Gloamhold | Great Storm | Quill of Infinite Spells | Xag Dead Empire of the Fungi-Spawn | Sawtooth Mountains
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 Forsaken Chapel of the Maiden of Death
Download
The Chapel of the Maiden of Death on Abbey Road has been abandoned for almost 200 years. The home of an extinct order of knights, the place is a monument and grave to the heroic dead who saved Languard from a plague of undeath. By now, rumours of strange lights and sounds emanating from the building have thrust it back into the limelight. Other folk claim to have seen spectral knights in the vicinity. Just what is going on at the Chapel of the Maiden of Death?
Add the Forsaken chapel to your campaign today.
02: Gloamhold
Ashlarian Legendry
Glowering amid dark rumours and terrible stories of desperate adventure, death, betrayal, and glimmering treasures squat the unutterably ancient halls of Gloamhold. This crumbling, benighted, haunted dungeon complex of unknown, but undeniably vast, extent is buried deep within the grim and brooding spray-drenched headland of the Mottled Spire. It is a place of legends, madness and death. Within this towering, wave-lashed shard of limestone lie the labyrinthine passageways and chambers of Gloamhold’s outer reaches and, beyond them, the benighted precincts and canals of the legend-shrouded Twilight City. Countless are the brave heroes who have perished in its illimitable precincts: Rivengate, the Murkwater, the Twisted Warrens, the Breathless Narrows and—above all—the Twilight City.
Even reaching Gloamhold is difficult. By land, adventurers must negotiate miles of trackless, jagged crags and sullen, dark gorges, chasms and valleys. Those approaching by sea have it no better as they must brave savage, foam-flecked waves. Tides about the headland are notoriously treacherous; wrecks of ships, large and small, driven to destruction on the rocks litter the seabed. Winter storms render Gloamhold all but inaccessible by sea for several months every year.
A subtle and ancient curse of great potency and malignancy lurks within Gloamhold’s gloomy, dust-shrouded halls. Many of those who explore its depths emerge changed. Adventurers bearing a certain haggard, prematurely aged appearance or who appear distracted by things no one else can see are often referred to as having the "Gloamhold Look”.
03: The Great Storm
Ashlarian Lore
A storm of natural ferocity, duration, and strength pummelled the Duchy of Ashlar in the turbulent autumn of 437 NR. The Great Storm, as it was dubbed, caused widespread destruction throughout the duchy. Coastal regions were particularly badly hit, but the most destruction and death was wrought upon Ashlar’s capital, the city of Languard.
Low-lying portions of Languard—notably much of Fishshambles and the Wrecks—were extensively flooded. Numerous moored ships, both small and large, were battered into kindling and large parts of Low City’s dock were destroyed. Many lives were lost both on the destroyed ships and in the city. Yet more lives and ships were lost at sea. Wreckage and bodies washed ashore for months.
In the storm’s aftermath, Languard’s docks were largely rebuilt, and its badly damaged buildings pulled down and rebuilt. For years afterwards, mudwalkers—those who scour the Svart’s muddy banks at low tide for valuables—enjoyed rare successes reclaiming many valuables from the glistening, glutinous mud. For all its ferocity, a decade after the storm struck Languard, most signs of its savagery had been erased. The same was not true throughout Ashlar, however. Many trees had been uprooted by the near-hurricane-strength winds and great swaths of woodland took decades to recover. Human memory is short, though, and within a century, the Great Storm had passed from common recollection. The priesthood of Serat, the Mistress of Storms, remember, however, and yet wonder what caused their goddess to hurl such fury and destruction at her devout worshippers.
04: Quill of Infinite Spells
Campaign Component (Wondrous Item)
Crafted long ago amid terrible and strange rotting jungle ruins the Quill of Infinite Spells is a near-mythical object of great power, great beauty and—perhaps—great danger.
Crafted by the long-dead legendary wizard-savant Timoteus Venemies, also famed for his heretical views on good and evil and of the need for the Great Balance, this oversized, wondrous feather of ever-shifting hues holds near-limitless magical lore. It was said of the preternaturally long-lived Timoteus that his magical knowledge was almost without peer and that he had mastered almost every spell extant in the world at the time. He was also rumoured to be steeped in the ancient and terrible best-forgotten lore of Xag, having discovered some forbidden wellspring of its ancient, hideous knowledge.
Wizards and their ilk can use the Quill of Infinite Spells to scribe virtually any spell into their spellbooks or onto a scroll. Such is the quill’s power that the user does not even need to know the spell they are writing; they must simply know of it. However, the quill is a wilful thing, and some sages believe that a terrible consciousness lurks within it. A weak-willed or easily swayed wizard of sufficient power may become dominated by the quill and compelled to write out and then cast a spell of unimaginable power wrought for some unspeakable purpose. A few oft-lambasted or dismissed stories speak of wizards found dead—horribly wasted and shrivelled as if they had starved to death—slumped among vast piles of parchment filled with dense writings of a wholly unknowable sort.
Whatever the truth of the matter, power-hungry wizards, confident in their lore and will, seek out the Quill of Infinite Spells for their own ends and advancements.
05 Xag, Dead Empire of the Fungi-Spawn
Campaign Component (Fallen Empire)
Millennia ago, the hideous fungi-spawn of ancient Xag ruled the sweltering southern jungles and raised grotesque towers and immense ziggurats toward the sullen stars in veneration of their uncaring, alien gods. Long and terrible was their reign over the primitive humans and their ape brethren that dwelled in the jungle and bounding plains. Far was Xag’s reach, pitiless were its armies and deathless were its seers.
The distant but catastrophic eruption of the island-volcano Cinderstone, however, doomed Xag to destruction. As clouds of hot, toxic ash filled the sky, day became night, and temperatures plummeted. When the ash began to fall, Xag died.
As hot, suffocating ash choked, crushed and buried their cities, nine of the greatest fungi-spawn—deathless seers, their lives unnaturally extended by gruesome necromantic magics—sealed themselves into the lightless depths of their greatest ziggurats. Built with supernal strength, these ziggurats—the greatest of all Xag’s creations—endured. Within their tomb-sanctuaries, they bore witness to the utter eradication of their kin and the complete destruction of their empire.
One by one, the deathless seers fell into slumber. For now, they sleep and they dream. Entombed with them, great spore banks—kept in magical stasis—represent Xag’s last desperate attempt to stave off extinction. When the time is right, the deathless seers will emerge from their ziggurats and use the spore-banks to rebuild their empire.
The humans dwelling in the jungle have long forgotten ancient Xag and its primal horrors. But even they do not dare the rugged, curiously-shaped hills of the deep jungle below which slumber the last buried remnants of diabolical Xag. Vague and formless legends and traditions of unspeakable terror lie over the silent, brooding jungle-clad hills. Carnivorous plants, heavy with fragrant and soporific black, scarlet and purple blooms, grow thickly throughout the hills, and not even the mighty tigers hunt therein.
06 Death Lake
Campaign Component (Mountain Range)
Famed for its ruggedness and remoteness, the jagged and snow-capped Sawtooth Mountains are a difficult and dangerous place to travel or live.
Several broken passes cut through the mountains and their heavily forested, rocky and pitted foothills, seemingly providing easier routes for travellers and explorers. However, many dangerous denizens—clans of simple but brutish hill giants and huge, man-eating tigers roam the Sawtooth’s lower slopes. These tigers grow to truly monstrous sizes, some reaching almost 15 feet long; hill giant champions hunt them for their skins, their teeth and the glory of besting one in single combat.
The most famous of the passes cutting through the range is called “The Snake” for its winding, twisted route. In winter, heavy snowfall renders even this route impassable—and lethal to unprepared travellers. Savage winds blow the snow into huge drifts, sometimes 20 feet or more deep, and avalanches are frequent. Travel without magical assistance is impossible during the winter months.
Deeper into the mountains—in the range proper—where the snow never melts, travellers report encountering frost giants and even gigantic pale blue ice worms that burst forth from deep drifts to devour their prey whole.
Some of the mountains in the Sawtooths stand over 25,000 feet high and have never felt the tread of a human foot. Glittering glaciers linger in the high mountains all year. Sometimes, though, when the conditions are right and the skies are clear, travellers claim to have spotted what appear to be curiously proportioned ruins perched impossibly high up among the mightiest peaks. Given the many perils lurking in the mountains, it seems unlikely that the origin of these ruins will ever be satisfactorily determined.
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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