labyrinth exists to keep someone in and everyone else out.
The labyrinth has long been sought by the Servants of Darkness. Within, the lich-priest Aarto Tuiretuinen, greatest of all Braal’s servants, languishes in a magical trap of supreme cunning and power. Wrought by a cabal of sorcerers and druids unable to destroy Aarto, the prison has endured longer than most kingdoms and empires.
Thanks to a phylactery of supernal strength held by his profane lord, Braal, lesser god of hate, malice and revenge, Aarto is essentially unkillable. Thus, he endures ensnared in a deathless torpor of the ages, awaiting the time when his lord’s servants breach his prison and sunder the enscrolled bonds that keep him therein.
Also referred to in certain ancient, crumbling texts as the Labyrinth of Shadows and Silence, the dungeon lurks at the nexus of a series of contradictory and jumbled legends. Many adventurers have sought the place, assuming great wealth and glory lie within. Most fail to even find the place, but those that do must contend not only with the labyrinth’s traps and guardians but also the Servants of Darkness who ever watch out for adventurers brave and skilled enough to pierce the complex’s malign heart.
06: The Sweating Death
Campaign Component (Disease)
All sane folk fear the Sweating Death. Virulent, swift and deadly, this mysterious disease kills almost half of those it infects. It arrives in a community, quickly savages it and then dies away. Magical healing is effective against the Sweating Death, but normally, cases progress so swiftly and spread so quickly through a community that only the wealthiest (or luckiest) can access such aid.
The Sweating Death kills those it infects in mere hours. Its onset is swift and merciless.
First, those infected feel a sense of dread leaching into their mind. This is combined with violent, cold shivers, dizziness and a crushing headache. Exhaustion, coupled with severe muscle and limb pains, follows. In the last hours, the hot sweating begins which invariably leads to delirium, intense thirst, and a racing heartbeat. Those who subsequently collapse from exhaustion and enter a deep sleep rarely awaken.
Many folk suspect that the Sweating Death is a magical disease of fell origin, and in this, they are partly correct. While the Sweating Death is a naturally occurring disease, because of its lethality, it rarely spreads far. However, followers of Imar, the Living Plague, lesser god of sickness, decay and corruption, have learnt how to harness the disease. Such deranged folk spread the Sweating Death to glorify their malign patron.
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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