The Riven Keep | Grim Lands | Kal Voren | Hamlet of Pebble Mill | Tordel
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.
I’d love to know what you think of this new format for the Sunday Supplement; please leave a comment below. Also, should Raging Swan Press develop any of the featured locales and so on below? Let us know in the comments.
01: Hamlet of Pebble Mill
Download
Standing near the mouth of the Tanu River, Pebble Mill is a miracle of Abarinite engineering. The mill—powered by the Tanu’s tidal bore—gives this small hamlet its name (and purpose) and is the inhabitant’s main source of employment. A few folk also fish the surrounding waters while the children and old folk harvest smoothed stones from the Tanu’s banks for sale to Languard’s artisans. Particularly large smoothed stones end up at Languard’s Great Forge, where they are sized and smoothed by Abarin’s master weaponsmiths and stonemasons for use in the duke’s cannons.
02 Kal Voren
Ashlarian Legendry
The Order of the Watch Eternal has ever stood in the vanguard of the fight against evil and chaos. An order of paladins and warrior-priests devoted to Darlen (LG greater god of Law, Order, Justice and the Sun), its members are heroes and protectors of Ashlar's commonfolk. Of the many heroes who have filled the order’s ranks, few are as well-known or celebrated as the paladin-lord Kal Voren. Riding the land three centuries ago, Kal bore a magical sword of surpassing power and was renowned for his unwavering faith. He called his blade *Demon Bane*, but it had another, older name: *Heaven’s Fury*.
Kal fought the ever-gathering forces of darkness for almost five decades; the paladin-hero's greatest victories include the banishment of the fiend Bala Sygax, Despot of the Smouldering Hills, and the utter destruction of the Lord of the Nineteen Obsidian Steps, the lich lord Namtar Anshan.
Even the greatest hero must eventually lay down his mantle, though, and after five decades of ceaseless service and struggle, Kal Voren died peacefully in his sleep. Respecting his wishes, the order did not inter one of their greatest heroes in the deep sepulchre beneath Tor Abbey. Instead, they dug for him a hidden tomb in the hills west of Dunstone near the nameless hamlet of his childhood. Here, the hero rested among the land of his forefathers. Some say Kal Voren was not a hero at all and that he betrayed the Order of the Watch Eternal in some terrible, unforgivable way; this is why he does not rest in the order’s sepulchre under Tor Abbey. Irrespective of the truth of the matter, his tomb, in which he is said to rest with *Demon Bane* in hand, has remained hidden and lost to the present day.
03 Tordel
Ashlarian Lore
Tordel is a rare starmetal—deposits fall from the sky as part of Vile Stars.
Tordel is as rare, expensive and difficult to work with as adamantine; only skilled artisans can work the metal. It is much sought after—normally by weaponsmiths. When used to craft a weapon, it is said to be able to trap the soul of those slain by the weapon; thus—slowly—the weapon gains power. These new powers often assume the characteristics of the creatures slain by the weapon. For example, a weapon used to slay many undead could develop strength-draining abilities or might confer resistance to various effects to which undead are immune. Other tordel weapons are reputed to act as soul traps for certain powerful individuals, ensuring they cannot be returned to life. Such items are carefully hidden so the imprisoned soul remains beyond the reach of resurrection spells and so on.
“Tordel” is a dwarven word that literally translates as “soul steel.” The elves call the metal “azangthal,” which translates as “glimmering soul metal.”
Dwarves are the folk generally assumed to have the most experience with tordel. Much of their knowledge—and several tordel weapons—were lost when Vongyth fell. Some information regarding tordel may survive in the Dreaming Spire’s “Special Collection” or among the dwarves of Dol Galir. Some folk believe that Delthur Madann found tordel in his legendary mine lost somewhere in the Mottled Spire, but the truth of these claims has never been proven.
The dwarf ranger, Johann Firehammer, is known to wield his family’s ancestral tordel thunderaxe.
(Hat Tip to Martin “I think I’ll Play a Ranger” Webb, player of Johann Firehammer.)
04 The Riven Keep
Campaign Component (Ruin)
Riven Keep is an ancient place of worn, moss-strangled stone drenched in rumours of terrible, blasphemous doings—doings so terrible that the gods themselves sent a storm of unnatural virility to destroy the place.
Struck by lightning at the height of the wild and unnatural storm of surpassing savagery, Riven Keep is now a derelict ruin inhabited only by flocks of crows and ravens nesting high on its jagged, crumbling walls and towers. The shattered ruin stands on the highest part of a small grassy islet that juts above the waters of the Blackwater, a cold and deep lake of unwholesome aspect. Locals believe strange creatures of unnatural origin dwell in the lake's lightless depths and do not venture far from shore. Even so, every year, the occasional fisherfolk or swimmer goes missing in the lake, and although Riven Keep is visible from shore, no one is known to have visited it in years. Adventurers planning to explore Riven Keep will get no help from the locals, who believe the ruin is best left alone to crumble in peace.
05 Tomb of the Iron Minotaur
Campaign Component (Dungeon)
The immense iron statue of an axe-wielding minotaur stands before graven bronze doors, massive enough to admit a giant. Set deep in the Cave of Endless Bats and accessible only through a ragged sinkhole piercing the cave's ceiling, this place looms large in adventurer lore. Those who have dared the cave tell of mounds of guano-drenched bones, swarms of ravenous bats, the impenetrability of the doors and the unkillable, unstoppable Iron Minotaur itself.
Only the bravest or stupidest of adventurers dare enter the Tomb of the Iron Minotaur.
06 The Grim lands
Campaign Component (Fallen Land)
East of Ashlar, the land grows wild and untamed. Here, civilisation's grasp has relaxed, and the rule of law extends as far as an individual's might allows. But it was not always so for the glittering kingdom of Yex once sprawled across these lands. But no more. Now these lands are known as the Grim Lands or the Fallen Lands of Yex.
Yex stood as a bulwark against the screaming chaos of barbarism for generations until it collapsed a century or more ago. Wracked by a vicious and protracted civil war, Yex's vulnerability did not go unnoticed—hungry eyes south of the border gazed north with a rapacious, ambitious gaze. When successive waves of marauding orcs driven into a blood-crazed frenzy by their warmongering high priests and warchiefs broke like a sudden, savage summer storm against Yex's southern border, there was little to stop them.
In but a few years, a red tide of slaughter and death engulfed Yex, drowning all in its path. When it finally drew back, it left sacked towns, shattered castles and a leaderless and destitute people driven to despair by the suddenness and completeness of their fall. Only the now Free City of Yex resisted the orcish onslaught, but it is a lone pinprick of light amid the gathering dark.
Today, life in the Grim Lands is difficult and dangerous. Where one kingdom held sway, now an ever-shifting patchwork of bandit lords, warlords, renegade humans and orc chieftains fights amongst themselves for status, power and resources. The fortunes of these kinglets ebb and flow with the vagaries of fate. Alliances are forged and sundered, rulers wrest power from their rivals or are killed, and hunger and poverty stalk the land.
But for all that, there is much opportunity in the Grim Lands for the strong and the brave. The Grim Lands lie amid the bones of its forbear, and its desperate folk cry out for succour and safety. Undoubtedly, much wealth yet lies hidden among Yex's ruin or in the jealously guarded treasuries of the Grim Land's petty tyrants and despots. What brave hero could resist such a call to adventure?
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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