d100 Strange Doorways in Auldwood

So commoners often find openings and doors to caves and structures on Exile island, Auldwood and Anglerslund. Often people just cover them up so kids don't find them and mess with them. Sometimes locals know about them and leave them alone due to local legend or past failures from looters. Many assumed tombs of the dead so leave them alone like good people. Sometimes people are diggining up old ruins for building supplies and good stones and find something. There are even towns that thing bringing in adventurers under contract to loot the tomb and 50% of the loot. They would rather a share with money than useless magic weapons. Maybe exited villagers tell adventurers passing by in the pub. Perhaps some kids have opened a hole and gone down and now need help?

Holes in hills - fillers for hexcrawls, local village sidequests or perhaps to plant some huge dungeon as a distraction or for later to visit.  

d10 Quick Types
1 Tombs

2 Old Ruin

3 Cavern

4 Old Mine

5 Lair

6 Outpost

7 Passages

8 Home

9 Dungeon

10 Deep Magic

d100 Strange Doorways in Auldwood 
01 Open ancient burial chamber of cyclopean stone long empty

02 Heavy stone slab of poor family crypt with common remains, a holy symbol and idols

03 Clay sealed stone door of crypt with long sleeping lesser undead and some treasure

04 Stone door with easy opening action, ghouls secret lair once a tomb. They have dug other tunnels to local graveyards and other tombs

05 Sealed wide stone door, tomb of ancient hero possibly with horse or chariot now a wight

06 Sealed door with ancient script. Tomb with stone sarcophagi of a mummy with a valuable gold horde

07 Stone lid over a pit, a tomb with a crypt of a wraith or spectre

08 Crude stone slab blocking tomb opening. If opened releases shadows or spectral minions

09 Boulder deliberately moved over entry to cave tomb with an armoured skeleton warrior on a throne with a horde of plunder, may not be human, often has magic items

10 Sealed stone slab door with ancient script of a curse warning of evil within. Tomb inside is sleeping vampire or trapped demon in a stone sarcophogi with a holy seal
11 Wooden doors under house foundation. Farmhouse cellar with crumbling goods and rats. Possibly some ok wine or metal tools

12 Rotting wooden doors under vines in a hillside. A crumbling storehouse with huge harmless scuttling bugs and a giant toad who came in when little. Old crates of intact goods and straw inside

13 Pile of stones with a tribal sign of the old ways. An storage tunnel with shelves of very old dried food, pottery, an idol and some potions from a tribe long ago

14 Trapdoor In burned remains of an old house. Remains of those who hid from raiders above and were sealed inside without air. Might be very angry undead family

15 Strange square stone in old foundation. COntains plague victims in long-buried cellar. When opened a miasma of disease is released possibly some diseased undead inside

16 A clay wall over whicker frame found in a gully. Ancient storehouse using part of a large cave, now overgrown with giant fungus and bugs. Possibly a family of peaceful goblins live here

17 A round stone lid into a slippery angled shaft. Within foundations of large house long ago. An ancient coal cellar with remains of a strange wagon and furnace.
18 Trapdoor under remains of a shack. Inside is a small dry cave with well-preserved food items and a common family forgotten treasure and animal pelts

19 Trapdoor drops down a shaft with a ladder or spiralling ledges to a well in the bottom. Connected to underground semi-flooded caves (some large creature lives in the water)

20 Stone door on a wall on crumbled remains of tower. Once a watchtower. Inside are stored weapons many intact and a petty golem guardian

21 Stone lid on pit to a glowing cave complex with dangerous fungi and giant bugs and some pixies

22 Rotting wood covered in vegetation. Cave where some wine was stored but tunnels go into the deep to a river or underground canal with a crumbling wharf and rotting small boats

23 Sealed stone slab door. Cave complex where remnants of a family of cannibals were sealed inside generations ago

24 Covered by vegetation stone door. Cave complex where some kind of market once took place and there are many passages and tunnels into the deep

25 Wooden locked door. Cavern with a lake and a village of fish folk who lived here for centuries and were sealed inside by human settlers 

26 Sealed wooden door. Steamy cavern, the upper area used as a bathhouse by someone and deeper chambers connect to steam caves and lava flows. Large reptiles and bugs live down here. Some human and other remains are partially coated in calcium accretions

27 Stone slab door. Clan of troglodyte lizard folk live here in secret in a great cave where they hunt bugs and toads and bats. They even have a treasure in a temple. They built the door to keep out strangers. Occasionaly a demon worshipping faction take over and cause trouble outside 

28 Rotting wooden door over large cavemouth partly covered by vines. A smaller rotting door can be broken through by kids or hobbits. This is entrance to a vast network of Underland chasms and part of a system that can be used to cover vast distances. Once traders used this and met here in a market within the entry cavern 

29 Ancient stone slab with mystic spirals and dancing horned people. Inside is a magical labyrithe connected to other similar mazes in different times and worlds and other lands. Two battling immortal will try and use visitors to quest for them. One seeks to dominate the multiverse with the power of the labyrynthe, the other wants it for wise mystics to explore 

30 A clay wall in a hillside with ancient handprints. Inside is a series of huge caves and a village of humans sealed inside who have become cave folk over generations living off bats and bugs and eating troublemakers. They hate outsiders who they believe will come to finish them off so all intruders must be killed and eaten 
31 Rickety wooden door with keep out sign and some names stating a claim. Inside a small tunnel complex is some lead and silver ore. Acid could be used to refine more silver possibly. A crazy old miner lives inside who murdered and ate his buddy one winter and now hides in the dark. He welcomes visitors and has booby trapped the place

32 Pit with wooden rotting hatch. Drops into a mine tunnel occupied by dwarf zombies who want to haord metal and valuable goods from some remnants of dwarf instinct. Dwarves who see this will be outraged

33 Open pit mostly covered by grass, a falling hazard. Inside is a small gold mine with remains of miners where they breached a much larger and older goblin mine

34 Small stone door locked with complex mechanisms and easy open mechanism. Gnome mine into rock tooking for Bismuth deposits. The passages are for small creatures, larger may have to crawl. They have left several mining automata here to work and a stockpile of bismuth to flood the alchemy market in the city for years

35 A secret stone door that slides away easily. Glowing elf runes inside indicate which clan own the mine. Its passages have become more like natural caves and are well lit by glowing crystals elves mined here for a cold smokeless light source for their palaces and treeforts

36 A crude but not very old wooden door. Some might recognise as lazy goblin craft. Inside is a 4 foot high tunnel complex of a iron deposit. When the iron was dug out a family remained behind to start a small kingdom and have converted tunnels to bug and fungi cultivation 

37 A bricked up mine opening partly hidden by vegetation. A mine dug into a deeper older mine that had a hellgate. The miners who got out sealed it up. Inside are undead and imps who use this as their entry in the world supplying cultists with orders and gifts of hell

38 Bricked up mine entrance. Soldiers used this tunnel to dig into a winery cellar and steal booze until caught. The entrance is still sealed but the winery is long gone and has been used by creatures to populate the mine

39 Metal lid on a shaft deep into the rock made with magic. Part of a broken which and chain is partly buried nearby under a clump of weeds. Down in the deeps below is a fossil mine where a wizard once dug up prehuman creatures and unpetrified them for research. There is the remains of an ancient menagerie, caves of petrified monsters and some of the creatures have survived after eating the wizard. The menagerie has magical food bowls in pens that have allowed creatures to survive. Some of the statues are of serpent folk

40 Locked iron bar gate on a mine. Has been used by a criminal gang for storage and if anyone touches this cave the smugglers guild will be very unhappy 

41 Open cave behind bushes with claw marks on walls. Inside is a family of bears or cave lions

42 Tunnel blocked by rocks and loose earth. A giant burrowing toad lives here and keeps the door shut since some prying adventurers found it

43 A wall of dripping ice blocks a chilly cave entrance. Inside is a frost salamander brumating for the current non ice age. Will wake up if any noise heard especially breaking ice of magical fire. It repairs the wall often and goes out some blizzards to hunt

44 A confused mimic without a dungeon home has set up here as a fabulous looking dungeon door just begging to be opened

45 A large slab of burned log blocks a cave mouth. Inside is a troll 

46 A cave entrance with rock carvings some very ancient. Seems to have been expanded in ancient times by residence. Cave art decorates the chambers and a lone cave person with a fireplace who is very angry at visitors. There is a firepit room with an air shaft and a well in another chamber and a tomb with hundreds of dedicated bodies and some oldest with cavebear pelts

47 Door in the hillside concealed behind grass. Is the secret den of a werewolf and remains of animals and a few humans are to be found inside

48 Large wooden door in a hill with a chimney. Inside in a family of ogres and their orc servant

49 Grassy curtain of tuf covers this hole which is home of a wyvern that hunts by night well away from its lair

50 Loose shaped heap of earth covers this burrow entrance of giant carniverous insects like ants, beetles, wasps, etc
51 Hidden hole in a hill is a outpost of local halflings spying on humans. Several of the sherrifs men are hidden here with a special non smoking field stove, a smokehouse, a pump for water and comfortable chairs in a smoking room. Well provisioned and wary of nosy biguns

52 Secret door in a cliff has been revealed by running water down a rockface. Inside is a dwarf secret watch outpost. There as a stockpile of dwarf rations and weapons here to supply other agents. May still be occupied and could be good or evil 

53 Tree covered hill where someone saw a tiny door open in a tree but cant find it now. One of several tree doors to a secret gnome home where they have a mission to keep an eye on local humans. They have pet badgers or giant ferrets

54 Huge ancient tree seems to have a doorway in it locals know about. It is a secret door to an elf watch tree where several elves can monitor local events, There will be good supplies of food and arrows. May be occupied by elves or their servants or pets and may be good or evil. They will have hundreds of years of records and reports

55 Dark hole in a creek mostly covered by vegetation seemingly an animals hole. An old outcast witch is living here observing it for some dread purpose. She pretends to be a hermit but has an impressive room of herbs and crafted occult trinkets. She may be interested in making money or gaining secret influence for her chaos coven

56 Heavy fortified door has been spotted in a ravine, orcs have build an outpost here

57 Wooden door under a shaded ledge. A secret bandit outpost with supplies and used to inform rest of the gang what happening in area. Pigeons in cages are kept for food and messages

58 Fake turf trapdoor, inside is a enemy nation or faction spy outost, part of a netwok

59 Hole in a tree has a ladder into a cave outpost with shrine supporting cultists in the area at work

60 Trapdoor into ancient cellar in foundations. Inside is a thieves guild safehouse here members on the run and secret goods are stashed and the occasional hostage 
61 Huge gate in cliff under vines with a smaller door of stone or metal. Requires keys or a puzzle to open on magic command. Actually is a entry to vast dwarvish underground highway some with tracks and various stations and side tunnels

62 Stone block with remains of metal door torn off, inside is a circular rusty iron stairwell and air vent to an ancient dwarf tunnel system connecting a cavern complex and a highway

63 Wall found to be an illusion. Behind that is a black diorite stone door carved with a likeness of a serpant folk wizard. This tunnel connects to a prehistoric tunnel complex with signs of inhabitants and obsidian tools. In the deepest pit serpent folk and their dinosaur pets are sleeping in magic crystal caves

64 Open narrow tunnel crosses miles used by ancient demihumans and smugglers

65 Stone door into chamber with locked iron bars and a deep shaft with a ladder. Enters into a gnome tunnel with rail tracks in state of abandonment

66 Wizard locked stone hatch in rock with dark elf runes. Behind it is a deep stairwell into a vast cave where dark elves lived but now is a fungus forest of dark fey with ruined buildings and giant walking toadstools

67 Stone door into ruined cavern town now only home to monsters and can be used to cross a fair distance in secret

68 Open passage into the deep. This is the entrance to a vast cave with a population of a hidden subterranean race. There are multiple guard posts on the way 

69 This passage is a secret hellgate to the first layer of hell. Inside is a huge devil face which opens as the portal and sevelel lesser devils guard it. Cultists and messenger imps often visit 

70 This cave is a magical time portal back to prhuman times, it is one way unfortunately but their are lots of powerful alien wizards who might be interested in you
71 Tiny painted wooden doors in trees and rocks in area from a clan of gnome homes
72 Door in the base of a giant tree stump is home to a forest dwarf and his badger folk friend and a goblin

73 Door in a tree with lovely bronze knocker. Home to a an elf scholar looking for seclusion and peace, likes to offer candy to young visitors who are all children to them

74 Small door in a hill is a halfling family part of a larger hidden clan

75 Door in a hill with a chimney releasing smoke. Inside a family of fauns are relaxing

76 Huge tree with a wooden locked door. Home of a forest druid who replaced the previous druid guardian

77 Wooden door on a cave where a holy hermit lives in isolation with a vow of silence

78 Wooden door into a house semi buried in hill with a turf roof. An elderly couple live here with a stove troll and a few brownies and pixies. They are far older than they seem

79 A crack in a tree you can see something inside. Druids used to use magic to open this portal and had a secret shrine in here. Local druids will be pleased to rediscover this and can heal damage to the tree done discovering it. Remains of ancient druid in bed inside 

80 Stone door into a water eroded stone cliff. Requires magic to open and is home to a local spirit divinity responsible for the area. Will be unhappy to be intruded and will insist strangers leave. If offered a gift and are good the spirit may aid them. rude visitors will be cursed
81 Single dungeon door, slocke with a guard niche and empty beer bottles

82 Purtculis gate in cliff. Inside is a dungeon complex full of humanoids, cultists and worse

83 Double dungeon door bolted on inside. The kingdom and a humanoid king

84 Ancient stone disc with mystic carvings seals an ancient tomb cairn. Inside a clan of elves feast eternally and enjoy gold left here by some human king

85 Stone door with an altar, requires blood sacrifice to open and gain entry to this vast cultist complex of caves and prehuman ruins

86 Great stone door with magic runes in a ancient language. Inside is a dwarvern complex long overun by goblins, trolls and chaos cults

87 Great sealed iron door to ancient complex of the necromancer kings

88 Stone slab door found behind a lanslide. An ancient dungeon of elemental cultists with portals to various planes and elemental creatures and a central chamber where the elemental unitarians united four separate cults

89 Circular stone locked door into a gnome dungeon full of machines and their pets

90 Recently built dungeon doors. Goblins found some long empty caves and dug out areas and have sold sections to monsters needing a home. Path to entry shows increased local usage
91 Black invulnerable door with silver lock that radiats LE. Gateway to the black lodge library - the university of hell where anyone can get free tuition for the study of magic. Only your soul is required and some oaths to your free imp each new student

92 Great stone door appears ovenight with a portal to giantland inside that seems like a huge tunnel. The giants plan to colonise this area and are evacualting their current predicament with other more horrible giants

93 Passage with invulnerable silver bars and a locked gate. Leads to a cave with a subterranean river and a wharf. A ferryman will come to take your one coin fair to the underworld or perhaps one of the hells or other netherealms 

94 Great green stone vault door under glacial gravel deposits. Inside is a portal to an otherworldly city of nightmare entities from beyond the void. They planed to invade but lost interest 

95 Black stone door uncovered by mudslide. Inside is a prehistoric temple to darkness with treasures and a otherworldly guardian and strange items

96 Tunnel blocked with rubble long ago with signs of possibly magic used to seal. Tunnel leads to a vast ruined alien metropolis inhabited by degenerate remnants and scuttling trilobites everywhere. Some big enough to ride and be dangerous

97 At low tide a stone door is visible in a coral reef. This is the ruins of a fish folk city inhabited by all manour of pesky sea creatures and their former slaves. A cult will seek to get ahead and sabotage expeditions 

98 An astonomer has seen a shooting star with a door though his telescope and he wants to teleport people up there and go inside. He has made it to the surface on test jaunts

99 A strange scintilating door of rainbow light appears on one of the great elder stone monoliths once a year each soltice, some say it is a gate to paradise or some faerie trap

100  Where there used to be a valley is now a lake of living flesh and there are several strange sphincter doors and mouth like portals. Strange hairless creatures are gathering local protein to feed these gates 

Abyss Oaths & Gifts

Had another play at B5 and a npc was eaten by a chameleon and a wizard scared I away with an illusion of a giant snake. Did find his legs and a hand. Turns out guy was miserable anyway and had funny dreams. Turns out he was mutating into a shoggoth so probably for the best.

So here is my chaotic evil demon fan oaths and boons. Some more powerful extra boons below but many will just make you a monster. Mayby I need to do a neutral evil Daemon or a more outer voids cult one as well. I think in my cosmology I will have daimons as a common spirit and numbers of those became devils, demons, daeomons and well as various good entities. Sort of proletariate petty godlings working for the cosmos and during early calamoties more extreme alighnments have developed. In my world alignment is mostly for fanatics and the alignment requirements of gods are arbitrary, unfair and imposed. Thats why most people struggle with it or reject it as a outmoded old religion.  

Abyss Oaths & Gifts
CE oaths for villains in league with Demons
Roll d12 on common oaths and if you get the same one you already had you can pick an oath from this list or roll on Rare oaths. If you have the first 12 oaths you may use the rare oaths table from then on.

Then there are the standard oaths in sets of four levels at a time that are what most diabolical cultists and bad managers adpot. You can swap any of the same set out really or roll a d4 as they will be of similar power creep. It makes better mooks have magic weapons that are possibly alignment locked and unusable to decent folk. 

d12 Common Oaths
1 Boast your superiority and terrible power to all

2 Hoard treasure and keep it hidden

3 Bring swift wrath to punish your enemies
4 Take what you covet if you are stronger

5 Pursue your lovers as a hunter hunts a beast

6 Sate yourself at every chance with food

7 Enjoy sloth and sleep at any chance

8 Slander and lie about your rivals and enemies

9 Threaten and intimidate strangers

10 Only eat stolen or wild food 

11 Draw blood daily for your demon patrons

12 Rule over the weak with pain

d12 Rare Oaths

1 Eat only what you kill 

2 Betray others before they betray you
3 Eliminate enemies now to stop future conflict
4 Betray all promises made
5 Destroy those who oppose your desires

6 Lie constantly to confuse your foes
7 Torture prisoners for hidden secrets
8 Consume the flesh of only intelligent beings

9 Always search for secret enemies and betrayal
10 Enslave those who fall under your power 
11 Leave no survivors on a battlefield

12 Always release imprisoned demons if you can 

d12 Boons of the Abyss

1 Minor cosmetic mutation of a table according to choice of a demon patron

2 +1 weapon made from abyssal metal usually a cruel blade or mace   

3 +1 Language spoken S or Written W d4 1=Abysall (CE) 2=Goblin 3= 4=Ogre 4=Troll

4 Arcane zero Lv Cantrip Spell  d4 1=Bugcharm  2=filth  3=Evil Eye  4=Vermin  

-

5 Major mutation of a table according to choice of a demon patron

6 +2 Weapon and if was a previous gift now also has the property of  +1 vs Law and +1 vs Good all stackable with other weapon pluses

7 Skill d4 1=Loot 2=Trap Lore  3=Bluff  4=Poison Lore

8 Arcane 1st Lv Spell d4 1=Spider Climb 2=Illusion  3=Darkness  4=Enlarge

-

9 Gain 12 idiotic manes demons to do your bidding or guard something

10 +3 Weapon and if was a previous gift now also has property only usable by CE as a cursed berserker blade to non chaotic evil users, has an evil spirit within it that communicate by empathy and tempts users to wickedness 

11 Gain a pet succubi or incubi follower 

12 Arcane 2nd Lv Spell d4 1=Acid Arrow  2=Alter Self 3=ESP 4=Mirror Image 

-

13 Can summon a type 1 demon per week

14 +4 Weapon and if was a previous gift now also telepathic to wielder has diabolic lore skill, +d3 venom damage, the spirit of the blade can poison unwanted users

15 Regenerate 1HP per round unless fire or acid, if already regenerates per round like a troll +1 per round instead. Any chopped off pieces may regrow as monsterous. The chopped off bits may become monsters

16 Arcane 3rd Lv Spell d4 1=Acid Cloud 2=Gaseous Form 3=Blink 4=Vampirism 

-

17 Can summon a type 3 demon per week 

18 +5 Weapon and if was a previous gift now also can speak and cast know alignment 3 times per day and gains extra +1 vs good or chaotic and +2 vs chaotic good, the weapon may cast suggestion once per day on any non-aligned wielder and will wait for the worse opportunity

19 Plane shift to your patron demons domain or back once per day

20 Arcane 4th Lv Spell d4 1=Confusion Ray  2=Dark Tentacles  3=Fear Ray 4=Wraithform

Bonus Petty Boons for Petty Cultists
Really some people are satisfied with less than an adventurer and don't want to power game through life

d12 Bonus Petty Boons for Petty Cultists
1 Soul dagger counts as magic and for each person killed it is +1 for an hour or can heal 1HP once per day (possible to upgrade plus at higher levels) 
2 An invisible demon makes an accident cause harm your enemy once a month
3 Daily receive a bucket of mysterious meat 2d4 kilos, appears in a puff of brimstone
4 Recieve a d4 unholy waters per day that can heal undead 2d4 damage 
5 A monthly visit from a demon lover 
6 Mystery package weekly d4 1=stolen goods worth 3d6gp 2=stolen goods from criminals 3d6gp 3=d4 berserker potions 4=one use wolf pelt turns you into a wolf till dawn (no effect on clothes or equipment)
7 Monthly a demon allows you to spy on someone for an hour. Might give you a dream or give a vision in a reflection or take you there as a phantom 
8 Feel no pain and immune to effects using pain -1 HP damage from non-magic weapons, many with this condition develop sadism as they resent others feeling sensations

9 Lycanthropy, a stranger brings you a magic pelt or ointment you use to become a powerful monster

10 Berserker, a stranger brings you a potion giving you the powers of psychotic rage 

11 You gain a single manes demon to serve your will, you must hide and feed it   

12 You are joined to a cell of demon cultists in a ritual and you all support each other serving your dark overlord in secret

*Petty Missions from Demons
Demons are not into giving you chores to corrupt you like devils are, they are more into straight-up fearless immediate action.

d12 Petty Missions from Demons
1 Steal corpses for necromancers or ghouls or other monsters to eat
2 Kill and partially eat a target assigned by demon
3 Torture a target assigned by demon to near death

4 Put on a party for demon cultists and minions 
5 Leave mutilated animals at a location
6 Take a victim assigned by demon as a slave or prisoner

7 Start a brawl in a public place and ensure a certain person is injured
8 Curse or cast a spell vs a local leader or civic official

9 Poison a well or someones drink

10 Ritually murder a specially chosen victim with a d4 qualities 

11 Murder a random stranger and hide the corpse

12 Burn down a building with occupants inside

Hells Oaths & Boons

Thought I should do this as a handy bunch of oaths and buffs I can slap on cultists in my current campaign & homebrew. Also I have tempted many players and most of the parties into serving hell. Who'd have thought the murder hobo lifestyle would have consequences for your soul. 

Basically, in my game per level you can make an oath to get a boon per level. You also get a score added next to each part of your alignment as you grow more fanatic. Or stay non aligned and don't bother with strange philosophy and do what you want whenever you want. 

Alignment Languages
Alignment language is derived from the outer and lower planes. They are used by entities summoned from allied planes and by cultists as secret speeches for church hierarchy and secret allies. Most zero level worshipers of a religion do not speak alignment languages only educated ones or perhaps former assistants or students of magic who got to at least 1st Lv. Worshipers may chant these words without understanding them.

Hell Oaths & Gifts
LE oaths for villains in league with Hell 
Roll d12 on common oaths and if you get the same one you already had you can pick an oath from this list or roll on Rare oaths. If you have the first 12 oaths you may use the rare oaths table from then on.

Then there are the standard oaths in sets of four levels at a time that are what most diabolical cultists and bad managers adpot. You can swap any of the same set out really or roll a d4 as they will be of similar power creep. It makes better mooks have magic weapons that are possibly alignment locked and unusable to decent folk. 

I have added bonus boons to tempt people into service. Some oaths don't seem too bad but are tricks to corrupt you and your family and any group you belong to.

d12 Common Oaths
1 Twist the spirit of all agreements to your own advantage  

2 Cast evil eye and spells in secret against those who spite you

3 Never give charity always put the needy in your debt 

4 Harm those who dishonour or humiliate you

5 Persecute those accused of breaking the law

6 Punish those who fail your commands or harm you 

7 Keep dark secrets of those in power from the masses

8 Don't murder others when you can sell them as slaves

9 Aid local diabolic cults in need without exposing yourself

10 If you can't find your enemy, punish a scapegoat publicly

11 Climb hierarchies for personal power and profit

12 Feed imps your blood once a month via your new extra nipple

d12 Rare Oaths

1 Recruit other worthies to serve hell in secret                                                                            2 Kill someone in front of a crowd monthly

3 Allowing a foolish, weak or useless leader to live is wrong

4 Give 10% of your wealth to Hell or a diabolic cult

5 Lead a secret cult or coven in service to hell 

6 Pay tax and give to charity so none suspect your secrets

7 Tithe 10% of wealth to collective family power and wealth in hells name

8 Only the laws and lives of your own people count

9 Useful allies and family are valuable property to be watched over

10 Make others dependent on your freedom and power

11 Offer gifts and bribes to those with power over you or your desire

12 "Do the devil's work and do it well" by performing a petty task for hell weekly* 

d12 Boons of Hell

1 Evil pet d6 1=vicious dog.2=huge cat 3=ratling 4=toad 5=goblin 6=bat, each only needs a bit of blood daily for sustenance and can act as the eyes of hell

2 +1 weapon made from hellish metal usually a blade or mace   

3 +1 Language spoken S or Written W d4 1=Diabilic (LE) 2=Ancient 3= 4=Orcish 4=Elemental Fire 

4 Arcane zero Lv Cantrip Spell  d4 1=Brimstone 2=Cauterise 3=Evil Eye 4=Stun 

-

5 Every month devils bring you d4 yummy addictive potions from hell d4 1=Resist Fear 2=Healing 2d4 3=Love Potion 4=Protection from Evil

6 +2 Weapon and if was a previous gift now also has the property of quickdraw

7 Lore d4 1=Diabolic Lore 2=Cosmic Lore 3=Arcane Lore 4=Alchemy

8 Arcane 1st Lv Spell d4 1=Burning hands 2=Charm person 3=Mask 4=Sleep

-

9 Gain a d3+1 pet loyal imps or hellhounds

10 +3 Weapon and if was a previous gift now also has property only usable by LE user, other alignments take a d3 damage per round or blow, has an evil spirit within it that communicate by empathy and tempts users to wickedness 

11 Recieve 1000gp a month from hell delivered by imps to aid your infernal efforts, hell considers this an investment in your civilising tyranny

12 Arcane 2nd Lv Spell d4 1=elemental ray 2=invisibiliy 3=knock 4=Levitate

-

13 Gain a pet hellcat

14 +4 Weapon and if was a previous gift now also telepathic to wielder has diabolic lore skill, +d4 fire at will and creates light as a torch, the spirit of the blade can burn unwanted users

15 Immortality and immune to natural diseases and ageing, can still be killed

16 Arcane 3rd Lv Spell d4 1=fireball 2=fly 3=haste 4=suggestion

-

17 Gain a nightmare you can ride to hell and back or through the planes

18 +5 Weapon and if was a previous gift now also can speak and cast know alignment 3 times per day and gains extra +1 vs good or chaotic and +2 vs chaotic good, the weapon may cast suggestion once per day on any non-aligned wielder and will wait for the worse opportunity

19 Release a barbed devil into the world per day and negotiate with it for service

20 Arcane 4th Lv Spell d4 1=Charm Monster 2=Create Abhuman 3=Fire Sheild 4=Polymorph Self

Bonus Petty Boons for Petty Cultists
Really some people are satisfied with less than an adventurer and don't want to power game through life

d12 Bonus Petty Boons for Petty Cultists
1 Daily double shot of warm spiced rum from hell brought by imps every day and a whole bottle once a month. Squeezed from livers of screaming damned drunks in hell they say but delicious
2 Rent is paid by hell up to a middle-class townhouse (if ask for a palace or mansion it is a haunted ruin)
3 Can borrow books from hell's eternal library of the occult, once a month an imp librarian swaps your book - if you lose it you better replace with another lost book at least or a pit feind librarian comes for it and your soul
4 A horse fit for your station - mean and wild to others but obeys your commands 
5 Fancy clothes brought to you from hell once per month such as pretty dresses, fancy wigs, stockings, embroidered coats, ribbons a fancy hat. Items are relatively fancy to the clothes a person of a class is permitted to wear. Outfits value according to class and halved after a month of solid use: Commoner 3d4sp Guild member 3d4gp Nobility d100+50gp
6 A satchel or carpetbag or pack that holds 20 enc but weighs only 4 enc
7 Cow or goat that brings milk for growing evil children but occasionally gores or tramples someone if you don't watch it. 1%chance per week cumulative of developing a petty diabolic mutation that resets to 1% once you get a mutation
8 Servant in debt to hell is found for you d4 1=posh youth from town too good for you 2=moaning old person 3=strangley attractive orc labourer 4=a hideous bitter dwarf or gnome

9 True Love - hell finds a cultist to be your mate. Its a bit scary and abusive but seems worth it 

10 You can borrow money from hell at 100% interest per year, if you cant pay you will have to work it off for hell. Interest-free if you can pay in 3 months without imps sabotaging you

11 You garden and lawn grow well thanks to diabolic fertilizer delivered by imps on a full moon 

12 You are joined to a cell of cultists in a ritual and you all support each other serving hell in the community

Petty Missions from Hell
Hell will forgive you and give you extra chances to serve it. Sometimes you need to do some small favour for hell which is brought to you by a messenger imp

d12 Petty Missions from Hell 
1 Deliver message to a person or a drop-off address (no peeking!)
2 Deliver package to a person or a drop-off address (no peeking!)
3 Threaten a target on behalf of hell if they don't comply
4 Attack a target to d4 1=cause injury 2=hit and run wound 3=almost kill them 4=murder them
5 Curse or cast a spell in secret vs a target
6 Meet with someone of interest to hell
7 Break a cultist or witch out of prison 
8 Write something on a wall

9 Convince someone to read this pamphlet on how to serve hell

10 Collect an item from a store for a cultist 

11 Block a road or path at a specific time

12 Start a small fire at a specific location and time

d100 Dirty Tricks of Dungeon Gods

Wow so i have a Kosmosaurs game on alt sunday that might turn into marvel or post apoc with several dads and sons which is interesting and probably good for me to be family-friendly. Possibly my game writing was a catharsis for when I was a child herder and being nice all day. Several of my players in customer service were the same. Possibly explains my sandbox mayhem and grimy settings.

My regular sun game-changing to sat evening and in transition and public holiday I might get a bonus few games in. Currently trying to run my Babylon game but we have had side treks into Horror on the Hill with new characters. We had some post-apoc and others going during last year's unable-to-all-be-in-same-room patch. Its good for my writing to game more.

Did most of BL1-2 The Ruined Hamlet/Terror in the Gloaming which has been for me and a friend playtesting my druid spells out. A few things have emerged from my druid system like the lots of spells that make 24 hour lasting healing beries, fire seeds, a pebble to boulder spell. Had a case where druid just dumped yesterdays and today's fireseeds on a monster and it was messy. I have come to quite like this adventure and am getting another print sequel on LuLu. 

So i have considered remastering my setting religion

-i do like my old RQ campaign gods from 90s as an older popular religion
it is very formal being the forced creation of an empire in a great elementalist heracy where elemental templars fitted all the empires gods into 4 pantheons of 12 and an evil 12 that were a bother in the 1st and second empire
-a more modern and active generation of gods I'm still writing for the 3rd age
-lots of demigods and saints often in service to upper tier gods many who lived in historic times
-lots of spirits lesser and greater everywhere all the time invisibly
-a bunch of outsider gods of the void even lots of local evil gods don't like or are using for power

OA while flawed in many ways as a book had lots of cool spells for dealing with spirits

Im considering some adventurer gods like:

Hrothgar a nasty murder hobo colonialist exploiter god all about plundering the frontier and being awful and being approved of by civilization. His nightmare shieldmaidens harpies to carry their souls to the underworld where that wage an eternal frontier war between the underworld and hell where they may kill anybody they want forever and get drunk on bloodwine. Worshippers call on him for bloodlust berserker powers or rage.

Yrilda a goddess of exploration, diplomacy, pets, trickery and luck. They also operate casinos, taverns, and gymnasiums. They bring peace to troubled places and solve mysteries. On death, adventurers are taken to a celestial tavern near the shattered lower levels of heaven meets the wilds of Arcadia and faerie land. There they recall old tales and drink ambrosia. Sometimes they may be sent to aid some foolish amateur adventurers.

There would have to be dungeon gods too and a host of dungeon spirits.

But the main point here is malicious dungeon spirits and entities may haunt adventurers with their awful pranks watching invisibly in the spirit world. They may aid local monsters who leave them bowls of blood and copper pieces in cracks in walls for them.

Clever adventurers might learn to make spirits offerings or develop magic protocols.

Roll a few in advance and apply in the worst situation for a dungeon. Most dungeon spirits will only bother a few times a day and many weak ones have limited uses of their power or to affect the mortal realm

Saves should help in many of these situations

d10 Quick Trick Types
1 Petty sabotage

2 Alarming antics

3 Demoralizing manners

4 Dabbling in death

5 Repulsive & Puerile

6 Serious sabotage

7 Dubious diplomacy

8 Vermin and filth

9 Dimension dilemmas

10 Dungeon animus

d100 Dirty Tricks of Dungeon Gods
01 Make a pair of boots or shoes lose a soul

02 Breaks a belt or strap so the victim drops something

03 Picks pocket and puts in own treasure hole

04 Glues something to something like a weapon to a scabbard

05 Dulls a blade and makes it rusty -1 damage until cleaned and sharpened

06 Something ignites spontaneously like map or hair (1hp damage) or a hotfoot while moving carefully

07 Blows out torch or lantern or replaces lamp oil with pee

08 Weakens ropes (possible in form of vermin damage)

09 Spoils rations or food

10 Non-magical weapon or item damaged by rust or rot and falls apart
11 WIll warn local wandering monsters enemies near

12 Bang some pots or anything noisy alerting locals

13 Making a strange noise that bewilders or scares strangers but locals know means trouble

14 WIll lock or bolt a door as they are about to be opened

15 Exaggerate party sounds like footsteps, breathing and voices for a while

16 Gives someone the hiccups for a d6 rounds unless they drink a teaspoon of vinegar

17 Causes party flatulence both smelly and noisy for a while 

18 Party members struck with belching and bloated gassy feelings

19 Musical instrument of gong sound from seemingly very close

11 Whisper a paranoid suggestion or command spell to a party member 

12 Strike someone with panic while doing something tricky or in a fight

13 Make someone drop their weapon embarrassingly for d4 rounds

14 Strange manifestation of wind or light stuns someone trying to do something

15 Intimidating evil laughter and some vague threatening phrase fills the corridor

16 Make strange lights and noises like ghosts

17 Wind blows out lamps and torches

18 Whispers from the walls of arcane chatter and malicious insults

19 Cause several litres of dirty smelly water to drain through the roof

20 Cover something with chilly cold slimy ectoplasm or leave a trail

21 Illusions of walls or floors undulating oddly and moving

22 Illusion of evil face for a moment in mirror or door or chest only one person sees it

23 Illusion of an ethereal phantom moves through party

24 Illusion of a bloody ghost with missing body parts, looks like an adventurer

25 Illusion of swarm of insects

26 Illusion of green slime or other ooze or mould 

27 Illusions of a trapped area that are harmless but scary

28 Hypnotic patterns that distract and delay party

29 Zone of magical darkness

30 Coloured scented mist floods area
31 A dead monster is reanimated, pronounces doom to all then falls dead

32 A dead body explodes into a swarm of bugs

33 A dead body explodes in a stinking cloud

34 A dead body explodes like a grenaide

35 A smaller monster bursts out of a dead monster

36 A dead monster revives as a zombie

37 Severed body parts reanimate and scuttle about

38 A spectral minion arises from a monster to attack who killed it

39 Any in the party who die reanimated as hostile zombies and attack comrades

40 Several corpses merge together into an undead beast

41 Put a sticky smelly slippery monster poop under someone's foot

42 Hurls or splatters monster poops at the party 

43 Bug flies up someone's nose making them wretch or panic a few rounds

44 Puts a full chamber pot over a doorway and dumps on unwary

45 Forms a monster from vomit and faeces in the dungeon

46 Someone is struck with the urge to use the bathroom, their newborn poop abuses them then runs away into a crack. It may appear to taunt their parent and humiliate them in the future (I never asked to be born - you not my real dad)

47 A sewer pipe bursts through a floor or wall showering passage in rancid filth

48 Form a water weird in leaking sewerage

49 Enlarges tapeworms to giant size 

50 Forms a laughing face from sewerage to taunt party about some doom or something
51 Turns a weapon or pole in hand into a live snake

52 Glues weapons so stick in hands and needs oil or vinegar to remove

53 Put contact poison on favorite tool or weapon or book

54 Plants a d4 tiny gremlin in a pack 

55 Lamp makes everyone else but yourself look undead (give players notes the party are all really undead but you)

56 Wooden non-magical goods infested by termites

57 Tiny baby rust monster swarm destroys non-magical metal and then flees

58 Tiny faeries steal lots of coins until caught, if harmed seek revenge

59 Poison waterskins

60 Put a frozen piece of troll flesh in a pack
61 Imitates characters voice to start a fight

62 While talking to strangers make an embarrassingly heroic fart for several rounds

63 Steals voice just as about to negotiate or talk

64 Confuses a conversation so both sides hear abusive insults

65 As you negotiate with strangers hear voices warning you and advising you to kill them quickly, sometimes advise both sides

66 During diplomacy a snake climbs up someone's leg possibly provoking them to draw a sword and start a fight by accident

67 While trying to negotiate to hear the buzzing of an insect swarm coming

68 Plants a false memory in mind during diplomacy enraging a participant, after they realised it never happened

69 Makes someone go berserk during negotiations

70 Makes the intent of the speaker sound opposite, peace becomes hate etc
71 Contaminates some foe's attacks with lycanthropy

72 Release a petty faerie, imp, gremlin or spirit to cause trouble

73 Releases shadows from the surrounding darkness or from some dead bodies

74 Sprinkle rot grubs or other perilous parasites in the area

75 Covers area with diseased miasma or fetid puddles to spread some illness

76 Poisons rations and water

77 Call a swarm of vermin to form and direct at strangers

78 Attracts thousands of bats to swarm through for at least 10 minutes of chaos and guano

79 Colony of giant vermin pour out of a hole d4 1=stirges 2=giant rats 3=giant leeches 4=giant bats 5=giant fleas 6=

80 Draws in a dungeon preditor that serves it and eats dungeon inhabitants in secret d6 1=carrion worm 2=mimic 3=trapper 4=lurker above 5=doppelgangers 6=lycanthropes
81 Conceal a teleporter pad to a lower level

82 Moves a wall or door for a while

83 Draw party into a pocket world inside a painting or artwork

84 Dilates time to increase wandering monsters and make spells and lights burn out faster for a while, will be surprised later to see how much time has past

85 Places area in loop of eternal recursion, lie a staircase or passage that goes on forever but return to the start as soon as you turn back

86 Bring in some changelings or doppelgangers from another world to cause mischief or just be offensive parodies of adventurers

87 Secret level of the dungeon is in another plane entry normally requires to detect magic or see invisible but the spirit might overlap portions briefly 

88 A sealed elemental gateway if opened by spirit releases some elemental beings and possibly mutates and taints local life

89 Gateway to the negaverse guarded by shadows and nightmare creatures in some dark place trying to influence whole dungeon

90 Hellgate in dungeon possibly in secret area brings in devils, imps and the occasional damned spirit. Here to buy souls for hell as dungeon bosses like it
91 Infects party with lycanthropy

92 Curses party and those who die in dungeon awake as undead of similar HD in a d4 rounds

93 Cursed with berserkerism as leave dungeon

94 Cursed to shun sunlight -2 to hit or spot trouble in light of the sun, grow pale

95 Allow a creature from beyond to enter reality through a puddle or mirror surface

96 Air pressure increases and beings from beyond are called through, a magical regenerating swarm of vermin from overspace who crave oranic matter especially moving meat ones

97 Contacts a faction boss or sub boss and directs them the the party location by magical means

98 Contacts the dungeon priesthoods and their guards are all called on by the dungeon spirit to rally against intruders

99 Animates a statue or steps from an artwork to attack to drive enemies away, if body destroyed takes a day to reform

100 The spirit in great fury calls on one of its relatives a deity for support. Mostly a lesser or demigod respond more often and sends reinforcements to aid the dungeon

Kosmosaur Playthrough

So had a first Kosmosaurs game and it was pretty wild.

I had read lots of the plot and faction GM stuff and wrote my own exploration tables but playing it was different. I fully read the rules and groked the system the night before and made 2 characters to test out to be NPCs.

I did a Doctor Styracosaur a boffin from HQ who gives missions to these new squads from Cosmosaur Academy. He will be a liability on the field but good for negotiations and data. 

I then did Buck Raving, a 40 ton apatosaurus with rocket tubes on his back and a sensor coms guy to back up Dr Styracsaur.

Players arrived and we made these:

Dr Anklo a 6 ton medic who most used his innate dino bonuses by trampling enemies. He has a coms suite and medical stuff and is a proper Boffin.

Sam the Pteradactyl a 8kg spy with a laser gun and armour and hackers skills - a mutated fish ate his family before joining the Kosmosaurs and he cant write.

Gordon the Parasalophasus a 2.9 ton duck billed horned honker space gardener. His family were killed be evil space broccoli anti vegetarians so now he is a cop using his extendable mono-trowl to uproot injustice. He is terrible at stealth.

Boltz Mech a utah raptor techie with a criminal past adopted by Kosmosaurs. Is a sharp shooter who thinks he is the next Napoleon with his laser

Another Utah Raptor was a soldier with a rifle

We then made the party ship.
The Pacifier, with a baby pacifier as a logo. The AI is an overprotective Nanny who is a bit difficult but helpful. The special features are manoeuvrability and a lab with a greenhouse for the biosciences. 

Then I rolled up an adventure seed with tables from book. I had been watching Fireball XL5 and Herculoids as prep. 

So we got a power hungry noble in a dead space gods corpse. They were to contact a bureaucrat of the government who called the Kosmosaurs. Turns out the mob and some other factions involved also including the Slime Lord syndicate. 

So the party got on their ship and zoomed away taking a bridge position. On the way Dr Anklo tried to make backup clones of everyone and sneezed on the betridish and was sorta satisfied. They arrived at Necros Prime a giant space astronaut many kilometres long in a space suit orbiting a brown dwarf with just comets and asteroid belts in the area. The corpse had a mine and was controlled by mean aristocrats who were originally guild masters. Various comedies like space god brain cells and nueral peptides were highly desired for AI.

So they met the bureaucrat and were put up in a nice hotel with a giant gold bath in a room connecting their suites. The made their plans. The dodgy ex crook raptor and the spy pteradactyl went lowlife and got a job offer as gang muscle. The others as posh nobles made some new contacts and got an offer to the nobles guild hall. The pteradactyl had given everyone long records of cruelty and worker abuses which helped them get close to the baddies. 

Both teams met up and made plans. So the lowlife guys got a mission to collect several VIP for the mob. The other guys got to the guild hall and heard suspicious sedition but not quite damning. Dr Anklo overcame their anti recording tech and got some possible evidence. They saw the villainous Lord Uru and Lady Carpathia. When they all met up again they disguised their ship as a pirate corsair and set of for the VIP the slime lords were smuggling into the great corpse colony. They docked with a mysterious black spiky ship and took onboard a wizened old triceratops in robes with blackened pit eyes and two berserker combat robots long ago banned. Even the Nanny AI was instructed on being deceptive and laughed evily.

They took on the guests and as they planned Pteradactyl discovered the guests were hacking the ship so they stopped it and went down below to kill them. Doors opened suddenly and robots came out. Dr Anklo and Gordon ran in causing havoc and lasers were everywhere. The pterodactyl and the crime raptor made EMP bombs. The dark dino used strange powers to resist but the team did win. The dark dino lord disappeared into the dust which was a bit odd as normally Kronsaurs don't shoot to kill and never turn their weapons to disintegrate on a sentient being. They rebuilt the robots into walking simpletons and took the evil robes. After the evil dino faded away leaving dust and was in the Kosmosaur database as an evil clone of an early Kronosaur hero.

They disguised Dr Anklo as an evil dino (beard I guess) and the raptors followed as his bodyguards. Gordon used his biogenetics and the lab to make an evil pheromone spray to help users seem more evil. They landed at a secret spacedock of criminals in the knee and a few characters went back to the head to report to the Kosmosaurs and the administrator's security. So the disguised Kosmosaurs were in this evil palace built for them in the foot and met with the villainous Lord Uru and Lady Carpathia. When it came for the evil plotters to laugh the kindly Dr Anklo just couldn't cackle convincingly with sadism but his raptor servants made up for it. The lords asked why not the triceratops they expected and he brushed it off with a "he is busy and must not be questioned". 

Eventually, the ship landed on the foot and the other guys had to hack a door then started blasting through walls. The royal dino villains sent two to guard on jetpacks and two to defend the door. Once inside Dr Anklo and the raptors attacked. Meanwhile, the Pterodactyl slipped away while Gordon finished off purple pig-faced aliens. He got to the doors and turned his gun into a one-use bomb blowing up two guards and breaching the wall. He was injured inside but the party was reunited. A few more rounds and the guards were gone. Lord Uru had a laser sword and Lady Carpatia had motorized metal teeth with a chainsaw-like bite. The noble boss crisis was averted and heroes won! 

The others humbly accepted medals and returned to ship while Bolts got on TV and took all the credit. His public speech did recruit 4 young dinos they took back to Kosmosaur Central.

The kosmosaurs submitted reports and several gambled as an option for more stats and failed. One made it. Others took the safer one area to be good at. Now a kosmosaur is bad at public speaking and another is bad at humility.

Great fun system and easy to get feel for and stage risks and threats. Players succeed lots but once they are damaged it is easy to put them under the pump by difficulty mods like a firefight, time limits or tools required. The near misses are fun. All agreed to play again so yay!   

With the dark demon dino return from the void?
The SLime lords will be out for the Kosmosaurs with hired assassins
Will those botched clones ever be mentioned again?

Gorillas are meant to be robots

Superhero Games - which is the one true RPG?

I think its an overdone genre. Looking at many new games of this genre many do little for me.in my day we had Champions, V&V, SUperworld, Marvel, Super Squadron, DC
I played a marvel campaign for 20 years and find when I run now people understand easily and quickly and we didn't use marvel universe for very long. Id like to do a Zenith game and would use superworld because of cthulhu RPG. Superworld works ok but lots of painful champions like crunch added to BRP and point systems are painful.

We played Spectaculars which has the shared world creation step of the game which should ask how lethal superheroes are really early as this issue affected our game quickly as we were playing in a 60s setting and had a few 80s killer-type characters. It was quite fun but it railroads some character possibilities out of existence. Some of the ideas in a campaign set-up would be good for any session zero hero game. It has lots of stuff in the box to manage a campaign which is an interesting approach bordering on modern board games.

M&M has great lore, art and sourcebooks even if you don't use system it has plenty to steal from for any game like the highschool heroes and agent campaign books. M&M is full of fan content mashing up DC and Marvel.

As I worked in comics I can't touch some superhero games over the art. Its a genre more about art than others.

Heroclix I like to use for minis but the local gamer scene didn't care about comics or characters just collecting and playing this strange game they ignored comics lore on.

I prefer wildly unbalanced power it's on point for the genre and comic writers have the same issues as a GM needs to face to make everyone relevant - its a feature not an problem. Marvel you could have daredevil and thor team up ok. Its part of the conciet of comic genre that a guy with a bow can save a steam when a god cant. So you need a way of doing this in game.

I like marvel simplicity of one table and quick to grasp and easy to mod still makes it great but you can steal ideas from any hero game, especially the long-lasting ones. Silver AGe sentinels is pretty good too for lore. Its probably easier to make and sell a hero RPG than a comic. Everything for TSR marvel game is free online and new fan content has kept up with new sourcebooks. I ran as a battle royale game with 16 players at a con playing great 80s crossover battles. I might run a 1949 era version of my setting inspired by comic 49ers by Alan Moore as a one shot. A common complaint is it has no character gen system but actually it has like 4 and you can make up your own each campaign if you want.

Complexity is an important consideration and accounting spreadsheets without an app is pretty unpopular currently. Too much simplicity and I feel zero risk. (FATE I find utterly unthrilling for risk). Many narrative games allow louder more imaginative players to dominate reality more than the GM and some players are left out a bit. Point games often break down when a character wants to pick up that power ring of a bad guy and someone else can do more with cash than a person with powers in some games making powers almost pointless. Possibly crunchy games handle long campaigns better. Some simple games have little growth built in or when everyone gets some xp they look more similar and don't fail much.

I did play champions in a competitive club environment and Marvel was refreshing and got rid of lots of bad behaviour with min-maxing numbers and you could point out this was comic code standards in the 80s when players lost all their karma points for murder.

People are still pumping out this genre as games and nothing will stop it. I'm happy to give them a go. Bad or non-genre art is a turn-off. Making certain character types impossible has problems. In a setting where all heroes have the same origin like some 80s dark heroverse that's ok. Part of the point of super team books is they let you tell any genre stories with a mix of incongruent characters. If you limit the possibility I recommend you establish the setting ASAP to explain why. People have different visions of what is desirable to make a genre or what is the essence of comic adventure story tropes. I think some creators would like to make comics but can't (paying a realistic artist wage is beyond most people apparently).

d100 Cursed Manors of Auldwood

Auldwood 
Is industrial heartland of the kingdom. To the north are the semi-abandoned frontier wasteland of the three kingdoms and the Sourlands. To the south is the old empire rulled by the moonstruck mad king and the borderlands are at constant war. To the West are vast wilds and allied states in the great continental war. There are great woods and mountains west occupied by prehumans peoples and tribal folk who utterly reject changing their wild folk ways. In the sea to the north is Anglersland, Scarford Reef Islands and Exile Island the home of the world's greatest pirates. So in the Noble heartlands  their is a strip of coastline with many mines and several large towns. Here is the wealth of the kingdom concentrated for war production. 

But off the roads are the vast and mighty Auldwood. A brooding faerie cursed forest where all kinds of otherworldly creatures and ghosts and witches dwell. There are many famous manours that merchants talk about but there are many smaller minor ones and many more that over centuries have vanished and reappeared. Many nobles of these woods prefer to live in the towns and near the great courts. Most see the Auldwood as backwards, superstitious and more wild.  

d12 Gossip About Auldwood
1 Stay on the roads, especially at night, never take a path you just find in a hurry

2 Faeirie kidnap children and idiots to be their slaves leaving changeling spies in their place

3 If you accept the hospitality of a cursed house you become part of the curse

4 Wizards, thieves and druids come here to trade at secret goblin markets for magic

5 Many knights wait the road to challenge fellow nobles but ignore squalid common folk

6 Auldwood was once an elf kingdom and the wicked elves of the west want it back

7 With shortages of a kingdoms labour in auldwood employ goblinoids and kobolds

8 Peasants of Auldwood are bound by law to their estates and cannot leave without a lords permission. This is the old law was required to keep the region populated

9 Don't go hunting in Auldwood without a local guide who knows the local spirit folk

10 Auldwood is full of witches and outlaw spell casters from all over the kingdom seeking secrets of pre-human magic in the various strange caves and ruins 
11 Before you kill any wild forest beast make sure it cannot speak or the wild spirits will punish you if you murder their friends
12 Remember you manners in the forest as if you are visiting your grandmother on holy day lest the wild spirits who call the woodland home will think you a rude guest and punish you. Don't swear, don't spit, cover your firepit and bury the bones of beasts you eat

d12 Warnings you are in Auldwood
1 Sure you heard some animals talking nearby but found nobody

2 Trees moved overnight in your camp and beasts are untethered if bound

3 You see one of the wee folk taking a pee and it gives you a rude gesture and flees

4 Dream of a supernatural faerie lover who is everything you could desire

5 See something following you in the darkness, a nightmare thing only you seem to ever see

6 Strange whispering of the woods sounds almost like chanting or poetry

7 At every crossroad there seems to be

8 If a stranger offers you a warning, a riddle or a challenge ahead take heed

19 Cursed people and places are shackled in repetition and misery from mighty magic which can be thwarted

10 When danger is close everything seems more intense and dreamlike you sometimes see things like creatures or paths or doors that were not there before 

11 Shun strange new trails, tiny secret doors in trees, faerie rings or stone circles that can be portals to the otherworlds where eternal slavery or death await 

12 Beware strangers you meet in the woods for humanity is just a cloak for many supernatural beings to toy with mortals

d12 Why Go To Auldwood
1 A knight lost his adventuring son to one of the cursed halls and wants whatever responsible destroyed

2 A youth got into an argument with their family and fled into the forest and now things have changed and they want them to return

3 A wicked robber knight murdered and took hostages and the surviving merchant families have offered a reward for killing the villain

4 An enemy of the crown has fled into auldwood. they must be killed but greater honour due to those who can present the varlet to the king in person asuring great honours. The rogue has become a sort of bandit freedom fighter 

5 A family member of a knight has been taken by kidnappers into Auldwood and is now a hostage in a tower

6 A noble youth fled a massacre into Auldwood and their surviving clan want them back

7 The king wants order brought to the forest and these backward cursed manours to produce more goods. A detailed report on the state of the manours is needed by the king in secret

8 A noble who lives from income from their estate in AUldwood has never been there and wants experienced travellers as escorts to make a visit

9 A tax collector requires guides used to supernatural and strange matters to protect them from curses and 

10 A family of spook hunters requires experienced adventurers to protect them from angry mobs and supernatural enemies. They are eccentric but have some useful methodologies and ghost traps and occult expertise. They seem all cursed with clumsiness

11 A group of noble Gourmet enthusiasts want to try all the rustic Auldwood regional dishes so they can compose a comprehensive cookbook. They need bodyguards as they noticed they seem to annoy rural folk quite a lot
12 A strange map has been found with various halls marked unknown outside of Auldwood and the Kings cartographers want these places audited by some reliable contractors

d12 Additional Event Complication
When you meet any danger or encounter in Auldwood roll for a complication

1 Some type of woodland being watches in secret d4 1=gnome 2=goblin 3=brownie 4=sprite 5=talking animal 6=spirit animal folk in beast form
2 Attract a fearsome forest monster d6 1=owlbear 2=hook horror 3=carniverous ape 4=troll 5=dire wolf 6=winter wolf
3 Treant of tree spirit sees the event and may help in secret

4 Wild band of forest folk come to investigate d4 1=centaurs 2=harpies 3=goat folk 4=fauns
5 A witch takes notice d4 1=familiar 2=magical divination 3=animal minion 4=magical disguise
6 A band of humanoids detects noise d4 1=kobolds 2=goblins 3=hobgoblins 4=orcs 5=lizard folk 6=jackal folk

7 A lonely spirit witnesses drama d4 1=spirit of unhappy robbers victim 2=local land spirit upset by noise 3=hungry spirit craves some blood 4=wicked spirit attracted to fear and danger
8 A supernatural creature spies on the survivors for quite some time possibly offering aid in a time of trouble over the next d4 days (possibly at a cost) d4 1=Imp 2=Sprite 3=Cherub 4=Daimon. The creature if impressed may offer a boon to the worthy
9 An ancient thing crawls from the mossy ground its sleeping place d4 1=gargoyle 2=living statue 3=lesser golem 4=troll 5=ogre 6=giant toad
10 Ancient dead minion of evil is awakened d4 1=3d4 skeletons 2=d6 shadows 3= 2d+2 zombies 4=wight

11 Some evil hears the names of the party on the wind and comes from hiding to cause them suffering and trouble d4 1=demon 2=evil demihuman 3=minotaur 4=witch. Some dark power whispers offer of rewards for doing this

12 Minor forest divinities choose to observe the party to judge their conduct and worth - they may leave a boon for the worthy d4 1=the green god as a shambling mound 2=the horned god as a goat folk 3=wild god as green hairy wild person 4=goddess as a Dryad with her d4 recent lover thralls

d12 Possible Curse Cures
1 Kill all those of the line of those who caused the curse 
2 Bring a holy relic to this place
3 Seek forgiveness from who made the curse and who will want some other toll
4 Representatives must pass a test of piety and courage

5 The affected must be sorry and atone as best they can

6 A chosen band of heroes will come to free you from the curse

7 Appeal to a deity to lift the curse often requires years of apologies

8 Beast or villain is the embodiment of the curse and must be destroyed

9 Object must be recovered on a perilous quest or another dimension 

10 A gateway or partial to another world must be found and sealed

11 A relic must be found and used to destroy the heart of the curse

12 A monument must be built or other colossal labour

A Witch in Auldwood is any unauthorised spell caster who unlawfully casts a harmful spell on a lawful kingdom citizen or property of a citizen without permission. They can worship strange foreign or old gods or daimon, worship nature, study wizardry or have blood pacts with the supernatural. Usually, spell casters belong to a guild or church that can shield them from accusations. In the civilised East Coast towns and villages, the Druidic faith is suspicious. In Auldwood locals revere them and even eastern most nobles begrudgingly accept their aid in gaining record crop harvests and honey. Those of the Druid faith are more likely to respect and appease wild spirits than fear them.

I'm considering an option for priests to turn other stuff besides undead and faerie might be a category - earthborn demihumans are immune to this - just for the plane-hopping minions. I'm still considering this extra turn category - I could even make extra types a non-weapon skill for clerics. Could have types like undead, demons, devils, elementals (each type), angels, faeries, lycanthropes, daimons, daemons, archons, deva, etc. I quite like my current cleric fx by alignment good=turn/destroy evil=command/charm nuetral=calm/return to grave.

 Auldwood is intended to use my Druid spell book lots and I'm having to deal with rulings I should have foreseen from players' antics. Which is why playtesting stuff is nice.

Will be updating my Psionics booklet as we changed some names in the druid book and will change other lists to fit. My Mentalism can be used as the latest in urban spiritualist occult powers and be used by tribal persons just as easily. Also has worked as an option for bards or for space elves in my more gonzo sf apocalypse games. Seem to be getting more real-world games of late and starting a Kosmosaur game. 

d10 Quick Curse Type
1 Curse of the Beast

2 Curse of the Witches

3 Cursed by Hell

4 Cursed by Demons

5 Cursed by Faerie

6 Cursed by Holy

7 Cursed by Nature

8 Cursed by Demihumans

9 Cursed by Gods

10 Cursed by the Old Ones

d10 Cursed Manors of Auldwood
01 Hunters Hall - gloomy ruined manour with semi intact house. They say there are treasures here but the great beast kills all it can catch and hunt. Other beastfolk lurk here and camp but all yield to the power of the beast

02 SIlverwolf Hall - the Argent family crest of three silver wolves and the house is surprisingly modern to recent court fashions. Special masked guests come and go. Strangers are welcome to stay at night and come to a feast. At midnight they all turn into werewolves even their servants

03 Fox Hall - Lord Raynard is a friendly noble in the latest fashion but his people seem surly and resentful. Long ago they evoked the fox god to replace a tyrant and now they are the thralls of this spirit being who torments them and is reborn monthly if killed

04 Thorn Hall - surrounded by vast maze of thorns populated by goblinoids and wyverns. Inside an evil witch holds the inhabitants in an enchanted sleep. In their dreams they labour for her home on the nightmare dimension

05 Blue Boar Hall - a gloomy castle on a crag over a dark crevice. Famous for storms, fierce boars, wolves and bears. The lord Barron Blue seeks to romance someone and get them to accept his devil-swine nature and remain engaged for one year to free his curse. He sometimes gets angry and murders then or their annoying friends. Local peasants live in fear of a beast that devours their most innocent youthful victims 

06 Blackheart Hall - is home to robbers, bandits, theives and assassins. They all worship the beast of Blackheart Hall the former lord Dorian Blackheart who is possessed by a minor named demon noble. If exorcised all the criminal scum abandon their wickedness and become just farmers 

07 Grail Hall - a friendly noble family welcome strangers as guests but the commoners all batten down their houses each night as if facing a storm. The pious seeming nobles cannot speak of the curse but must accept guests and speak not of the beast that kills guests each night or will kill a local instead

08 Tyger Hall - a small castle on a rocky peak, the noble family of knights of the old religion and the women of their family are all weretigers. These huge foreign cats roam this peak but will allow strangers to visit once on the way in then will swarm the path at every ambush point outside. Anyone taking the cats beyond the domain extends some part of the curse power and makes it harder to remove. A few of these cats have been taken to other places already

09 Elk Hall - a family of the old way dwell here and are welcoming to strangers offering a feast. During the feast a stag headed spirit being will arrive with great knocks on the gate and be admitted. It will challenge a person at the feast to a duel and carries a dreadful blade that is vorpral against mortal born. Any who take the sword by defeating the spirit being become the next elk man

10 Wyvern Hall - the clan here are gruff but offer a night in their bleak castle. All people within are unfriendly and alert for hidden evil. They scrutinise every action, item of clothing and word for hidden meanings or intended offence. Eventually they set on guest with an angry mob and steak them in the forest of the beast who comes to eat the sacrifices and bless the deluded cursed people. If defeated the people are restored to normal and feel terrible and become a religious settlement
11 Raven Hall - a grim castle with many swarms of raven in the areas. Once guests are accepted they are put in a tower room with food and guards where the ravens caw menacingly judging the newcomers. Late at night, one person chosen by the ravens will be taken by the noble family of were-ravens to a witch holy place to be sacrificed. The witches worship an elder raven goddess

12 Bleak Hall - a gloomy mist-shrouded hall where there is a cursed ball every night. New guests are drawn into the ball and become guests replacing the older ones who are entombed as undead in the dungeon catacombs. A witch in the uppermost tower maintains the spell but is willing to send people into the past to avert the great tragedy of the cursed ball

13 Quail Hall - rich and festive village and manour with chubby and jolly children. The noble family are all porkers and invite visitors to a 12-course feast or die. Some of the food is magical and dangerous or causes mutations. The first course is a dozen quail on skewers stuffed with nuts and berries. Long ago they starved a witch in their dungeon and now they all stuff their faces with misery. The clan have adopted with the curse a chicken leg heraldic design   

14 Toad Hall - a boggy estate of happy plug-ugly warty bandy-legged marsh folk. The manure is home to an eccentric lord who breeds all manner of giant insects and amphibians. A grand choir greet visitors and invite them to feast of giant bugs. If any amphibians are harmed or their delicious bug menu is mocked the locals turn into were-toads and are very angry. Witches like to leave their familiars here sometimes and the current lord injured one long ago

15 Bog House - a sinking hall and village where locals carry on as best they can with marsh monsters and sinking buildings. The local lord refuses to release the ashes of the witches he burned and is the cause of the sinking. Some people have turned into beast folk and new strange effects happen often as the sinking gets worse. Moss grows over objects left outside overnight

16 Bat Hall - built on a craggy cave-filled rock where millions of bats live. The lord threw a witch in the hole and since then his family has been bitten by were rats but none of them knows and has blurry memories of their nocturnal adventures. Each night any identities they learn of their kin they forget by dawn. Guests are welcome to a tense dinner as guests unsure who is the killer were bat or even if they might be the monster. Werebats willt try to kill a few guests with hit-and-run tactics at first and other locals help them investigate. Eventually, they will face many werebats. In the caves below finding the witch's body and taking it to her coven will remove the curse

17 Moon Hall - order of knights of the moon headquarters who hunt were creatures and shapeshifters of which there are many in this domain. The order were all cursed after killing a witch's lover to become werewolves but do not remember it. When hunting the werewolves they often torment travellers and villagers who are innocent  

18 Tusk Hall - order of hunters who killed a witch familiar and now they are bestial knights who see all visitors as animals of an exotic type to be hunted. They will collect horrible trophies they see as horns and tusks they put on the walls of their feasting hall

19 Crag Hall - overlooking a chasm with a single-span elegant bridge crossing the pit. People crossing the pit often are attacked by spirits that inflict them with vertigo and cause them to fall into the darkness. The castle has all kinds of open stairwells and towers and pits and the family are scattered and lost in the labyrinth since they bricked up a witch in the cellar

20 Helm Hall - all the inhabitants who hated dwarfs were turned into dwarfs. Now everything they make looks like dwarf made and they are terribly awkward and embarrassed. Visitors are welcome to a feast with beer drinking and other contests. Authentic dwarfs who discover this secret may be horrified and sense something is inauthentic. The witch curse requires those who join a dwarf church can choose to be restored to human 

21 Sulpher Hall - on a volcanic vent with bubbling springs and sulpher pits. The castle makes gunpowder and various guns of the latest design and the smiths were taught by devils through a hellgate in the dungeon

22 Hellhound Hall - a mercenary guild turned into a domain hall, its soldiers are brutal veterans and their ruler is unbalanced. The lord made a pact with hell and the people have slowly become converted to diabolism. The local tavern has a hellgate where hells agents come through. The lord will personally hunt strangers with his hellhounds and vampire sword

23 Bonfire Hall - where villagers nightly burn great fires and thicker idols and roll burning wheels and haystacks down hill In a great nightly party. These often cause accidents with strangers unused to dodging flaming objects. Any criminals will be burned at festivities. The nobles of the hall support the commoners and have their own cult temple to call on beings from the stars who are really devils deluding them

24 Hobbs Hall - a town famed for outwitting a devil while building their bridge. Yet the villagers are all devil cultists and many have magical tools of their trade as granted them by hell. Many toil at arms production and there is a hellgate in the smithy. The noble house has been sent many honours from the king for sending many fine weapons as tribute. The weapons are malignant influences and crave war.  

25 Black Goat Hall - welcoming to outsiders and the manor is charming and of fashion three generations ago. The family will dine with strangers and offer them a wing of the house. They will warn strangers to not leave their rooms at night because Hellgoats walk the land causing mischief to those not allied to hell. Local villagers wander in black robes by night to dance with the goats

26 Fang Hall - a brutal dynasty of hunt loving lords enjoy hunting human visitors sewn into animal costumes to hunt and sacrifice to Hell. Locals help the lords deal with visitors to spare themselves being hunted. Their mighty champions take pleasure in tormenting their prey

27 Castle Grim - a hellish castle used as a prison for a cut of the ransom. Anyone kept here never leaves without gold involved and strangers may be mistaken for spies 

28 Horned Hall - where a grim cult of hell knights in plate with horned helm plot with cultists to spread their evil into civilised lands. They keep many prisoners and evil books and even have a gateway to the black library of hell where evil wizard students get low cost training for their souls

29 Castle Iron - a spiny cathedral-castle in a stormy crag, devils rule over the locals and forbid anyone to leave. Special prisoners and the local noble family are kept in the dungeon where devils torment them. A Warlock-knight rules the domain and has plans to spread his influence. He has a Hellgate in his manor in a special painting 

30 Gatehouse Hall - has a gate with portcullis and chains as a symbol. Used to be a prison complex and the villagers the staff but the prison strangeley grew on its own and is connected to hell. The family within the dungeons heart are trapped in the very prison they wished for from a devil prince of Hell
31 Blackspire Hall - home of a demon prince who dwells here in human form to direct certain activities and plans it has. Cultists and favoured monsters are common here. The Prince will invite strangers and trick them into entering its own demonic demi plane

32 Obelisk Hall - manour was built around an ancient dread druid cult shunned by others of this kind. Weresnake druids dwell here now and the locals live in fear of nobles but are not sure exactly why. Priests especially are attacked by local monsters. The family will invite attractive adventurers or virgins to their house for dinner. There are famous caverns under the house and giant snake monsters of great age. A snake demon is parent of the cult and will send them help from other reptilians

33 Barrow Hall - manour house where a clan of vampires welcome strangers while servants cower in fear and look away. Will eventually reveal true form and enjoy hunting victims in castle with outer gates sealed. Their patron lord of the dead is a fearsome demon who may send them aid
34 Blightmont House - a barren mountaintop with everything build from stacks of stone and slate and many drystone walls for goats. There is a ruin of a demon cult house locals try to avoid. Inside is a sealed portal where cult pilgrims come to try and open to a demon realm

35 Scorpion House - a strange house built in a foreign manner with exotic desert demon idols. Locals fear their lords who are immortal mummies able to become human for a while. Guests are welcomed with the exotic splendour of far away ancient peoples before having their fluids drained. They serve a demon master of the desert in hiding from their homeland awaiting time to return

36 Chimera Hall - a demon cult of chaos mutants have corrupted locals and life. There is a chaos pool where cultists make new monstrosities with captives. The lord is a chaos champion of a demon noble of primal chaos hoping to raise a gaggle of evil brutes to lay waste to the region

37 Labyrinthine Hall - a strange hall built on a prehistoric labyrinth filled with minotaurs who worship a bull-like demon lord. The people of the land and hall have all been enslaved and are forced to dig for gold in the mountain and expand the maze

38 Toadstool Hall - is covered in fungi surrounded by giant mushrooms, fields of mould lakes of slime. The locals are addicted to the spores and those who die can be brought back as zombies by the fungi demon lord of this domain. The family who rule and many locals see a thriving rural paradise. The demon can alter their perceptions  

39 Demon House - famed as a hall of cultists that has been burned down several times by heroes. Each time a new demon cult and domain ruler emerged. Demons compete to have the cults support their demon in the war on mortal souls. Rulers and commoners pretend to be strict puritanical rustic worshipers of a boring lawful cult

40 Fen House - surrounded by bogs, the villagers live in stilt houses and rafts in marsh while the house is built on a strange rock outcrop. The area has a dreadful stench and all kinds of wicked spirits. The nobility looks rotting and infected but are very welcoming. In truth any who tolerates their hospitality for a night will free them from the curse and they always want to leave. In the castle slime drowned cave sewers the demon god of ooze and putrid filth visits to get away from home life

41 Oak House - the lord of the hall keeps his wife a prisoner and the land is suffering, if freed she is revealed to be a monsterous faerie and flies away. Their brutish sons kill their father then each other leaving a castle with no heirs. Later an army of faeries and elves come to punish the domain

42 Acorn Manour - was a gift from a king to a ranger lord who used it as an important ranger headquarters in the region. Faerie folk come here often and seem to have charmed the leaders or have control over them. In fact the rangers here are influenced by faerie folk and many retire to live in faerie land. Faerie here will be very curious and watch guests and rummage through their belongings and pester them with questions. The weirder the visitor the better

43 Barbers Hall - a secret order of barbers who act as healers, stylists and an intelligence network. They are paranoid about faeries and elves and people without body hair are considered elf or changeling spies. They get lots of faerie pranks on them which annoys them also. Barbers from many places come here to study and locals have the best hair in the kingdom for commoners. The current lord is the kings barber who is mostly away 

44 Bards Hall - bards gather here for secret competitions and feasts and gossiping. The ruling family are all educated and musical experts. The village is really a musical trap here full of retired bards and kept out of kingdom affairs. Faerie did this for the king for gold and many hidden changelings and lycanthropes visit here from faerieland

45 Nightmare Hall - haunted by ghosts, spirits, trolls, dark faerie and nightmare beings from beyond. Any who come here are in danger of being swallowed by shadows or a mirror into a strange otherworld, trapped and tormented by nightmares. A dark elf ruler replaced the human dynasty with changeling agents

46 Frostheim Hall - haunted by winter faeries and elementals and always cold and snowy. Locals used to freeze dry food in the highest place and near the stone circle plain. Everyone here is miserable and items left briefly will have ice pixies sprinkle frost and snow over it. The rulers are in fact changeling replacements of the original line

47 Strangelight Hall - a marshy woodland where locals are pestered by sprites and brownies and faeries who also aid various strange creatures living here. Locals mostly live in marshes or the estate housing of the hall. Many see strange lights at night and travel by night is forbidden and gates closed. Local priests of the old faith try and appease faeries and the new priests try and banish them. The humans here never made a treaty with the local fey rulers and land spirits and may be able to change the situation 

48 Dryadsgrove Hall - an estate in a thick forest with many empty houses. The lords welcome runaways and even bandits and encourage them to settle or take a house free of rent. What they don't say is faerie folk and elf slavers come here to ensnare humans. Many work with a dryad or other fey folk and talking animals and even werewolves used as hunting beasts and to betray humans. Babies are closely guarded by locals in the temple and children are not to wander

49 Oak Hall - an estate with a ghost town loggers camp near the lord's walled estate with villager tenants. The lord is paranoid about appeasing the trees and faeries have been exploiting this and acting poorly with pranks and dirty tricks the locals put up with. Guests are even better targets and locals implore them not to swear or strike a faerie. After a conflict with forest folk the village has struggled to new resources and has more pigs now 

50 Ash Hall - settled by invading warriors long ago locals have some different customs and brought in some of their own spirits including enemy trolls with them. A recent priest sanctified a druid place and put their holy symbols over the prehistoric sigils where the first humans made pacts with the spirit folk. Now the spirits have arisen and are tormenting the village with bad crops and elfpox. All this makes the survivors more bitter and fanatic and make the priest more powerful  
51 Grey Hall - a former larger town with remains of a cathedral removed by a church. The remaining inhabitants have many ruined temples and buildings from past glory days. The current fort has riders to hunt bandits who plague the area. The area was not only abandoned 90 years ago by the modern church it was cursed. Gloomy mossy ruins are more and more inhabited by goblinoids. Some people are dealing with them and others claim all goblins are evil and must die. Locals have a shortage of labour so are dependent on hobgoblin and goblin labour. There are only a few bugbears in the halls of tribal goblin kings at the moment. Great fungus forests have appeared in places. A bishop has cursed the town to quarrel and fight. The nobility struggle to keep peace and the domain is a mess and want to solve the problem of peace with goblins and the removing the curse

52 Lamp Hall - a beacon is lit here on a tower so fog travellers can find the great hall and walled village. Locals once kept a holy lamp which was stolen and now they have been cursed. Each night not only do they get more fog now but strange creatures roam the mist. If the real lamp returned the evil would flee but nobody knows where it is 

53 Temple Hall - each night the locals and lord all lock themselves inside and undead templars arise each night to patrol the domain. They especially hunt modern church uniforms and will mobilise a serious force against any church invasion. The locals welcome strangers and beg them to stay inside. The Templars were cursed by a former theocrat and cannot die just reform in their coffins and return. If anyone takes any of their relics from many tombs and ruins the templars will want them back and mount an attack on any thieves. They will violate their own code of harming locals to get a thief so grave robbers and adventurers make locals scared 

54 Wizard Hall - a tower of a wizard who was approved for a time by the modern church but then they were angered by his fame and excommunicated and cursed him. The wizard since then has made her domain a paradise with no labour required. The wizard and locals are cursed to live as zombies who regenerate each day and aimlessly wander the pleasant domain. Zombies attempt to capture victims and make them drink from the cursed well in the wizard's tower. Most people fear the land. If the curse can be broken the people will be pleased and the wizard will work on securing his domain and welcome demihuman peoples

55 Bear Hall - a rough country village of furriers and loggers where a visiting saint was mocked by everyone for his new faith and cursed the domain. Now the town is plagued by bears of various types and quite a few werebears. Most people know a werebear and do little to stop them. The town is more concerned about the lack of women in the almost all-male community which has nothing to do with any curses and more to do with their over-exuberant love of drinking, wrestling and not bathing because that is for soft people. Visitors are advised "just give the bears food and back off everything will be fine, come to a manly wrestling match instead"

56 Beacon Hall - is a convent estate of warrior nuns and priestesses under command of the current Lady Abbot. The beacon they light in their castle is a relic they defend to the death and they are wary of the presence of chaos and demons. The locals will try and recruit warrior women who visit. Many of the local non-humans and monsters are female also which seems a bit odd. The order was cursed for their heretical thoughts by an archbishop long ago which makes male creatures want to leave. The sisterhood thought this was awesome and even get along with faeries, elves and orcs affected also. Church agents since have tried to remove the "curse" and failed  

57 Weird Hall - was a site of some wicked nobles who were demon cultists. The church sealed all the converts in the domain as a curse and has driven other cults into the region as a prison. Locals are welcoming to strangers until they see they are not bound by the curse or evil cultists. Then strangers become fair game and are hated. Many cults here have settled together in a truce and many evil shrines and idols are on public display. Most fear "the witch place" and assume there is a plan to send a crusade here to kill them all one day

58 Bramble Hall - a wild unkept domain where the walled manor estate has many quaint old houses. All the people here turned into beast abhumans by a curse from a saint who said they were beasts for not quitting Druidry and mocking him. Now all the various species of beast folk live together and welcome humans and goblinoids and demihumans also. The locals are mostly onboard with current life but a small minority want the curse lifted and the town cleaned up. This order of flagellants believe they deserve punishment and if they suffer enough will be reborn as humans. Lord Bulger Chadwolf increasingly wants the firing cult to leave but the curse keeps the beast folk here. Beast changeling spirit folk, talking animals and lycanthropes are moving in and also changing the mix

59 Whitepole Hall - locals sit on ladders and poles to be closer to heaven at every opportunity recording their hours in lords manor chapel house. Very zealous will implore you to try it also. Very boring religious zealots that people think are cursed. Actually, the locals claim they eliminated their curse years ago, something about snake people

60 Lion Hall - house of a famed general dynasty or war leaders of the kingdom. Each lord of the Hall becomes a werelion and most of the ruling family are now lycanthropes. The family while using piety and national symbols in their lavish art really were always murderous bastards and cursed for killing a saint who argued with them over a war. Guests are invited for dinner then hunted and devoured 
61 Blackbog Hall - a swampy sinking castle and floating village struggle with sinking land since they burned a druid holy tree. The druids visit seasonally to sink more land and create monsters to torment the inhabitants until they repent and embrace druidic flower power 

62 Mistletoe Hall - a hillfort domain where ancient druid kings were crowned. The current new nobles don't understand why peasants and beasts seem to act up so much. A druid warned them so they had men shoot him with crossbows for being on their land. Year by year rocks grow from the soil, trees move and giant animals increase in numbers 

63 Boar Hall - a hall where lords came to hunt and where the current lord Brutus began hunting wild folk on his land. Since then the boar have increased and become huger and more hostile. Devil pigs and wereboars cause trouble constantly. As people are depopulated from boar attacks or leaving the lord is broken and desperate. Even his old hunting buddies are now wereboar berserks spreading rebellion

64 Blazing Hall - where once was a thriving hall estate and village now mostly rubble and ruins and dead vegetation. A druid awoke a volcano to punish nobles and released various fire elementals in the kingdom. People survive but shun stone housing and mining due to the quakes. The lord lives in a huge tent where he drinks over his decision to destroy a druids circle on his land

65 Brazen Hall - a domain with copper and arsenic mines where bronze was once made. Many of the locals are stunted and easily mistaken for dwarves. Bronz is still the main industry but the workers are stricken with mysterious afflictions. Dwarves will be shocked by this unnatural faux dwarf activity. The druids used to aid the locals with medicine but stopped when the town wouldn't support an old ways rebellion with weapons. Strange vapours and newt folk fire cultists now plague the land

66 Dolmen Hall - a former domain of a king now a walled estate with a village. As the newcomers did not recognise local druid authority the village has been stricken with mysterious crushing attacks and torn-apart bodies. Druids have left tree folk and living stone monoliths and scarecrows to murder people at night

67 Pony Hall - wild hills and mores where small fiesty ponies roam. Locals use the ponies quite a bit and worship an old pony goddess. A new priest and settlers disapproved and now a kelpie nightmare faerie has been snatching travellers by night and in the early mornings. There have also been some werepony outbreaks

68 Ram Hall - a lord with troublesome peasants chased most of them away and now keeps a few shepherds and sheep convinced its a get-rich-quick scheme. The local druids unimpressed have punished him by making the sheep giants and wild so now nobody has work and giant sheep menace everyone. His lordship has begun growing ram horns and wool

69 Green Hall - a lady wizard bought this domain and built a tower. Local villagers were at first unsure of her but it turns out her were-snake cult was just what they were looking for and killed the local druid and priests. Druidic snake cultists in retaliation increased snakes in the area and have feuded for decades over the hearts and minds of locals. Strangers wont be able to tell which snakes are witch snakes and be confused by snakes eating each other violence
70 Philosophers Hall - a vast alchemical apparatus making petty potions is operated by an alchemist lord and his gnome minions. Local villagers help feed the tiny workers. Over the years they have dumped alchemical waste and now mutations are common among monsters and locals. Strange slime creatures and bugs are also common

71 Blindoch Hall - dwarves cursed this domain and all its iron mines are now full of goblins. The dwarves are regretting this curse as it begins to affect their hidden homes. The local lord is going broke as costs for soldiers are on the rise and profits of mines plummet. If he leaves locals will be without defence, food and work 

72 Barren Hall - humans here messed with halflings who got a land divinity to curse the human land with barrenness and it became a wasteland. The last few settlers struggle as wells dry and crops fail. They blame and hate halflings which wont help them. The halflings assume humans will apologise and cut a deal or quit and leave. Even stored food becomes a victim of vermin here. Halflings food stores are fine and they are getting richer and fatter

73 SIlverdew Hall - a past lord killed a unicorn and elves have taken over the land and driven away or killed the official village folk. They maintain the human hall and village with some changeling actors to keep humans away but they are very odd folk

74 Treehill Hall - a lord annoyed gnomes with rude jokes so they undermined the hall and walls leaving humans living in ruins and rubble. Now gnomes are in charge and demand cash for basic goods like food and water with lower rates for non-humans

75 Dwarf Hall - A dwarf clan offended their gods and since then they are third class servants of a human domain built in the ruins of their ancestors. Locals are patronising biggots to dwarfs. The clan beg strangers recover their clan shield to be forgiven. Once aided with curse dwarfs go on a murderous rampage and take over for good. A few dwarfs claim humans can be ok and can be redeemed by serving dwarfs 

76 Mooncrest Hall - humans destroyed an elf sacred tree and now the elves rule here. bright and dark fey folk have malicious contests with human visitors and make wagers to reduce or increase human punishments. The bright fey antics are still bad just less fatal and cruel

77 Stout Hall - a domain of halflings who maintain a puppet human clan to pretend to rule over them. They pay their taxes and dont want strangers to know. They mumble something about a curse if questions come up but really the halflings replaced the mutated humans who used to live here. Occasionally some mutant from the swamp tries to tell strangers the truth 

78 Redcap Hall - locals were cannibal bandits and cultists who have become bloodthirsty killer gnomes. Visitors are robbed and eaten and they use the castle dungeon to keep prisoners. The original vanished family of the appointed ruler is here with other travellers being held for years of torment

79 Hobnail Hall - a lord had his people leave his cruel stewardship and has replaced them with hobgoblins. They tell people they are just temporarily hobgoblins due to a curse but really they are paid wages. The lord has a few humans and is always looking out for new human boss types to run the hobgoblins

80 Nightfang Hall - a black creepy tower where locals accepted an evil sorcerer with gifts who over time replaced the people with orcs. They tell strangers of a curse that made them orcs and try to send adventurers on a quest for an evil orc relic they want to summon long missing orc hordes trapped in a faerie land
81 Mystic Hall - a wizard tower and walled village cursed by the gods for the wizard's forbidden research. At night all locals turn into were-salamanders. These huge hungry amphibians can swallow an adult human and hide in water and holes. The wizard is attempting now to contact older more helpful gods so she can avenger her people and embrace their condition. Of course the gods don't like this either so nudge some murder crazed adventurers sort it out

82 Stallion Hall - formerly a riding horse breeding estate for nobility but centaurs have had a word from the pony godess humans were mistreating horses and trying to cross them with nightmares. Centaurs came and clubbed the locals to death and replaced them as if nothing is wrong. They tell a different story about how they were the humans transformed but have learned to live fine as centaurs

83 Cellar Hall - a domain of drunks who live off wine and beer and mead. The town produces plenty but consumes most of what they make. Outside the booze industry everything seems shoddy and unkept. The graveyard shows shorter lifespans every generation. Even the kids are drinking and smoking to learn the local trade and babies look dim and cry without a bedtime dram of rum. Generations ago they offended a wine god in the form of a homeless creepy old satyr. Wild satyrs still come and visit and are given all they can drink in hopes their curse ends before they all die

84 Scalds Hall - where a lord attracted bards and secretly killed the ones he disliked. The gods were offended and struck all in the village unable to hear. They have developed sign language and bards have stopped coming having known someone killed. Their are dusty concert chambers and instrument storage rooms in the castle and even the once musical commoners now have no music of joy

85 Spindle Hall - once famous for weaving and many noble women would come here to spin and make important tapestries. The lady of the manor was cursed by the gods for her complaints about the world and now the women are all werespiders and the menfolk less involved in the tapestry trade are trapped in tapestries

86 Brazier Hall - a small manour and estate village mostly here to gather resin from an aromatic tree that lives on the mountains for incense. Many religions used to buy the resin until it was revealed to be dried demon Ichor and various gods cursed the mountain. Now the remaining people are wereravens ever on the lookout for demon cults trying to make the curse worse. Evil cultists flock here for the now forbidden resin and locals must hunt and kill them in hopes of the curse being forgiven. The angry gods dont even remember this event anymore

87 Bellend Hall - a famous great bell was there that kept away witches and evil undead from the area. Unfortunately, the lord threw his sister off the bell tower and the bell cracked and now attracts evil. The mad lord has grown worse as supernatural menaces increase

88 Sphynx Hall - locals settled and built here but killed off a species of beast folk who lived here. Now every night the welcoming locals repeat the same events and at midnight the spirit beings of the dead arise and kill everyone. At dawn the village is reset and nobody remembers. If the curse heart is destroyed and some of the beastfolk resettle the land the gods forgive the village and the spirits are reborn as young adults

89 Ruin Hall - hall built where adventurers come to plunder ruins. Some curses were made early on when a goblin king's family was killed. No progress can occur here. All the arms and weapons are outdated, the population never grows and civilisation never creeps in. Most of the population are murder hobos or profiteers providing services for them. Modern items brought in change to outdated ones overnight but return when they leave the area to normal. People have lived in tents and hollow trees for decades and the hall is still incomplete

90 Moonlight Hall - a lord here used diabolic powers to spy on a goddess bathing and she was very creeped out and mad. By day all here look normal but by night they all seem hidous rubbery warty geriatrics. The original imp involved still lives in the village and cannot leave. Everybody is wise to his tricks and he has given up and is unable to leave 
91 Bloodbourne Manour - a red granite castle with most of the village is inside outer walls and very secure. The noble's ancestors were prehuman lamprey folk and they feast on blood in secret in caves under the manor. Whenever someone kills them all some other lineage show up by freak chance, settles in and discovers their heritage and adopt black magic. The locals live in fear and have strange nightmares and are hydrophones. Their are flooded caves under everything in the area and ancient ruined temples of the prehistoric lamprey lords

92 Grimface Hall - an estate with a wall surrounding it with many gargoyles and faces on the walls. The hall has a huge statuary of strange prehuman and alien species in a vault. Locals are hideous and inbred degenerates who all have similar faces as the nobility. The oldest people in town eventually when old morph into ratling folk and slither off into graveyard warrens to worship their dark gods 

93 Dagger Hall - a welcoming dynasty keen to share scholarly and wizardly knowledge. Has a vast sprawling forbidden occult library and a gate to the library of hell. Ageless nobles claim the books help them fight unpopular hidden cults rife in the area. Really they are fiendish sorcerers possessed by evil spirits from beyond the void seeking ways to release eternal chaos and darkness on the world so they can end their curse. Some think they are vampires or serving hell when really they have no allegiances they just use planar beings trapped in this material plane

94 Skullcap Manor - where a clan of wizard nobles spent decades on necromancy to prolong their lives but instead they visited the otherworlds of shadow, nightmare and darkness and returned planar monsters of evil. The nobles have replaced all their peasants with undead as the ones who could flee did long ago

95 Eidolon Hall - built over a hollow hill with a strange prehuman statue, this hall has seen nothing but tragedy. The nobles here desperate to fix the problem attracted cultists and charlatans. Now they worship the hidden idol under their home and are introducing other villagers to it slowly. The hideous toad goad requires enough worshipers to escape its hidden prison pit

96 Serpent Hall - build of black basalt rocks from a more ancient building. The lords here discovered they were not only hereditary sorcerers but descendants of the serpent folk and thus ought to rule the universe. Most are shapeshifters but the more awful mutant hybrids live in the old sewers. The villagers are fearful and full of strange stories of things they have seen 

97 Swine Hall - a stone citadel built over a cave-filled mountain. Once settlers moved in they began finding remains of older settlements that came and went and could even see layers of habitation cliff strata layers. Strange screaming swine folk and people who seemed to be from the past would arrive at night causing trouble. The tower has an old library, a secret lab and an observatory with a telescoped on some demonic eye in the sky. Time flows oddly here and something in the cavern harvests all living in the domain every few centuries 

98 Blue Tower Hall - a wizard tower of prehistoric design restored by a wizard scholar seeking assistants. Villagers are all his servants and respect the master without question as their forefathers did. The wizard has plenty of missions to recover items and one day will reveal his true species and bring his hidden spawn and kin into the surface world to take over as they did long ago

99 Canal Hall - is a former drained swamp now with a maze of canals many passing through hills in tunnels. Former fisherfolk hid in the dark caves and turned white with malice over centuries. They have snatched a few people from tunnels and most blame the ghosts of the drowned crew and not a problem. Soon the fishfolk will start taking whole crews then homesteads. A cult of supporter hybrids help the fishfolk cross moors and wells and sewers of the domain

100 Skybolt Hall - long ago a noble cult ruled here over a fearful people sure witches were everywhere. Really the menace was their elites who were summoning star demons from beyond. The cult was exterminated and replaced by new noble families. Occasionally strange stars are seen, or someone disappears or is found struck by lightning. They say the old cult observatory and old manor house are haunted and locals are still afraid of witches ghosts are everywhere

As usual on big ones let me know if I repeated names or got numbers messed up

 

Original Setting Details

http://elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2020/03/noble-lands-of-auldwood-south.html
Also this
http://elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-fallen-empire.html
Auldwood here now just part of kingdom of Mordnar that overlaps with other kingdoms and the Great Wilds. 

 

Also have incorporated a bunch of campaign areas into one map now
I ought to put in the route Lampgulp the leviathan who orbits Anglerslund as a major world navigation hazard. Possibly she kept the Monster Empire and pirates at bay for thousands of years. Even serpent men in their monstrous kronosaurs fear mighty Lampgulp.  One day with will deal with the exotic west, the wild south, the frozen north, and the western lands of war and the Waeric Islands. Lots of countries include parts of Auldwood but their borders are more theoretical really and the white line is the border that faeries and wild folk kingdoms agree on. This has been expanded since the civil war started and the great continental depopulations occurred.