Parsantium | Pebble Mill | Hall of Heroes | Murkwater | Ravens' Step | Sandford | Vor's Scintillating Cudgel
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.
00: The Free City of Parsantium
Campaign Component (Free City)
The Free City of Parsantium stands astride two continents at the crossroads of the world. Here, storied cultures collide, creating a melting pot of adventure and intrigue. Located where the Griffin Water meets the Corsair’s Sea, Parsantium is divided into three quarters, one on each side of the Dolphin Strait and a third on a central island. Great stone bridges, over 300 yards long, connect the separate parts of the city.
The Old Quarter on the southern side was built over the ancient city of Dhak Janjua, founded 2,000 years ago by refugees fleeing the evil geomancers of Karjan. The quarter is a chaotic, cosmopolitan blend of cultures: onion-domed mosques and Aqhrani coffee shops jostle for space with brightly painted Sampuran temples and elegant Tiangaon teahouses. The impossibly tall headquarters of the Esoteric Order of the Blue Lotus towers above the city’s poorest districts.
Across the strait to the north is the Imperial Quarter, home to the Great Palace of the Basileus, the Holy Basilica of Helion, and the Hippodrome where the ever-popular chariot races are held. Here, wealthy and decadent Bathuran nobles scheme to increase their power in glistening white marble homes adorned with golden domes and exquisite mosaics.
Occupying the central island is the Mercantile Quarter, the world’s largest marketplace. Dominated by a 200-foot bronze colossus depicting Corandias the Magnificent, Bathuran conqueror of Parsantium, snake-charmers, water sellers, tooth-pullers, barbers, and musicians wander the busy stalls.
Finally, a fourth “Hidden Quarter” lies beneath the city streets. Composed of the ancient ruins of Dhak Janjua and the cellars, cisterns, and tunnels built by later generations, Parsantium’s Hidden Quarter is ruled by a powerful crime lord. The catacombs are frequented by criminal gangs, necromancers, evil cultists, and worse, and are best avoided by all but the boldest adventurers.
The Free City of Parsantium is a guest post by Richard Green, freelancer extraordinaire. Learn more about the city, its history and people over on Richard’s blog.
01: Pebble Mill
Standing near the mouth of the Tanu River, Pebble Mill is a miracle of Abarinite engineering. The mill—powered by the Tanu’s tidal bore—gives this small hamlet its name (and purpose) and is the inhabitant’s main source of employment. A few folk also fish the surrounding waters while the children and old folk harvest smoothed stones from the Tanu’s banks for sale to Languard’s artisans. Large smoothed stones end up at Languard’s Great Forge, where they are sized and smoothed by Abarin’s master stonemasons for use in the duke’s cannons. This natural resource makes Pebble Mill valuable to the Nenonens, and the hamlet is under the duke’s direct protection.
02: Hall of Heroes
Ashlarian Legendry (Holy Place)
The centrepiece of Tor Abbey and the focus of the Darlenite (greater god of law, order, justice and the sun) faith in Ashlar, the Hall of Heroes is a hallowed place of prime importance to the Order of the Watch Eternal. The *Font of Exalted Deeds*—a sacred relic of the faith—stands at the centre of the hall and is the focus of the faith’s religious ceremonies.
The *Font of Exalted Deeds* is not the only feature of note in the hall, though, for the floor comprises hundreds of gravestones naming the order’s heroic dead interred in the catacombs below the abbey. Each graven marker records the fallen hero’s name and lists their most illustrious deeds. Acolytes and knights come here to gaze in reverent wonder at the heroic dead and to drink in the tales of their deeds and sacrifices. Thus does the order endure—learning from the examples and experiences of those who have come before. The oldest of the stones is now worn with age, but in the faithful’s minds, this does nothing to dim the lustre of the long-dead’s example of service, loyalty and piety.
See Also: Font of Exalted Deeds, Tor Abbey
03: The Murkwater
Ashlarian Lore (Gloamhold Locale)
The seething, foam-flecked waters below Rivengate are hazardous and deadly to the unwary, unlucky or unskilled. Many underwater dangers—jagged rocks, savage rip tides and more—await explorers attempting to access Rivengate and the areas beyond. Only skilled or lucky captains dare to sail into the gloom of Rivengate’s gaping, shadow-choked maw. Within flows the dark and treacherous Murkwater.
Extensive landings provide access to Rivengate’s surviving halls. Battered by the Murkwater’s remorseless tides, the first of these landings has partially collapsed. Yet moored alongside is the battered and rotting hulk of a large fishing boat sunk during a storm last winter. The other landings, cracked and worn by time and tide, are intact. Malformed and sickly seaweed grows voraciously to the landing’s sides, and abnormally large, but misshapen and often sharp, barnacles cluster here in great profusion. Hidden by the seaweed, they lurk ready to rip any unfortunate climber’s hands to shreds. The slippery seaweed makes climbing onto the landings at low water difficult and dangerous.
If the tide is right, however, explorers can pass even deeper into Gloamhold by sailing along the Murkwater’s tenebrous course. Adventurers must time their explorations carefully, for the tide is exceptionally strong, which makes travel in the wrong direction dangerous, difficult and tiring; such explorers must row against the tide.
The vicious tides are not the only danger lurking in the Murkwater for unwary explorers. Below the river itself runs a twisted, flooded network of caverns—the Breathless Narrows—and in several places the two waterways intersect. In such areas, the denizens of the Breathless Narrows often lie in wait for passing vessels. During particularly stormy weather, small localised whirlpools often form in these locations, adding an extra danger for explorers.
See Also: Gloamhold, Rivengate, The Flaming Lady
04: Ravens’ Shelf
Campaign Component (Druid’s “Tomb”)
A pack of large and startlingly ferocious ravens dwell upon a rocky, inaccessible ledge halfway up a vertiginous cliff deep in a range of wild, heather-dusted hills. A narrow and steep shaft of curiously smooth design pierces the cliff behind the ledge. A grotto lies at the bottom of the shaft, and within lies the mouldering remains of the hermit-druid Gorraen Mistaval amid the ruin of his old home.
Surpassingly powerful in life, and yet anchored to the world by his love of nature, Gorraen’s life force dwells in the cavern and can possess the ravens. So skilled is he in this that he can jump from bird to bird and through them, he soars high over his beloved hills, watching for humanity’s encroaching shadow. This shadow he vigorously resists; nothing must be allowed to mar or damage the stark natural beauty of his beloved hills or to harm the delicate balance of the range’s ecology.
Folk dwelling in the lowlands have learnt that expeditions into the hills often return empty-handed, having experienced a startlingly high incidence of accidents, incidents and setbacks. Many believe the hills are haunted, but no one has guessed at the true source of the misfortune besetting any sizable expedition heading into the hills.
05: Sandford
Campaign Component (Village)
Overlooked by a stout castle of simple but effective design, the sleepy coastal fishing village of Sandford straddles the Nimar River’s estuary. Six miles east of the ruin of Saltern Priory, Sandford is the personal holding of the Rakkanens, an ancient family descended from the warrior-knight Matias Rakkanen who hacked the place from the wilderness generations ago.
At low tide, a broad, glistening sandbar emerges from the Nimar’s waters to link the two halves of the village. Locals know the sandbar and its ways well, but visitors and newcomers are well advised to tread carefully, for the sucking, cloying sand can be treacherous.
Few locals give much thought to the ruin of Saltern Priory that stands but six miles or so along the coast, preferring to pretend that the allegedly haunted and cursed place does not exist. Instead, they worry and fret about the village’s harbour and the perennial problem of the harbour silting up—a storm last winter drove significant quantities of sand into the harbour, and sporadic dredging efforts remain ongoing. The harbour is the village’s beating heart—without it, penury and hardship will likely beset the villagers.
As well as inundating the harbour with silt and sand, the last winter storm also revealed a curious rock formation in the Nimar’s estuary. Now at low tide, the tops of ten seaweed stones—nine arrayed in a rough circle around the tenth, larger stone—emerge from the Bitter Sea’s fretted waters. The locals call the formation the Dancers and tell predictably fantastic and fanciful tales about them…
See Also: Prior’s Walk, Ruin of Saltern Priory
06: Vor’s Scintillating Cudgel
Campaign Component (Magic Item)
The redoubtable Vor was a crusading warrior-priest of old famed for this magical cudgel. Vor was obsessed with saving souls in peril of eternal damnation. He travelled the land pushing back the encroaching darkness, preaching to those in peril of slipping into evil ways and generally serving as an example for the commonfolk.
Vor wielded a cudgel forged from fabulously rare iroculum that became synonymous with his holy questing. Vor’s Scintillating Cudgel, as it became known, could call forth various light-based powers that he used to sear, smite and illuminate evil’s minions.
Vor was particularly fond of enlightening those who needed saving and was famed for his love of bad puns.
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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