Tuesday 24 May 2016

d100 Mildly Suspicious Village Happenings (+more hell stuff)



Hell Project Progress

I did like the ones in dragon magazine and was disappointed they didn't get officially used. Manual of the planes kinda disappointing being mostly full of spell mods rather than adventure seeds. 

My first three Hells: 1 Plague lands, 2 Infernal lands and 3 Underworlds were based lots on literature, art and mythology. I have some rough plans for the following:

4 A swamp
5 A frozen hell
6 The dark dimension
7 Nightmare land
8 Something like a  Buddhist and Chinese hell's with endless rooms of horrible torments. It might feed into
9 Bosh-Brugel hell based on their late medieval surreal paintings full of metaphores. I just have to find my books in storage. Just found out i gotta move for second time this year so glad I didnt unpack much yet. Should be easy with books.
10? Still unsure, posibly something with elder gods and dinosaurs

Naming them a bit of a issue too (fantastica, fantastisch, somnium). Need to be full of grotesquery and rabelaisian shenanigans

Black Stump is a quiet little decrepit village out of the way. Unfortunately once you have arived you are trapped in a temporal null zone. The only way out is to enter one of the entrances to hell and escape through the netherworld. Other suspicious villages can be found all over Exile Island that are tainted by cultists. Plenty of others are a bit off and local cults are pretty common. Using these in a random village might lead to murder hobos turning witch hunters and killing whole villages.

d10 Quick odd happening types
1 Animals
2 Children

3 Folk art
4 Cover ups
5 Shops
6 Odd locals
7 Farming 
8 Monuments
9 Outdoors
10 Strange folk

d100 Suspicious Village Happenings

01 Suspicious murder of crows staring at strangers from rooftops and trees
02 Followed by black cat, runs away under ladder and under fence if noticed
03 Sly one eyed toad stares from crack under doorstep
04 Goat stares at visitors then makes odd screaming bleats when sees adventurers coming
05 Rats run across road and over feet
06 Chirping bird swarm about making strange noises07 Two headed lamb being inspected by villagers who then hide it from strangers
08 Huge ferocious black dog barks ferociously but stops when owner glances over
09 Horse goes wild, screaming till brutish man whips it away
10 Huge black cock crows when you enter village street

11 Group of similar looking silent children staring creepily staring at visitors
12 Little girls singing scary skipping songs

13 Boys dissecting a puppy
14 Creepy googly eyed child nodding head non stop and drooling
15 Kids chasing cat with sticks
16 Little girls playing witches with broomsticks and pets
17 Child drawing occult signs on wall with chalk
18 Kids performing ritual like game throwing flowers and chanting around mud idol
19 Woman with creepy googly eyed baby
20 Odd pale kid playing flute or other instrument follows party playing weird tune
21 Corn dolls or dogs with some bloodstains
22 Strange chalk sigils drawn over house doors
23 Burned remains with bone human teeth fragments
24 Strange costumed dancers chasing each other with sticks and demanding coins
25 Maypole dancing youths
26 Dancing led by beast mask wearer
27 Animal skulls on posts
28 Dancers in monster costume with terrible bagpipe band
29 Villagers singing strange folk song while working
30 Villagers beating scapegoat animal in ritual
31 Odd child size muddy hole behind a house 
32 Bones scattered in streets locals say are from pigs
33 Happy dog running off with suspicious looking bone
34 Villagers finishing burying something look awkward and leave
35 Villager throws something in well when sees strangers
36 Merchant covers and removes some goods on display
37 Some villagers quickly eat something when they see you coming
38 Farmers quickly bury something when they see you coming
39 Strange footprints in muddy street
40 A hasty bonfire with villagers burning something smelly
41 Strange idols for sale along with normal goods
42 Weird deep sea fish being sold by bulgy eyed fish monger
43 Butcher chopping up chunks of mystery meat gleefully
44 Vendors selling curse tablets on the side
45 Candle maker boiling up foul smelling tallow for new candles
46 Baker only sells special pies to locals
47 Blacksmith makes and sells exotic knives, some for locals only 
48 Carpenter stops sawing and stares at you, starts sawing when you look away
49 Tailor selling hooded capes and beast head masks for festivals
50 Shop refuses to sell to outsiders, "local shop for local folk"
51 Other villagers drag away the friendly drooling village idiot
52 Village drunk slinks away somewhere out of sight
53 Kind village elder asks how they can help you on your way
54 Old woman ask if you need healing, potions or enemies cursed
55 Man offers unusually marked pets for sale
56 Locals have interesting tattoos
57 Locals have unusual jewelry 
58 Locals have unusual deformity, birthmark or other bodily feature
59 Locals have unusual turn of phrase like "we welcome strangers to our feasts"
60 Local tries to seduce party member and get them alone somewhere
61 Bountiful crops with folk idols on each plot 
62 Unusual marked animal in pen alone with lots of food
63 Strange scarecrow surrounded by crows
64 Youths tormenting a animal for fun
65 Sweaty farming youths wink compellingly at strangers
66 Farmers hanging a pig from a tree to butcher it with strange knives
67 Labourers singing a strange work song
68 Local farm youths chasing a piglet with hammers
69 Farmer passionately kissing a cow
70 Farmers having break, one dancing with a goat
71 Worn stone block with old blood stains 
72 Stone pillar with skull shaped niches
73 Cliff or boulder with ancient carved pictographs
74 Several old graves with archaic symbols of old faith
75 Abandoned, vandalised  shrine of popular faith
76 Headstones re purposed for building a wall
77 Church in dilapidated condition with missing symbols
78 War memorial statue with missing head and limbs
79 Stone sarcophagi covered in iron bars
80 Strange rock formation with hoof prints
81 Unusual plants in garden for poison or magic
82 Farmer tying dog to mandrake root to harvest the magical herb
83 Children gathering holly berries and leaves to build a human fetish
84 Hunters putting on wolf pelts and ointment
85 Shredded old fishing nets and broken boat unused for years
86 Corpse wrapped in blanket of nettles shoved in a bush
87 Burned remains of wicker man
88 Old man carving creepy faces in pumpkins and turnips
89 Villagers leaving out baskets of food while singing by a large boulder
90 Villager talking to farm animal ignoring strangers
91 Old woman chanting and gesturing to stars
92 Evil staring old man playing with fancy knife 
93 Old women with cauldron on camp fire
94 Old woman sitting with cat having a chat
95 Fat guy gazing at strangers rubbing groin and drooling
96 Hooded figure in distance watching strangers
97 Farmer carrying bucket of blood to make bloodwurst sausages
98 Men throwing sword into a pond 
99 Men throwing a dead dog and coins into a sinkhole
100 Fisherman throwing engraved wax tablet and bucket of gore into pond

will do a very suspicious village happening perhaps one day

2 comments:

  1. If you can find a list of the 136 'pit' hells of Chinese mythology, that would be pretty awesome. From what I understand the Chinese hells are a mix a buddhist, taoist, and folklore that basically consist of ten courts* controlling the eight hot and eight cold hells of buddhism, each with 16 sub-hells (commonly referred to as 'pits' where individual tortures are conducted.
    *The ten courts of the Yama Kings are also depicted as 18 levels of hell, considering court 1 is the entrance level, court 10 is the exit level, and each of the other courts consists of a hot hell next to a cold hell, it's easy to see how they arrived at the number of 18 hells.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thankyou very much!
      exactly stuff i was after

      apparently Buddhist hells had some influence on the west

      Delete

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