Sinkwebs | The Clay Man Tavern | The Grimoirium | Draken-Nar | The Horn of Arluthe
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: Treasure Dressing: Armour
Treasure Dressing supplements enable you to easily add interesting, flavoursome and unique treasures to your campaign. This helps you bring the world to life in your players’ imagination and adds anticipation, wonderment and enchantment back into their characters’ lootings.
More extensive treasure dressing resources are one of the things that I get asked for the most. This month, we start a new line—Treasure Dressing—and our free download this week is a sample from the first instalment, which focuses on armour.
02: Sinkwebs
Ashlarian Legendry (Gloamhold Denizen)
Found in the deepest, the oldest and the foulest spider-haunted locales buried in Gloamhold’s doom-drenched depths, sinkwebs are silent, lurking killers.
Sinkwebs comprise the semi-sentient tendrils of huge, ancient spider webs driven by an insatiable desire to seek out warm flesh to feast upon. Encrusted with the dust and grime of ages past, these thickly woven webs often hold the mummified remains of countless creatures, great and small, within their silken folds.
Animated by the necrotic energies released when prey dies trapped within their silken confines, sinkwebs are merciless, near infinitely patient ambush predators. Terrifyingly, these animate undead spiderwebs are capable of limited movement. Unlike a normal spider web, they do not wait for prey to blunder into their threads; rather, they silently inch through their dungeon-homes in search of food. Countless adventurers have died screaming, jolted from their slumber by the first silken, but impossibly strong, caress of a sinkweb falling across their prone bodies.
Attracted by a ready supply of food, vast colonies of tiny spiders often infest sinkwebs and pour forth in scuttling swarms to fall upon those caught in its powerful embrace. Thus, adventurers unfortunate enough to encounter a sinkweb must not only contend with the creature itself, but also with its tiny, mindless—and ever-hungry—allies.
Sinkwebs hunt by first grappling their prey before pulling them deep into their silken embrace. There they are crushed or suffocated to death. Vulnerable to fire, sinkwebs can be driven off by its presence, but are otherwise implacable and fearless hunters.
See Also: Gloamhold, The Twilight City
03: The Clay Man Tavern
Ashlarian Lore (Tavern)
Favoured by members of Dulwich’s Potter’s guild, the Clay Man tavern stands in the heart of the old town near Foundation Way. The tavern is a place for quiet drinking and conversation. Little exciting happens at the Clay Man, and that’s just how the patrons like it.
The tavern is named for an infamous local tragedy. Over a century ago, a man made of clay ran amok through the town killing several citizens before mysteriously disappearing. The event has entered local lore, and the tavern’s sign features a stylised clay man of odd proportions with his arms outstretched as if he is trying to grab someone.
A hidden cellar lies below the tavern’s cellar. It holds a dust-shrouded laboratory, and it was here that the infamous clay man was crafted by the arrogant and under-skilled wizard Perttu Otra. The hidden laboratory cellar hides a further secret—the infamous clay man abides within, trapped in a stout cage of thick iron bars. Now sunken into lethargy and slumber, he lingers undying, waiting for a chance to escape and to make amends.
The tavern’s current landlady, Kalsu Otra, is a descendant of Perttu but is unaware of the secret buried below the tavern. Her elderly mother, Kerttu, knows of the cellar, though. As her life dwindles, she searches for someone to continue her grandfather’s work and protect his legacy.
04: The Grimoirium
Campaign Component (Cabal of Necromancers)
Hidden in a remote and inaccessible location far from the reach of meddling do-gooders, the Grimoirium is the lair of an ancient cabal of black-robed, dark-hearted wizards of the vilest sorts.
The Grimoirium is a fortress of ebon magic and dark lore. It stands amid the broken, dusty crags of a sand-choked hill range buried deep in the blinding sands of a distant desert. The local tribes know to avoid the hills and to flee from the sight of the occasional caravans led by black-robed adherents going about their unspeakable business.
A veritable legion of mindless and semi-mindless undead lurk in the hills surrounding the Grimoirium, and demonic servitors protect the fortress itself. A squat central keep stands at the centre of the fortress. Windowless and time-gnawed, this hateful structure is of an alien, pre-human design whispered to have been crafted using scraps of lore carried from the ruin of Draken-Nar.
This building holds the cabal’s vilest books, tomes and spellbooks. Therein lurks lore of the most unimaginably horrible, sanity-shattering sort. All such knowledge, however, pales into insignificance in the presence of the Nameless Codex. This thin tome comprises but twelve slender bronze plates held between covers crafted from the supple but supremely strong midnight black scales of some preternatural being. The book has extra-dimensional properties and is a remnant of fallen, pre-human Draken-Nar. Written in an all but extinct language, it holds near limitless knowledge, including rituals designed to bend, manipulate and reform the very stuff of reality and the universe.
05: Draken-Nar
Campaign Component (Ancient Kingdom)
Tens of thousands of years ago, the inhuman artificer philosopher-priests of doomed Draken-Nar mastered non-Euclidian geometry and built immense, sanity-shattering fanes to house terrible and alien beings brought forth from the Eternal Void.
From their mountainous realm upon a vast and distant island, they carried out unspeakable research and sent out their sail-less stone galleys to explore and plunder the world. But the priests of Draken-Nar delved too deeply into forbidden things and learnt too much. They uncovered secrets that no mortal should know.
In a single day and night, their once great and terrible civilisation was scoured from the world by a thick grey bilious fog that billowed forth from its fanes and high temples. The fog destroyed everything not of stone or metal that it touched, erasing the blasphemous horror that was Draken-Nar. It was as if the gods themselves had decided that the world would be a better place without Draken-Nar.
And yet fragments of this peerless, pre-human kingdom survived the magical cataclysm. A few of its greatest priests and wizards escaped upon the wings of powerful spells or by employing cunningly wrought implements and devices of the most curious sort. Some lingered on in the world for a while before falling prey to time’s remorseless onslaught or the vengeful assaults of fearful savages. Other survivors returned to the ruin of their home to scavenge what they could from the lifeless wreckage. In this, they were successful, for the philosopher priests recorded their lore on thin sheets of specially prepared, all but unbreakable bronze. The secret to crafting such sheets was lost in Drakon-Nar’s fall, but imbued with extra-dimensional properties, each could hold staggering amounts of lore. Other, more powerful sheets held entire demi-planes within; such places could be prisons, homes or secret refuges. Yet other sheets, spell-trapped and hidden, were used to store lore deemed too dangerous for even the philosopher priests to know.
Thus, do scattered fragments of Draken-Nar’s hideous lore yet survive to the present day. The foolish or the power-crazed seek out such fragments for their own personal ends. Few such quests end well, for calamity and misfortune hound most such folk; only those loreseekers with certain arcane protections can hope to emerge unchanged and unscathed from contact with Draken-Nar’s terrible legacy.
06: The Horn of Arluthe
Campaign Component (Legendary Item)
Carried into battle by an ancient elven hero of Ilathyel, the Shining Kingdom, the Horn of Arluthe produces a beautiful, clear and unwavering note when blown. Audible over extreme distances, the horn is laced with magic. Winding it summons spectral elven champions to the possessor’s aid. The ghostly elven warriors are supremely skilled, fearless and loyal to the horn’s possessor. They fight for up to one hour before returning to their endless rest. The horn can be used in this way once every seven days.
The Horn of Arluthe is a beautiful object. Wrought from a unicorn’s horn freely given, and intricately carved with scenes of bucolic woodlands and elven warriors, the Horn of Arluthe is an example of the heights to which elven artifice reached at Ilathyel’s zenith. The horn is in pristine condition, and it resists all stains and blemishes. Its magic repairs all damage in a matter of hours.
Elven and half-elven bardic heroes can tap even more of the horn’s magic powers. Ancient stories speak of it filling those hearing its beautiful, unwavering note with extra bravery, strength and endurance. Other legends imbue it with yet greater, more legendary powers, but only the most skilled bards are said to be able to bring them forth.
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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