Vilimzair Aralivar | Wreck of the Anvar | Sentinel Hill | Sparkwell Farm | The Grey Angel
Welcome to the Sunday Supplement, Raging Swan Press’s weekly email for GMs. This week, we have one free download, one piece of legendry, one piece of lore and three miscellaneous campaign components for your game.
Should we develop any of these idea further? Comment below.
01: April’s Inner Cover
Download
April's new inner cover presents 20 more cool words and the names of 20 streets for your game.
02 Vilimzair Aralivar
Ashlarian Legendry (Legendary Figure)
A mythical but controversial figure, the elf Vilimzair Aralivar is widely held to be the World’s Greatest Ever Bard and a legendary pirate captain. The tales of his heroism, good looks and musical prowess are legion and seemingly without end. Along with his faithful parrot, Pluck, and a crew of semi-useful, hapless idiots, Vilimzair swashbuckled across the known world in a series of incredible, scarcely believable adventures celebrated in famed play and song.
Several books, including My Amazing Life which details—sadly all too briefly—a few of his innumerable, wildest and best-known adventures and voyages, are attributed to the Great Bard himself.
Some believe that the countless adventures and deeds attributed to Vilimzair are impossible—no person could be so heroic, talented and lucky; thus, he is a figment of someone’s overactive imagination. Others believe that if he did indeed exist, the stories of his derring-do have been blown wildly out of all proportion. Most folk think Vilimzair is long dead. A few fanatical followers, though, believe that he either found a way to cheat death and live on—questing ever-onwards in pursuit of yet greater adventures and experiences—or that Seluria Inamiltae, the elven goddess of romantic love and beauty, herself enamoured by the Great Bard’s endless talents, elevated him to semi-divine status and that he is now her consort and paramour.
Finally, many elves, half-elves and even, bizarrely, some humans and half-orcs have claimed descent from the Great Bard. Most such folk do so only for tawdry self-interest and personal gain. Still, a few possess genuine musical talents, leading to conjecture that the heroic elf sired a veritable legion of children during his incredible life.
03 Wreck of the Anvar
Ashlarian Lore (Painting)
The half-blind artist-seer Valdemar Lemmikki painted this bleak oil on canvas almost 200 years ago. Dreams of terrible and evil portent are said to have assailed the preternaturally skilled but highly sensitive artist in the weeks before he began the work. Such was the dreams’ unnatural force and vividness, Valdemar finished the massive piece after a frenzied month of work. The effort reported broke Valdemar, who died the following year without painting anything else.
The Wreck of the Anvar is widely thought of as a masterpiece but a blasphemous, hideous masterpiece that should never have been painted. The painting was reputed to have strange effects on those gazing at its gloomy scene. Several viewers reported feeling distinctly uneasy in the painting’s brooding presence, while others swore a faint, unwholesome smell emanated from the canvas. A few shaken souls reported hearing the faint, desperate cries of the Anvar’s crew when they gazed at the painting for too long. Few sought out the masterpiece for a second close inspection.
The picture depicts the *Anvar*—a famed, but doomed, ship of the now-extinct Alanen family lost on a mysterious voyage to the far south. The painting depicts the ship rolled almost onto its side, wrecked upon a jagged rocky isle festooned with strange and weird growths. On its seaward side, an impossible mass of tangled, noisome weed has almost overwhelmed the doomed ship. Beyond the island, a vast carpet of weeds stretches to the horizon. Overhead, the sky is dark and leaden, although a strange light emanating from an unknown source permeates the scene.
The masterpiece hung in Castle Languard’s Great Hall but was moved after folk began to avoid the place. Re-hung in a distant audience chamber, it slowly faded from prominence until it was reported missing in 465 NR. The painting’s current location is unknown.
04 Sentinel Hill
Campaign Component (Town)
Long have the sullen and indifferent stars cast their wan, ethereal glow over the dismal and queer, mist-drenched town of Sentinel Hill.
The town stands upon a high, wind-swept bluff of slick stone thrust out into the Bitter Sea. Below, the oft-wild and always unforgiving waves seethe and batter the cliffs as if nature herself abhors Sentinel Hill and would see it drowned.
Buried deep beneath the town's tenebrous and gloomy courts, tangled and filthy streets and ancient and tottering buildings lie the Underlands. Here, strange and hideous alien forms flop, ooze and shamble through the illimitable dark and dwell amid the time-worn ruins of the Lost City of the Elder Ones.
The clannish, insular folk of Sentinel Hill eschew modernity and instead embrace the Old Ways—a phantastical, half-remembered jumble of myths, legends and rites bequeathed to them by the countless generations who have lived and died in Sentinel Hill. Their traditions burrow far back into pre-human history and have their foul roots in certain religions of the most aberrant and grotesque sort.
Visitors rarely come to Sentinel Hill—the town is wholly without redeeming or interesting features—and of those that do, few leave.
05 Sparkwell Farm
Campaign Component (Farm)
Renowned for its fecundity and the deliciousness of its bountiful produce, Sparkwell Farm fills a bucolic river valley girded by dense, ancient woodland. But a single track leads up the valley to the isolated farm, but it is a well-worn track for many folk come to do business at Sparkwell Farm.
The Mietti family dwells at Sparkwell Farm, working its fields and tending its livestock, as they have done for generations. They are tall, merry folk, and many of their neighbours believe there is a touch of elvishness about them. In this, they are wrong—the source of their otherness is far more primal—but none can disagree that they are skilled farmers and good, if private, neighbours.
By happenstance, the first Miettis sunk their well through an ancient fey stone circle long-buried by the ever-shifting river that cut—and still cuts—through the valley. The circle’s primal magic is only a remnant of what it once was, but it is still potent enough to open a portal to the fey realm when a pregnant full moon fills the sky. On such nights, motes of multi-coloured light borne upon a soft, warm breeze drift from the old well and out over the valley to fall where they may. This is the source of Sparkwell’s renowned fecundity and the subtle changes in the Mietti family.
For their part, the Miettis have some inkling of the well’s power and keep it secret from their visitors. None may tarry at the farm overnight, and although some of their neighbours have seen odd lights among the trees, the family will not speak of them.
Every full moon, the family gathers around the well to dance, sing, and bathe in the coloured lights, and every year, they grow stranger and more otherworldly—some more than others…
06 The Gray Angel
Campaign Component (Supernatural Being)
Seen as a harbinger of doom, the Grey Angel visits goodly folk in danger of impending moral damnation. Paladins contemplating forbidden love, goodly priests sliding into sin and those plotting some terrible deed for “the greater good” have all received visits from the dour and silent Grey Angel.
Sages believe she is a fallen angel undergoing penance for some terrible deed or betrayal wrought aeons ago, but her identity remains a mystery. In any event, devoid of all joyous celestial and heavenly colours, the ragged-winged Grey Angel is well-named.
Stories of the Grey Angel’s appearance dot the historical record going back centuries. Normally, she appears in a subject’s dream. She never speaks, but the look of sorrow, woe and terrible understanding upon her countenance is normally more than enough warning. In exceptionally rare cases of extreme need or great import, the Grey Angel visits a waking subject as a final warning of certain and irrevocable damnation. She may not interfere with events, however, and those set on their path may ignore her warnings if they so choose.
Ashlarian (proper noun) of Ashlar; Campaign (noun) a connected series of adventures; Component (noun) a constituent part; Legendry (noun) a collection or body of legends; Lore (noun) knowledge and stories about a subject
Thank you for reading the Sunday Supplement; I hope some of the above material makes it into your game or sparks your creativity.
Remember, Everything is Better with Tentacles!
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