2024-03-18

Dragon Peak: Entry Level

Entry Level Map
Under the glacier next to Dragon Peak, a twelve foot tall stone double door provides entry into the mountain. The door has images of tree trunks carved into it, realistically mimicking a dense forest with textured bark and the occasional knot. One of the knots goes a little deeper than the rest, and if a dragonborn inserts a hand into the hole, the door will quietly swing open.

A round room fifty feet in diameter lies beyond the door, its walls carved to look like an old elven forest. The ceiling twenty feet above looks like a canopy of leaves blocking out the sky above. The rotted remains of a long wooden table pile up near the similarly-sized door opposite the entry. Two smaller doors provide egress through the side walls.

Examining the carved walls reveals deep knots carved into the walls for the smaller doors, but the larger door has none. The carving itself seems like an elven design with its eye for realistic detail, but the elegant workmanship feels very dwarven. The remains of the table show evidence of a braided ivy border detail and carved writing in three languages: Draconic, Gladlam (Elven), and Steinrede (Dwarven). Sharp-eyed and lucky investigators may piece together the words five, trials, prophecy, and scale, but the wood has rotted over the past 500 years and utterly obliterated any further words.

The left door will open for a dwarf inserting a hand into the knothole, and the right door will similarly open for an elf. The left room's walls were carved in the traditional dwarven style with straight lines and geometric regularity, mostly involving equilateral triangles and diamond shapes. The right room continues the forest motif from the circular room. Both rooms contain a plain stone couch that once held cushions, a long line of stone pegs on the wall opposite the circular room for hanging cloaks, and a door with no visible means of opening.

2024-03-17

The Rumor Mill - Week 11

Gather 'round and watch (pun intended) for week 11 of The Rumor Mill, which contains rumors about the Fellport Watch. The Reserves train weekly, forging the volunteer citizen militia into a reasonably competent fighting force. The full-time Watchfolk train intensively in techniques for crowd control, siege resistance, scam identification, conflict de-escalation, and boarding party repulsion. Watchfolk serve for 8-10 hours per day, then either return home ("Part-Timers") or to assigned barracks built into Fellport's walls ("Lifers").

Let's find out what people say about these mostly-unappreciated city defenders.

2024-03-13

Prophecy: Breath of the Recurring Scale

The handout I made
for Sunday's game
The Dragontouched, a cult of mystic winged kobolds, maintain a prophecy called the Breath of the Recurring Scale. This prophecy lies at the heart of their faith, and they travel the world looking for adventuring groups that fit the descriptions mentioned in the middle couplets. The elder Dragontouched mystics keep refining the prophecy through vision quests.

A little background: Dragons left Beneterra 500 years ago. The kobolds left behind view themselves as relatives. They want the dragons to return, so they use the prophecy to look for the party who will open the gate and bring the dragons back. The Dragontouched believe that the Breath of the Recurring Scale provides enough information to identify the people who will open the gate. The Dragontouched don't know about the trials at Dragon Peak, though they know that pilgrims could petition Shaxalar for an audience when she lived there.

2024-03-11

Dragon Peak

Far in the northwestern mountains stands a steep and sheer peak next to a glacier flowing off a cliff into a valley. Here the silver dragon Shaxalar made her lair, and here the dragons departed this world five centuries ago. A huge gate filled with shimmering liquid magic stands open within the lair, leading to the plane of dragons, guarded by an elderly dragonborn ranger names Sheridan and his pseudodragon companions.

Dragonborn started dying out after the dragons left. The bloodlines grew thin once the draconic influence left Beneterra. Ionian scientists identified the draconic marker in blood samples and noticed its remarkable absence around 200 years ago.

2024-03-10

The Rumor Mill - Week 10

Welcome to week 10 of The Rumor Mill, which serves to keep me on track with Lore24. I have posted nothing else this week, partially because I've been prepping maps and props for today's Fellport game. I have a few articles mostly written, but I haven't had the focus available to polish and publish them. And with Daylight Savings time starting this morning with its usual week-long period of disorientation, I don't foresee writing much of anything useful this week either. It seems like every March things fall apart for me - I did the same thing with City23 last year about this time. But as long as the rumors flow, I'll stay on track. So here we go.

I don't have a central theme for today's list of rumors. I'm OK with that.