Hex Crawl 23 #34: Salt Flat, Reaching Ridge, and Four Possible Clues

Two hexes northwest and one southwest of Alakran.

 

The system I use fills a five-mile hex with the same terrain, but the one-mile subhex scale allows for some elaboration in the name of realism. For example, this hex was designated a salt flat like # **, but I made it half a salt flat and "reached" a mile-wide ridge of low hills down from the similiar area to the north.

Also, in my encounter system, it's possible to roll a "clue" - some kind of mark, scent, or sound left bya nearby creature. Here are four clues for creatures that dwell within ten miles - if a GM likes, they can secretly designate this hex a "clue hex" where people passing through will randomly find one of these (except if an already found clue is rolled again).

1. Rocks and pebbles, all of a reddish hue, have been arranged on the flat plain to make eight stick figures in a line holding hands, the ones on the end brandishing spears. (Hex #18).

2. The bones of a pigeon, gnawed with violence, scattered on the ground and befouled with horrendous-smelling white nitre. (Hex #57)

3. The familiar split-toed footprints of a camel, appearing out of nowhere, running for five strides, and just as abruptly disappearing. The ground is flat and dry, so it is unlikely wind or sand blew the rest of the prints away. (Hex #36)

4. A weathered and pitted brass plate about the size of a man's foot, shaped like a leaf, slightly curving from side to side, one end seemingly broken off. It could be a piece of armpr, but experts on that topic will pronounce the design of the suit very odd indeed. (Hex #86).

Hex Crawl 23 #33: The Singing Palm

Two hexes southwest, one northwest of Alakran. 

 

Some time after the big trade caravans stopped rolling over the road to Dulsharna, when lonely Hasanayn of two camels (hex #1) was left to ply his trade through to Alakran, the tall landmark date palm ten paces north of the roadbed began to sing.

The song was sweet and thin, like a little girl singing, and it carried a compulsion: to look south, to that low gray sandstone hillock (hex #32), and to listen to a lower-pitched harmony coming from there. Once that other song was heard, well. Quite a few wayfarers disappeared before the word got out in Gesshed: take wax, and stop your ears, and skirt around the tree if you can, and under no circumstances eat of its fallen fruit. Observing these strictures allows Hasanayn, and the Notch fortress supply wagons, and anyone else coming and going, to pass without being lured south to the deadly hill.

So dread is the taboo that nobody has investigated what might be in the tree; just part of the general fatalism in east Wahattu these days, what with Dulsharna falling, harpies on the wing, rumored dragon activity in the south, and whatnot. It's a small crimson snake with the lips of a woman, killed easily once spotted. But in the cave are six more to take its place overnight.

Who fells the tree, suffers its curse. Whatever you wield made of wood, even handles, will splinter on a 1 or 20 skill or attack roll; shields of wood, likewise, break when they receive a foe's critical hit.

Hex Crawl 23 #32: The Singing Cave

Two hexes southwest of Alakran.

 

Not all the descendants of Ekidna, female monsters tasked with guarding the appraches to fabled Zigmunus, follow their duty.

This one, Merlul-Ushar, has always felt herself special because her snake-tailed form most resembles her great foremother. For perfidy that she will not discuss, she was banished to this cave in a low, gray sandstone hillock a century ago. She is allowed to chase and prey upon any male intruders she sees from the hole's southward-facing entrance. But in recent years, with trade along the Road of Flowers drying up, she has become more bold, and hatched a scheme (see hex #33) for bringing wayfarers to her den.

A low, crooning song can be heard from the cave throughout this five-mile hex, and with exceptional skill, in adjacent hexes as well. If heard within one mile, it has hypnotic and compulsive properties that force the hearer (with a save) to investigate further. The song is coming from a chorus of small red snakes with weirdly human-like mouths.

We will let the annals of the Band of Bronze describe the rest of Merlul's lair.

Entering the cave, they saw a puzzling construction of diverse bones, in the form of a snake-tailed humanoid with a rodent skull, placed on a scrap of papyrus, a trade letter from a long-ago Dulsharna merchant. The wide, natural-seeming yet oddly smooth passage turned and they beheld an enormous collection of bones of all species and discarded garments. At the next turning, tall bone constructions in uncanny architectural-organic form, as if assembled by a morbid Antoni Gaudi, met their eyes. Then, just beyond was a deep chamber with a watery pool, and six small red singing snakes wriggling on the floor. Here, three vermilion snakes of female face, their smallest motion filled with grace, advanced arm in arm. The ones on the end held slender bronze scimitars, and they fixed the intruders with a persuasive gaze.

(combat ensues)

Then, the pool bubbled and a naked man bobbed to the surface, calling for help, claiming he had been held prisoner by the serpentine sorcery. However, this was quickly detected as an illusion. The man stretched, shifted ... and turned into an enormous greenish snake-bodied woman wearing a bronze tiara and carrying a bismuth bronze curved sword, its hilt studded with malachite stones.

(combat ensues)

The loot in the cave, at the bottom of the pool or under a pile of stones, numbered some coins, barely-cut gems of black, reddish, and tawny hue, a magnificent shield covered with bronze figures depicting an array of civil activities, and a mysterious glass half-sphere, something to do with the darkness as the bard discerned. Throwing the less fragile loot into their bag of holding, the party left that uncanny cave, back across the silent sands and untroubled road, to Alakran.

The half-sphere, as it turned out, was a magical planetarium. If placed in a room in absolute darkness it projects lights representing the fixed and wandering stars of the current sky onto the walls and ceiling.