the polearm pellet

 

Amongst Migimúlli's pellets toward the back of the burrow is one completely compromised of polearm heads. They are all very old looking and rusted beyond use. Except for one, number forty in the image, which is still shiny and new looking. There is a pictogram of a fish embossed in the ferrule. If put upon a haft this becomes the blessed bident carried by the priests of Ula in ancient times. For stats see page 209 in the dmg. It has d3 daily charges of the spell dominate beast (phb 235) applying strictly to piscenes. It is also a +1 weapon applying to both to-hit and damage.

NPC: Melga the myconist

Appearance: young human female, in pretty rough condition, what's left of a quincunx of white mud clings to her face, a black rope is tied round her waist thrice  as a belt and a charm against ghosts. Dressed in the common buckskin breaches of a Torenwœli traveler, her loose linen tunic torn and bloodied.

Background: you know Melga to be a wagoneer whose circuit runs from the north woods to Kōlmo's lumber camp via the shepherds' outposts of the foothills. Her parents are recently deceased and  perhaps were moonberry gatherers.

Behaviour: she keeps mumbling some sort of saying "black streaks on grey, stay away, grey streaks on black, don't look back". As soon as she is able she starts rummaging about for her satchel which is in one of the pellets. Once feeling better she is insistent upon making the party a pot of soup.

Puddings

The words of Magister Fenlaus Klissthistle have come down to us through the aeons in the form of his encyclopedic opus, “a Taxonomy of the Salubrious”. My aim here is to elucidate certain tidbits of the work which may be of use to a student of herbalism and poisonry. An oft neglected section, hidden in the appendix designated as “ill-advised tinctures and pseudomagery”, deals with the practical uses of the various predatory spore based life-forms included in the genus gelata bituminis known as “puddings” in the vernacular. My intent is to summarize and outline the following topics from Klissthistle's research:

Varieties of Gelata Bituminis

Method of gathering and processing the Gelata Bituminis

Uses of the Gelata Bituminis

Risks of their use

Migimúlli

From time to time in the forest people report finding large elongated humanoid footprints. Not often, and often not reliable sources there are few that pay it much heed. This has not prevented the common proliferation of certain legends of Migimúlli....

Appearance: large of body but always hunched over its skin is thick and rough the colour of sun bleached boulders with pale green and red lichens spreading across its back. Tiny red eyes are eager and observant but betray little understanding. The face grotesque with a dominant beak-like nose and wet black lips.

Temperament: shy but curious it has no concept of it's own strength. Long razor sharp claws are used to inspect and dissect whatever grabs its attention. Migimúlli has roughly the intelligence of a raven and therefore no language.

Pellets: Migimúlli lives to weave the dissected bits of its collection into compact pellets, each about the size of a fifty gallon drum, which it stashes in its lair. When Migimúlli has filled one lair it conceals it and moves on to a new burrow. Some example of things comprising the pellets: human hair, strips of linen, hickory wands, snail shells, dwarven remains, antlers, baby teeth, a roll on the random item table in the phb page 160, a roll on treasure tables from the dmg pages 134, 135, 144, 145, a roll on the tools list in the phb page 154, a rusty weapon (glaive, war pick, trident, morningstar), fish bones, the sacred whip of the Milkweed clan,

Smell: the heavy rich tang of a wet dog 

Yoik's Expidition Dossier

Helmet styles from the era of the fish eaters war found in Bérnx' tome of armaments. The helm of silver beard will be in one of these styles the suspicion is probably the central one.

Map of antique Onua found by Yoik amongst the ephemera of the archives. (Watercolours by yours truly)

Excerpt from "Brother Adlada's Misspent Youth", a pedantic travelogue: having lost  our hirelings to a pack of deranged cat people and a stew with the unwise ingredient of red sallow we arrived at a wall of herbage. We had not the inclination to follow where the river plunged into what seemed like a tunnel of writhing vines, thorns and bramble. Also large evil looking fish deterred us from rafting upstream. Therefore we payed homage to our ancestors who had died in the sack of Onua and to Silverbeard's memory at the riverbank before we turned our faces west again. But less than a day had past when the twins had a change of heart and returned to follow the river. That was the last ever seen of them, many times I have felt regretful that I did not despise my life and follow them.

Excerpt from "Pólept's Picaresque": After the flight from the Gnome lord's minions we plunged into the dark woods to the west. Tragically my paramour Alb fell between the mat of roots and disappeared into an apparent void below. Not until I had completed playing a dirge upon peasant-reed flute did I finally hear the rapport of his landing in what must have been a subterranean water source. I spent the next fortnight bargaining with the forest demon Ufikanuguinnan for his soul but to no avail.

Excerpt from "Pilgrims' Skin, The annotated guide to the war of religion": ... A certain shrine was allowed to remain for almost 100 years, in the inhospitable forest of Turnwul. This was not a physical temple but a site that one could access if one paid a certain forest witch to be a guide. She could take you along hidden trails through the forest that sees no light and lower you through a hole in the greenery in a bucket on a rope. She would lower the pilgrim down 100 feet and by the light of the torches dropped down the outline of a city could be seen 100 feet lower. The devout would forge their prayers into silver ingots and toss them from the suspend bucket as an obeisance to those who were exalted in death. This practice ceased when a zealous inquisitor from the conclave slew the witch.

The Lodge of Registered Swordsmiths

During the reign of Bónu the God-King, in the second generation of the first Aeon by dwarven reckoning, it was forbidden that smiths should make swords except those who were registered within the imperial guild. This was for the uncomplicated reason that it reinforced central authority and fostered morale amongst those officials ranked high enough to be allowed to bare a sword. Over time the prestige of being a registered Swordsmith caused certain jewellers and ironworkers who never intended to forge arms to seek registration with the guild. Eventually, after noble families began buying their way into the guild, the badge of a Swordsmith meant less about one's ability to craft a blade and more about social rank. By the third aeon the lodge of registered Swordsmiths is an initiatory system with 180 ranks and four houses. The rites all refer back to the trade and the symbology all speaks of smithing with the use of a heavily layered jargon accrued over 3000 years. 

The meeting halls of the lodge, spread across the land, are known for their abstruse architecture and vivid frescoes.

Also each hall contains nesting chambers layed out for rituals reenacting chapters of the society's mythology: the high prototype is stolen from Mozji, Bónu grants the cornerstone of the grand lodge, the forging of the blade of perfect knowledge, Queen θekil learns how to cut both ways, and of course the cautionary tale of the unregistered blade's failings. The ritual reenacting of these scenes, often graphic, is also the core of the initiation process.

Event dice breakdown

Day
People- afflicted acquaintance, smugglers, foolhardy travelers to find dead later on, deceased fellow adventurers,
Animals- wolves, bears, serpents, cockatrice, all potentially afflicted,
Environmental- muskeg (group challenge), fog (navigator wis check), poison berries/mushrooms (forager survival check, group con save vs poison), crossing the river (group challenge),
Night
Animals- winter wolf, blœtorm, spiders,
Spirits- ghost lights (mm wil-o-the-whisps), nightmares (dc 13 wis save or don't regain hp or spells), Tomntoi,
Nothing- everyone heals and spells are renewed.

Inspiration: Invisible Cities

invisible cities by Italo Calvino has some great fodder for inspiration especially in fantastical city building. A gift from my good friend Cat, she suggested it might give me some DMing ideas.  Indeed, there would be any number of big ideas to populate a campaign. The only trick about it is that it's almost poetry and therefore would need a little transitioning to be usable. An excerpt:

From there, after six days and seven nights, you arrive at Zobeide, the white city, well exposed to the moon, with streets wound about themselves as in a skein. They tell this tale of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream. They saw a woman running at night through an unknown city; she was seen from behind, with long hair, and she was naked. They dreamed of pursuing her. As they twisted and turned, each of them lost her. After the dream, they set out in search of that city; they never found it, but they found one another; they decided to build a city like the one in the dream. In laying out the streets, each followed the course of his pursuit; at the spot where they had lost the fugitive's trail, they arranged spaces and walls differently from the dream, so she would be unable to escape again. 

This was the city of Zobeide, where they settled, waiting for that scene to be repeated one night. None of them, asleep or awake, ever saw the woman again. The city's streets were streets where they went to work every day, with no link any more to the dreamed chase. Which, for that matter, had long been forgotten. 

New men arrived from other lands, having had a dream like theirs, and in the city of Zobeide, they recognized something from the streets of the dream, and they changed the positions of arcades and stairways to resemble more closely the path of the pursued woman and so, at the spot where she had vanished, there would remain no avenue of escape. 

The first to arrive could not understand what drew these people to Zobeide, this ugly city, this trap.