It takes a village to raise a child, lets just hope the village isn’t razed in the process
Setup: It’s been years since the dragon Zaurigel terrorized the skies over the hinterlands settlement of Colver’s Deep, brought down by a now famous team of hunters who’s names have been sung across the land ever since.
Our story does not begin with these slayers, instead we follow a band of hardluck sellswords and their tagalong companions who missed out on the dragonhunt altogether, and have only now stumbled into the events that will make them into heroes
Despite the beast’s glorious death, no one was able to find Zaurigel’s lair you see, and the vast horde of wealth that was rumored to be contained within. No one, until one of the party managed to discover a deep cave out in the mountains that bore clawmarks and telltale blue scales deep within its reaches. Assembling a few of their trusted friends together to brave against the dangers of the wilderness ( and help carry all the loot), they set off to make their fortunes.
Traveling to the horde is not all that dangerous. Sure it takes a bit of climbing, and in the dragon’s absence some beasts have moved into the cave…. but the true adventure begins when the party looks out over a cavern full of riches and realize how woefully unprepared they and their community are for such a vast inheritance.
Adventure Hooks:
Unlike most underdog adventures, this campaign start is less about grinding to the top meant as a test of what happens when people unprepared for power suddenly handle it. The party should all have financial woes that this wealth could go to alleviate, great ambitious that it could fund…. but walking into town and paying off your family’s debts to the local land baron is likable to raise some eyebrows. They HAVE to be careful with it, or else they’ll end up thrown into a dungeon and tortured by the avaricious until they’re forced to give it away. Whether it be bandits, Colver’s deep’s own corrupt authority figures, or those dragonslayers who catch word of that long deferred lootdrop.
Perhaps the greatest treasure in the horde is a single mottled, melon sized egg, one that will quickly hatch after the party begins fussing over it and expunge a derpy little wyrmling the party will be forced to adopt on the spot out of sheer cuteness. What better metaphor for unexpected responsibility than becoming unwitting parents to an undersized apex predator that will totally blow their cover if the townsfolk ever catch sight of it.
In addition to the valuables contained within the hoard, there are also a plethora of obscure magical objects, that the party will have to spend time discovering. hijinx are guaranteed to ensue, as each of these treasures can become an unexpected adventure hook in their own right. Expect cursed items, sentient items, and things that are just a little too magical to sit still once the opportunity for escape has been presented to them.
Background & Environment: A goblin fishing hamlet located in the center of a vast and fetid swampland, Rotbottom considers itself to be a haven for outcasts, scoundrels and the unsociably odd. Rotbottom is a ramshackle place, built of salvaged wood and stolen nails, and against all odds operates under a spirit of optimism despite the overwhelming sense of decay. The people there are ramshackle too, the many goblin families accepting and even adopting those found monstrous or maligned by other settlements.
Mood & Themes: Moral degeneracy and acceptance, the entire settlement is “the wrong side of town”.
Who’s Hiring:
Despite Rotbottom being ostensibly lawless, someone has to prevent the all the malcontents from terrorizing the innocent fisher folk and instituting some kind of stabbing based hierarchy of thugs. That’s where bugbear Thumbscrews McThunk comes in. Thumbscrews ( or “Screws” to his friends) is the settlements self appointed enforcer of the common good, Maintaining that order in a place like Rotbottom is about three things: 1) Respect, 2) Kindness 3) Gutting anyone who doesn’t respect you alive and hanging them out by their noodly-bits over the dockside to send a message. McThunk has recently been laid up in a brawl with a local gang interested in throwing their weight around and he’s willing to pay the party to do some legwork ( read: kneebreaking) for him. Doing so will not only net the party some coin, but respect around Rotbottom for outsiders such as themselves.
Aside from the goblins and other wretches who trawl the swamp’s waters netting and spearing as they please, the biggest employer in Rotbottom is the Wiggleworm Distillery: an industrious operation that produces a number of uniquely gobbish goods and hawks them all along the waterways of the swamp. Easy to spot by its hook & worm branding and mismatched chimneys belching foul miasmas out over the already polluted lake, the distillery spends each day producing bottles of rotgut, wormwood heavy absinthe , and a surprisingly artisanal selection of spirits distilled from the local root/berry/algae species. Frozen out by more “respectable” rivals in towns outside the swamp, Wiggleworm is happy supply the players as bootleggers, with the intention of creating a public demand for their products to use as leverage in future trade negations.
Castigated and exiled after delving into heretical knowledge, an occult scholar has made a begrudging home in Rotbottom, residing in a skeletal wooden tower as far away from the village’s stink as they can. Willing to trade spellcasting services for coin and civilized comforts, the occultist can also send the party on numerous missions in the hopes of gaining enough power to “make those fools rue the day…. (yada yada)”. Regardless, they pay well, and if their attempts at revenge don’t end up causing the end of days, they’re sure to be entertaining to watch.
Rumors & Goings on:
In an effort to curb street violence (and have something more interesting to bet on) The Rotbottom chamber of commerce has introduced the “Rotbottom Bugball League”, a completely fictitious sports bracket for a competition they made up in the moment. Rules are fluid, but generally involve two (or more) teams trying to move a ball down a dock, jetty or quay that’s been roped off for the event. As if the game needed any more chaotic elements, the ball itself is infact an oversized woodlouse native to the area, which after being thoroughly tenderized by numerous kicks and slams is to be devoured by the victorious team.
Anyone around Rotbottom can tell you that Catfish Cait is the most trustworthy of riverguides. Unlike most who come to the hamlet, Cait isn’t a criminal at all, and simply grew up in the swamp and loves ferrying people through it on her proudly maintained skiff. An old hand at avoiding beasts, robbers, and the shifting banks of the fen, its supprising that Cait hasn’t been seen in some weeks. Folk are starting to worry, as even though they might be a town of cutthroats and outcasts, the people of Rotbottom have hearts, and truly do care for their own.
As a fishing community, respect in Rotbottom is often held by the one who can bag the biggest whopper, though there’s lot of debates as to whether or not that solely applies to fish. Those with a desire for acceptance and a lax regard for fishing & game law could put themselves on the path of crocodiles, dire catfish, the king of the bullywugs or even a legendary kelpie that’s said to haunt the surrounding swamp. Provided they can hook the beast or spin a good enough yarn, one could get quite the adulation among Rotbottom’s populace.
Hello there! I'm a new follower but love your stuff, it has really helped inform the development of my island-hopping campaign. I have an encounter idea based on some fun visuals but need help fleshing it out further - Frost Giants are invading a tropical island, inhabited by revelrous satyrs. Perhaps to begin a ritual, requiring visits to many similar sites, to terraform the neighbouring continent OR to simply honour their fallen, conquering in order to carve a worthy burial mound. Any ideas?
I suppose everyone wants to get away to the tropics now and again.. I just wish they’d left their stormy dispositions at home.
Setup: A horde of marauding fleet of icegiants have emerged into a tropical sea, after traveling through a doomscar that has unleashed an unpredictable glacial tide into the warm southern waters.
While the local trade ports and naval fortresses are more than equipped to handle the local population of pirates and other maritime dangers, few of them are prepared to handle the Ice giants’ unique method of raiding: stirring up a blizzard to cover their approach, crashing through any seabound defenses with magically propelled glaciers that precede their own vessels as rams, then freezing the targeted harbor solid to both slow the defenders and allow their towering warriors to make an unhurried landing.
Though seemingly motivated by nothing more than petty greed, the jotun are led by a mystic named Rimyr Skycarver, who sees their collective banishment as the first step in a grand pilgrimage across the boughs of the world tree. Rimyr wields a magic that allows him to control the weather through the cruel manipulation of the land’s laylines, an art deemed heretical by his fellow mystics as it was seen as a mutilation of the very world itself. Rimyr cared little for their judgement and has spent the decades away form his homeland learning to imitate the most devastating forms of weather of each new realm he visits.
Adventure Hooks:
Far more disastrous than a simple portal, a doomscar is like a tectonic fault between dimensions, creating disaster with the violence of it’s opening and bleeding out calamity like a wound in the world. Before the giants ever make landfall or encounter another vessel, the party will likely have to deal with the minor tsunami or typhoon it kicks up striking the settlement they’re staying in, or atleast hear of it making land nearby.
Rimyr and his raiders were infact cast out of their homeland long ago, and have been plundering their way through the realms for some time. Weighed down with the wealth of many dimensions, their custom is to seize or construct a network of fortresses stretching out frim their incursion point to better guard a potential retreat. These encampments will be fortified with ice and altered to fit the giant’s needs, serving as a place to repair their ships, house their accumulated spoils. Any assault on this fortress is likely to be complicated by the many captives from this world and others, all taken by the giants to serve as thralls.
Though his weather magic is a threat in and of itself, what Rimyr seeks above all is the right nexus of laylines that would allow him to assert total control over a landmass, breaking the locals with endless storms until he and his raiders ruled over the frozen remains of a kingdom, rife for subjugation. He’ll keep raiding, using various divination methods to tell him where, until his search for such a nexus is exhausted and his cast runes tell him to move on.
I was wondering if you could do something of a Monsters Reimagined for Luthic. It always struck me as odd that even though she is a deity of childbirth and fertility and motherhood she is evil simply because she is an ORC deity.
There are no easy births: it always a matter of blood and broken bones and shit and curses and pain in the desperate hope of getting through it alive and maybe bringing something good into the world in the process. It would stand to reason then that the god who claimed birth as her domain would have to be strong, hopeful yes, but tough as old boot lather and not afraid to get her hands dirty.
Luthic is that god, who lends her strength to those who bear life as the process threatens to rip them apart, who councils with midwives, grannies, bonesetters, and village witches who keep the hardwon knowledge of the fever-herb and staunching poultice.
It is said that before she took her current form Luthic was a god of the dark and secret places of the earth, who first encountered mortals when they sheltered in her caves from the bickering of other gods and their aims during the primordial dawn age. The mortals were new, not yet knowing the design of thier own bodies, and when it came time for the first generation to give birth to the second, someone had to step up and help them through it. Like any mother Luthic encouraged them through their explorations, as playing with sticks led to spears and tools, and painting on stone walls led to art and language. When they were ready, she brought them blinking into the light, and then retired to a well deserved state of distant reverance as her adopted children took their place in the world above.
Adventure Hooks:
Like the great bear that is her crest, the cavemother likes to keep to herself much of the time, unless some idiot stirs up enough of a ruckous to wake her from her hibernation. This time it’s some upjumped priest king that’s convinced that if he can just impregnate the right woman he can sire a word redeaming chosen one. The only problem is that he’s not giving the “right woman” much of a choice in the matter, and has decided to invade the party’s homeland to search for and capture her. Luthic isn’t going to stand for it, and appears to the party in the form of a local medicine woman to set them on the right path and patch their wounds along the way. Once they’ve earned her trust, she’ll put an ancient bone knife in their hands sharp enough to cut through an army of zealots and imply that they should use it to feed the priest king his own cock. Something about a lession in not sticking it in where it’s not welcome.
The caves marked off as sacred to Luthic are wellsprings of primordial power, resounding not only with the wisdom of previous generations but the energy of creation itself. Its said that if you pilgramage into their dark depths one might emerge remade, free of illness or debilitation, or reborn into a body more fitting of who they truely are.
Seeking the holiest of holy places to consummate his marriage to his longtime rival and off again on-again flame, an orcish champion has sought out a long-abandoned mountain temple dedicated to the Cavemother. His dreams of altartop honeymooning has been shattered however as he’s discovered that the temple and surrounding highlands are overrun by the brood of Shub-Nuggrath and her cultists. Having perhaps bitten off more than he can chew, he requests the party’s aid in ousting the “goatfuckers” from the region.
I love monsters that deal with dreams and the unconscious, partially because it seems an untapped avenue of creative exploration when it comes to d&d adventure writing, but mostly because it lets me use trippy dream imagery to tell a story.
What’s interesting though is that there aren’t many d&d baddies deal with dreams, aside from creatures like nighthags and other entities that use the dream/nightmare spells to deliver their messages/scorn from afar.
Eberron has the Quori, but as it stand these invisible manipulators are deeply tied to that history/setting, and actually have very little to do with dreams playing more into the “psychic invaders” trope. That said, they do have a few cool tricks, and a great name to riff off of, so riff I shall.
TLDR: As setting neutral antagonists, the Quori are a form of phantasmal predator that leech off the fears of dreaming beings. The more advanced members of their kind steal interesting minds to act as servitors, retreating back to the nightmare cities they maintain in the astral sea.
The Basics: Quori are native inhabitants of the astral sea, and are beings composed of pure thought. Few can say whether they originated as embodied beings at some point, or whether they were simply created this way, but it is safe to say they are largely ignorant of what it is to be tethered by flesh. As such, most Quori have no solid form, instead reflecting the dreams and fears of whichever people they happen to be haunting: multitudinous eyes for the paranoid, skittering appendages for the squeamish, flicking silhouettes for those burdened by night terrors.
Most Quori are content to be psychic scavengers, stoking sleeping minds into fretful imaginings while tagging along in troubled thoughts during waking hours. In this way a single Quori can persist for centuries, moving from mind to mind throughout a populated settlement. Occasionally however one of these scavenging Quori will encounter a bone-chilling terror, a burning rage, or a delirious mania so strong that they become self sustaining. Freed then from the need and the mutability that comes from savaging from other minds, this Quori becomes “lucid”, self willed, capable of returning to the astral sea without fear of dissolution.
These Lucid are literal thought leaders of their kind, capable of sustaining droves of their lesser kin without the need for mortal minds while at the same time coloring their outlooks and personalities as echoes of their own. Though most lucid lord their position over others of their kind, most are quietly aware that too many followers risk exhausting their emotional stores, reducing them back to scavengers at best or creating a feeding frenzy at worse. As such the Lucid covet and cultivate strong mortal emotions, the way a greedy lord might overtax their populace to ensure that the cutthroat mercenaries they employ remain wellpaid.
I just read your Orcs reimagined and I loved it. An origin that I’ve been tossing around for Orcs in my own worlds is kind of stealing the mythological origin of the Klingons from Star Trek - they were created by gods a long time ago, but eventually they realized the gods were more trouble than they were worth and killed them.
I would love to see more Monsters Reimagined style pieces for Gnolls and Goblins and Drow and the ‘monstrous’ player races that are rooted in racism and colonialism
I wanted to follow up with gnolls specifically because they’re a case study in how d&d has tried to “fix” the issue of “monstrous humanoids” and the ethical concerns of “always chaotic evil” and ended up going the exact opposite direction of what they should have done, doubling down on the justifications for why they’re bad and why it’s alright to kill them rather than addressing
TLDR: Rather than the psychoic killing machines they’re presented as currently, Gnolls should be the game’s consummate survivalists. Better equipped to live a more naturalistic lifestyle thanks to their numerous animalistic traits, they thrive in the outlands and harsh wilderness. Because living as hunter/scavenger/gatherers has worked out for them so well, Gnolls never really integrated in with the other agrarian-focused cultures, preferring to keep to the safety of the wilds rather than the frequently contested farmlands, leading to a mutual unease and cultural barrier that both groups have to work to overcome. Gnolls have very few taboos about what is and is not “useful” and have been known to eat the bodies of fallen travelers when food is scarce, or dig up graves for the valuables stored inside. This has given Gnolls the reputation as cannibals and blasphemers, when really it’s only the hyenakin being practical.
What’s Wrong: As of 2nd edition, Gnolls were like just about any other monstrous humanoid dnd species, savage primitives who worshiped evil gods and participated in various acts of barbarism. Slavery and cannibalism were the things that typified the gnolls ( not that other monsters weren’t willing to engage in slavery and/or cannibalism) and they were decidedly cruel and lazy, capturing others because they thought work was demeaning ( which is a whole… crockpot of weird stereotypes that I’m not going to get into at the moment). This characterization continued up through 3rd edition and pathfinder, the latter of which substituted the gnoll’s cannibalism god for Lamashtu, “the mother of monsters”, who is said to have birthed most “savage humanoids” in her wretched womb ( again, don’t have time to get into that but YIKES).
Then 5th edition crept around, and the gnolls took on a new flavor. They were decidedly MORE evil, MORE savage, LESS sapient, than previous versions, driven to endless slaughter by the voice of their demon-god Yeenoghu, practically demons in flesh themselves. They were remorseless killing machines who desired only chaos, to the point where I often saw them referred to as “Jokerlike” by gamer-bros who lacked the media comprehension required to relate them to any greater motivation.
To explain why they went through this metamorphosis, I’m going to have to explain a little bit of gaming history, as well as d&d’s version of the trolley problem. Buckle in, this is going to get Pedantic…
First The history lesson: Because d&d had its roots in wargaming, enemy creatures in the monster manual were presented with a category called “Organization”, which told you how large the squad sizes of these creatures could/should be. Often these came with the chance to roll for additional troops, or have a leader who had advanced levels and special abilities. Problem was, for savage humanoids, these organization charts almost always included information about the demographics of a “monster” village, including how many non combatants and children there were in relation to how many fighters they had ( anywhere from 5-50%)
the thing about running my silly little d&d game is that it has fundamentally changed me and my life forever, for the better.
thinking about “i am made better by you; i am made more myself by you” but irl about this fucking game!! like!!!
i have never, in my entire life, worked so hard at anything, so consistently, for so long, as i have running this game. i have never been so open and radically vulnerable as i have running this game. and in turn, i have never asked for what i needed and reached out for support from my friends as consistently and loyally as i have while running this game. i have never leaned into anything as hard as I’ve leaned into the challenges and tensions and complications of running this game. i have never committed myself to creativity and to living a creative life as i have since i started running this game. it has changed my life. it has changed me. it has made me more myself. ttrpgs are magic. friends are magic.
Gangs of brigands attacking along the trade roads in a series of bloody, near suicidal raids. An increasing spree of violent incidents in town that seem to be spreading like a sickness. Folk in their feverbeds rambling about a war out of time. These seemingly unrelated incidents are the violent signs that have been laid before Prior Rupak, healer and priest of Pelor, who sees them as the prelude to a far greater evil. The good healer cannot treat the victims and investigate the cause of their suffering at the same time, and so seeks allies to help stem the tide of blood before it pours over into the streets.
Hooks:
The party may first encounter Rupak after seeking out his infirmary, usually open to all by grace of the dawnfather’s altruism but recently closed off so that the priest and his acolytes can triage an ever mounting number of injured. Ushered in to receive treatment in payment for their aid, the party is briefed on the strange occurrences in town and sent on their way. Alternatively, should their reputation be great enough, Rupak may send a runner to ask for the party by name.
Merchants are always wary of bandits on the road, but this latest swath of reckless attacks has them especially worried, shilling out good coin for caravan guards that may get the party to tag along. Gossip by the watchfires says that the attacks are originating from a tumbledown old fortress out in the countryside, though why any self-respecting brigand would choose to lair in that haunted place is anyone’s guess.
Untangling the different attacks in town leads the party through a gauntlet of civil strife: lovers’ spats, disagreements in the market, tavernbrawls, all turned bloody and in some cases lethal. Investigating the matter reveals that each perpetrator was at one point a victim, all still bearing a fevered and borderline infected wound (if only a scratch) from a previous altercation
Ya’ll should rec me some of your favourite, commissionable monster design artists. I’ve got some stuff coming up soon and I could use a few more people to reach out to!
A repository of free inspiration for all your Fantasy Tabletop Storytelling. Every day I share adventure ideas, artist sourced images, and other story inspiration for YOU to use in your games. Check the sidebar for our tagging system if you want to find something in particular, request an adventure, or support the blog. P.S.- Call me Dapper
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