Hex Crawl 23 #266: The Northern Meadows

Six hexes northwest, seven north of Alakran.

 

Herders from Kin-Yan eastward, and the river lands northward, take their flocks to these pastures, watering them from natural wells and thin rivulets flowing northwest. The meadows are called the Blood Fields by old people who remember tales of a mighty battle fought there. Indeed, rooting around the tufts of grass that are bone-pale in the dry season and a shy green in the rainy season, might (5%/ hour) reveal one of these finds (d6):

1. A skeleton hand gripping a sword hilt stuck in the earth. Just the hilt.

2. An arrow head with a magical one-time blessing to ignore armor, apparently never activated

3. A skull half-set in the ground where a family of jerboas has made their nest, and are hoarding two gold and eight copper coins. 

4. Flies buzzing around a haunted, indelible, ever-wet patch of blood in the ground.

5. A ring of green corrosion that marks the rim of a chariot wheel. Buried a finger's depth under the earth at the center of the ring is the bronze hub, also corroded but much of it intact.

6. A place where the wind, if it blows from the west, carries ghostly shouts of triumph, and if from the  east, carries the ghostly tumult of routed men.

Hex Crawl 23 #264: The Farms of Armakhu-Lallu

Four hexes northwest, nine north of Alakran.

  

Another irrigated farming district of the east, this one has a population of over 1,000 scattered about its extent. Each house icon represents a clanhold, a small cluster of large dwellings with about 100 dwellers. The farm-only hexes have scattered single-family houses and each of these square miles has about 10 of them.

The district is called Armakhu-Lallu, or "plentiful wood" owing to its closeness to the forested heights of Arraqa. Indeed, about a hundred citizens are employed as cutters, shapers, and transporters of wood, which they husband carefully -- a previous generation denuded the hills directly to the south, which still bear an evil superstition about them. The rest farm grains and garden produce with the carefully diverted waters of the stream Muttanbitu.

The households are harmonious, governed by consensus and council, in fact a bit boring. Adventurers will seek their rest here and quickly move on most of the time. It is said that the Armakhi are as bland as their characteristic dish, a barley-flour custard mixed with sheep's milk and the eggs of the hens that most households keep. This dish is known as khud-libbi, or simply translated, contentment.