Hex Crawl 23 #196: Village of Barzanke and a Village Randomizer

Four hexes northwest, four southwest of Alakran.

 

I've been using a number of random and semi-random means to give character to villages, especially the large number of villages dotting the prosperous landscape of Dulsharna. These include a table of economic activities given the terrain, and the more freeform use of the Perchance adjective-noun generator; for example, "darling persona" which I generated right now might bring to mind an NPC who is all sweetness and flattery but in a hard-to-define fake way; no doppelganger or scheming monster, just a kind of void behind them.

If we bring together a bunch of these ideas then a d12 mega-table might be born, rolling once per 100 inhabitants (or with larger populations, three times per 1000) for a set of particularities fit for any settlement.

1: Concentration on one kind of economic activity

2: Excellence in one kind of economic activity

3: Peculiar form of one kind of economic activity

4: Strange absence of one kind of economic activity

5: Memorable feature, openly visible

6: Memorable feature, secret or hidden

7: General mood or character of settlement; use Perchance adjective generator

8: Memorable NPC, leader of settlement

9: Memorable NPC, citizen of settlement

10: Distinctive treasure object

11: Distinctive festival or ritual

12: Distinctive taboo or custom

For some of these I have further tables or consult Perchance. Let's look at Berzanke. It sits at the border between the grasslands of Targatana to the southwest and the desert. We'll say it has about 200 souls so we roll for two distinctive characteristics. A 2 and a 10!

Something about these people's economy is really excellent quality. Barley, that's it! The grains of a flawless whiteness (third try on Perchance) the go into making sacred bread and beer for the feasts of Mitra.

As for the treasure object, let's say it's a utilized lifeline -- deeply treasured, secret, and hidden under the village's crude shrine to Mitra of the Sands, it is a simple cord with copper sparkles on a black threading of some kind of hair, tied into a loop at the end. It can store up to three raise dead spells but is currently out of charges, though still radiates a faint necromantic magic. The villagers remember its last few failures and will be hugely grateful if visitors figure out the reason for its failure, and perhaps engineer a trade of white barley to a temple for the restoration of one of its precious charges.