The Whaling Woods

At night during high tide the fishermen of Frogston lure whales into the woods. When a whale is entangled in the dead trees, they surround it in their small boats and slay it. Whaling at night is a doubly dangerous activity due to the undead the high tide brings. Along the coast wreckers make trouble by luring passing ships into the woods. Shallows and sandbanks are frequent in the waters around the Whaling Woods.

The Swamp of Submerged Secrets

The swamp was once the center of the realm of the Emerald Magi. Purportedly their reign was brought to an end when a successful uprising of pleasure slaves replaced the magiocracy with pornocracy (rule by prostitutes). This spelled doom for the Emerald Magi and today the swamp is littered with their ruined towers hidding the secrets of the magi. It is an initiation ritual Marsh elves living in the swamp to steal something from the ruins.

Magic is still strong around the ruins. Therefore clerics, magic-users and elves need only half as much sleep and half as much time to prepare spells while in the swamp.

Note: This incorporates an entry from the Random Weird Historical Events table I won for my entry into the Hack Vornheim contest. Entry 50 to be precise.

Banshees

A banshee (or Bean-Sidhe) is the howling spirit of a dead elf woman whose appearance foretells death. Now, most elves in the land beyond the Drowning Woods are either marsh elves (sometimes called swamp elves) or pale elves. In other words, most elves aren't of the goody two shoes variety. What that means for the disposition of their ghosts is left up to the individual referee to determine.

Banshee: HD 9, AC 18, Speed: half as fast as an unencumbered man, Morale 12, Damage: 1d8 (claws), only vulnerable to silver & magic, 50% immunity vs. spells, typical undead immunities, AL: Chaotic.

• Death Cry: Once per night, a banshee may scream loudly, painfully and deadly. Everyone within earshot has to succeed at a save vs. poison or die painfully in 2d6 rounds. Everyone who fails their save also is immediately deaf due to ruptured eardrums.

The Lake of the Spooky Nun

Many legends surround the fresh water lake and the nun from the society of the Ice Serpent who drowned herself to close a gate at the bottom of the lake. Supposedly, the gate leads to another world in a far-off cluster of stars where strange gods and ancient evils dwell. The nun was transformed into a banshee that haunts the lake shore when there is danger of the gate being opened. Some halflings fearfully whisper that the nun has been sometimes seen at night in the past couple of decades. At the same time, there have been reports of strange foot prints found at the shore. Foot prints some crazed magic-users believe to belong to Deep Ones. But of course that's typical villager talk.

Note: The Lake of the Spooky Nun can serve as a starting point to introduce monsters, artifacts and rituals from Carcossa into the campaign.

Goblin-Spiders

A Goblin-Spider Forest of course needs goblin-spiders. These are not your  traditional Japanese variant. Goblin spiders are smallish to largish creature with the body of a spider and the head of a warty hooked-nosed goblin. Their two foremost legs are actually able to manipulate tools and weapons. Though they rarely use them.

Goblin-spiders: HD 1, AC 13, Speed: one-and-a-half times as fast as an unencumbered man, Morale: 8, Damage: 1d4 + poison (save vs. poison +2 or die) (bite), 1/day web (caster level = HD), AL: Chaotic.

This is the most commonly encountered variant. For larger variants increase HD, increase armor class by 1 for every 2-3 HD, at 3 HD loose the +2 save bonus, at 6 HD impose a -2 save bonus. Queen Tittania probably has at least 10 HD and may even be a magic-user.

Goblin-Spider Forest

Through the dense and pathless coniferous forest run several brooks flowing from the two lakes towards the coast. The weather is rainy in summer and snowy in winter. The forest is home to the halflings, centered around the town of Darkenstone. Somewhere deep within the woodland the caves of the goblin-spider queen are hidden, where the goblin-spiders enslave unlucky travelers and their queen, Tittania, spins a vast web over a bottomless pit.

Notes: Yes, I realized too late that a spider queen sitting over a bottomless pit has been done to death. But at least Tittania is neither demon nor godess, just a big fat spider. Think Shelob with more malice and spells. Also, the halflings have finally found their homeland. Unfortunately, as you will read later, it is under attack by the Deep Ones from a distant star.

Iron Blade Lake

According to stories, two enemy armies plunged their weapons into the fresh water lake as part of a peace treaty. Anyway, sometimes one can find strange scimitars of ancient design on the muddy banks. Trolls are living in the caves on the highland side of the lake. They worship the dragon Anthrax the Purple Thunder as God under the Lake. By braving the troll caves, an enterprising (or suicidal) adventurer could reach the dragon cave located at the bottom of the lake.

The Rustmoor Highlands

The hill country is densely populated. Outside of the four large towns, the people live in clan holds and tribal villages. The highland clans are influenced by the Church of the Iron God. The clans are mining for iron ore and coal. The village tribes produce iron ingots and steel. The townsfolk produce tools and weapons. The signature weapon of the highlands is the two-handed greatsword (double cost, non-magical +1 to damage).

The Doomglaroon River and the Death Frost Mountain

Today, we continue with the exploration of the lands beyond the Drowning Woods.

The Doomglaroon River is navigable from the delta around the Nameless City up to Kirkstead. The barges bring finished goods from the Nameless City upstream and raw materials downstream. In the riverside villages, the Speakers of the River serve as priests. They know the secrets of irrigation and river locks. Each spring in each village a prisoner is chosen by lottery to be the Disciple of the River Father. The chosen disciple is drowned in the river to appease the river and prevent flooding.

The Death Frost Mountain (name taken from Zak's campaign map) is the only mountain to survive the moonfall in the area. The top is covered year round by glittering ice. The Doomglaroon River has its source at the foot of the mountain. Legends tell that the mountain formed around a sleeping giant. If you want to explore the Death Frost Mountain, get yourself a referee and the excellent Doom Frost Death module from Lotfp.

Cults in the Land beyond the Drowning Woods

Clerics require gods to worship and grant their spells (or whatever passes for gods in the campaign setting). Lotfp assumes that all clerics are lawful (i.e. allied with law as opposed to chaos). Reading the Tales from the Flat Earth by Tanith Lee where gods are very distant and aloof beings, that gave me ideas.

Basically, all religions in the Land beyond the Drowning Woods are cults. They venerate distant gods. Most clergy are 0-level. In order to gain insight into the nature of the gods and the mysteries they present, one has to leave the safe confines of ones village or town and travel to distant places to experience creation. Enlightenment is not for the meek.

The Church of the Iron God worships a stern father-figure. They value honor, righteousness and obedience. It's a cult of warriors, smiths and mineworkers. It is very prevalent in the Rustmoor Highlands where the main cathedral of the faith is located.

The Order of the Pale Worm venerates the lord of death and decay. He is the patron of graveyards and tombs. The statues depict Lord Death as a giant white maggot dressed in hooded robe of black velvet. His main temple is on the Isle of the Pale Worm where he is served by the Verdigris Virgins.

The Children of the Beast King worship the Horned One as a fertility god. They dance around the equinox fires and celebrate rites to ensure the bounty of the harvest. The cult has a large following the Goblin-Spider Forest and the rural communities on the Swamp of Dreadful Dreams. At the spring equinox, a young man who has never before known a woman, has ritual intercourse with the harvest hag, a woman who has raised at least three sons.

The Speakers of the River Father can be found along the Doomglaroon. They idolize the river as a benevolent father who brings live and prosperity to the villages and towns along the Doomglaroon. Sacred priests usually accompany the river vessels.

The Society of the Ice Serpent is a mystery cult based upon ancient teachings of the pale elves. It is believed that the Ice Serpent is the creator of the pale elves. Today it is a deity worshipped by magic-users, alchemists and tieflings. The marsh elves revile all clerics and priests of the Ice Serpent.

The Servants of the Bloated Toad are merchants and traders who believe in decadence and opulence. They see obesity as sign of an affluent lifestyle and favor of the deity. The priesthood is rich and lazy. Rarely do they find the tenacity to explore the deeper meanings of the tenets of the Golden Toad. Currently, the priests are trying to open a temple in the Nameless City. An effort regularly met with some sort of setback or disaster.

These are the cults and churches of the land beyond the Drowning Forest. All of these cults have clerics, but so far they aren't really differentiated from another. I am thinking of ways to do this without unbalancing the game. On the other hand, I am not sure, if that is necessary at all. I am tempted to just let this stand, until a player decides to actually play a cleric and chooses a cult as his own.

The Estuary of the Unquiet Dead

The floods caused by the moonfall created the estuary. Rumor has it, that sunken cities and kingdoms of men lie at the bottom of the sea. Sometimes the tide washes jewelry and gold coins on the shore. Always the rising tide brings the undead drowned ones to the shallow coasts. In the depth of the sea live sea serpents, whales and seals. Still, fishing boats, merchant ships and dwarven galleys sail the estuary.

The Stone-Cold Forest

The Stone-Cold Forest is a woodland of petrified trees radiating an unnatural and unseasonal cold. Before the Moonfall, the dwarves build their galleys of stone from the trees. The docks were located in the nearby city of Brú'na'Brae. Today, the forest and the city lie abandoned by the dwarves and creatures of night and cold have come to roost there.

Those who enter the forest without winter travel clothes take 1d4 points of damage each turn. In winter, even someone travelling in winter clothing takes 1 point of damage per turn. Wearing heavy furs protects from even the worst winter weather, but all actions are at -2 penalty.

The Stone-Cold Forest rises above the tides of the Estuary of the Unquiet Dead. Not even storm tides will flood the hilly woodland.

The Book of Stone

This grimoire consists of thin stone sheets harvested from the trees in the Stone-Cold Forest. Within the pages are densely etched with dwarven runes. The book contains five 5th level spells that any magic-user or tiefling can learn: major creation, passwall, stone shape, transmute rock to mud and wall of stone.

The real treasure, though, is the treatise on building stone galleys, an art currently lost to the dwarves. If dwarves hear of a character possessing the book, they will stop at nothing to acquire it. They will try to buy, steal or rob it.

But that is not the worst. The grimoire is as cursed as any other. Each time someone learns a spell from the book, he has to save vs. magical device. If the save is failed, the character is turned into a dwarf of equal level losing his spellcasting abilities. The victim can be saved by casting a remove curse on him.

The Drowning Woods

Pale dead trees stretch their branches accusingly towards the sky, the spongy ground is covered with rotting leaves and mushrooms, and it smells of moss and brine. Each tide of the Eastern Ocean brings more water. Each footstep fills with it. The trees slowly sink into it. The marsh elves fear the woods and the woods hate the marsh elves.

Here, in antiquity, the lichwitch Audreen the Icy ruled over the ivory court of the pale elves. Rumor has it, her palace still lies at the bottom of a lake within the forest.

The Swamp of Dreadful Dreams

The Swamp of Dreadful Dreams is a mire of treacherous mud holes and quicksand, overgrown with cyan blue grass and weeping willows smelling of coppery death, and at night flooded by the saltwater tides from the Estuary of the Unquiet Dead. Legend tells that beneath the ever-present hills are the barrows of the queen consorts of the First Dwarves, lying dreaming, waiting to be reborn as slime demons from the outer dark.

Every night's sleep in the Swamp of Dreadful Dreams has a 25% chance of being a nightmare. If someone experiences a nightmare, the next day he suffers a -1 penalty to any and all actions and saves. Marsh elves never experience nightmares in the swamp, dwarves have a 50% chance of having nightmares.

Black Unicorns

Okay, I know they have been done to death. But I still want to do them. Also, beyond the Drowning Woods there are no white unicorns.

Black Unicorn: HD 5, AC 19, Speed: twice as fast as running man, Morale 10, Damage: 2x 1d8 (hooves), 1d8 + cause disease (horn), 25% magic resistance, double damage if charging, teleport as MU lvl 5 once per day, AL Chaotic.

• Virgin sacrifice: If the black unicorn encounters a man who has sacrificed a virgin, it must save vs. spell or forevermore serve that man.

The Drowned Ones

The land beyond the Drowning Woods does not have a moon, yet there are strange tides. When the sun sets, the water rises. When the sun rises, the waters recede. Thus it has ever been, since the moonfall.

With the tides come the Drowned Ones. The unquiet dead of the sea. They go where the salt water flows.

Drowned one: HD 1 to 3, AC 13, Speed: 3/4 of a walking man, Morale 12, Damage 1d8+3 (sabre), undead immunities, upper-half damage from bludgeoning weapons, vulnerable to rock salt, AL Chaotic.

• Watery touch: Drowned ones with 3HD or more can forego their weapon attack and instead touch the target. Target must save vs poison or die from drowning within 3 rounds. The corpse will rise as a drowned one in the next night. 
• Cursed treasure: Drowned ones carry 1d6 brass coins which will gleam like silver at night; tattered leather which will function as leather armor at night; sabres that will gleam as if struck by moonlight at night, but are useless in daylight (still count as magic weapons!). If anyone carrying part of such treasure is slain, he must save vs poison or rise the next night as a drowned one.
• Breaking the curse: Either prevent victim from drowning with appropriate spells or cast a cure spell on him. After the victim has turned into a drowned one, only a remove curse spell will work. But the victim will still be dead.

Note: At night, the tides are rising and all hexes not occupied by hills will flood with salt water. Villages and towns constructed on those hexes lie in elevated areas or have been elevated.

The Book of the Pale Moon

"As the uncaring gods warred in Heaven, the Moon was cracked and flung to the Earth. A great upheaval followed as the shards of the moon struck the cities of dwarves, rent the nations of elves and drowned the kingdoms of men. All that had been built was shattered. All that had been gathered was scattered.


Today, the world knows nothing of the Fallen Moon, the skies are empty save for distant stars. The oceans are shallow and the tides sweep the land. Yet dwarves, elves, men and tieflings prevail. But some, those born with seething sorcerous blood, look up to the sky, at the poisonous pale green moon glaring down on them. Ever full, never half, an accusing eye directed at their sins of wizardry and chaos."
- From the Book of the Pale Moon, written in the 2nd century of the Era of the Leaden Dawn by the magic-user Aglemore the Lunatic

Note: The Book of the Pale Moon is a grimoire containing the magic-user spells: summoning, force of forbidment, howl of the moon, strange waters II, seven gates, contact outer sphere, weird vortex and witchlamp aura.

Once per day, the owner of the book may cast any one of the spells contained in the book as a magic-user of his level. After casting the spell, he must make a saving throw vs magic at a penalty. The penalty is the difference between his current level and the minimum level required to cast the spell (if he is of higher level, this can become a bonus). If he fails the save, he will dream poisonous dreams of a pale moon. He will thrash and howl in his sleep and cannot be woken until dawn. Such a sleep is not restful at all. A magic-user or tiefling will not be able to prepare spells, and all his rolls on that day will be at a -2 penalty.

The spells in the grimoire can be studied and copied normally. This will not having any ill effect.

Port Nameless

The city once had a name. Then the people decided to sell the name (and something else) to inchoate entities from beyond time and space - for food. Nobody in Port Nameless goes hungry. All the temples are abandoned, their windows cracked, their roofs open. In the sewers rules the Shrieking Shrew and the Council of Groats. Their rule is the law.

There are always six on the council. Snatched from the streets. They serve for life (and beyond?). They are the maker of laws and the judges. They may only speak in council while eating oat groat. Each time they meet, one of the groat meals is poisoned. One of the councilors may perish. To be replaced with another citizen snatched from the streets.

Marsh Elves

In the Swamp of Dreadful Dreams and the Swamp of Submerged Secrets, the marsh elven tribes roam. Marsh elves look wizened, with flinty eyes and long gnarly legs & arms. There ears are large and pointed.

A marsh elven tribe usually consists of 10d10 people travelling in strang boat-like wagons with big spidery wheels. About 90% of a clan are 0-lvl individuals. 10% are marsh elves (as medium-sized halflings) of levels 1-10. The highest level individual will be the leader. There is a 50% chance that the clan has a marsh witch. The witch is a female of level 5+1d10 and casts spells as a magic-user of equal level. She usually has 1d3 apprentices of levels 1-6.

Clan Names: Use the tables below to create a two-part name. The table could conceivably be used to generate tribal or clan names for other species (orcs, gnolls, goblins, etc.)

First part (roll 1d10)
1 - Blood(y)
2 - Black
3 - Gray
4 - Rusted
5 - Gnawed
6 - Bleached
7 - Crimson
8 - Purple
9 - Rotted
10 - Ghostly

Second part (roll 1d10)
1 - Bones
2 - Skulls
3 - Teeth
4 - Eye
5 - Fingers
6 - Boots
7 - Gauntlets
8 - Swords
9 - Knives
10 - Wheels