KILLING TIME - Unknown Armies Hexcrawl

CARAVAN PALACE are a cabal of camel-riding shepherds in the Australian outback, descended from the Afghan cameleers that spearheaded the exploration of the sunburnt continent. These wizards and their families run the Caravanserai, a combination sheep station, tourist trap, and ethnic enclave in the back country of South Australia, 600km north of Adelaide.

When a monster starts killing their livestock and the cops don’t lift a finger to help, the sorcerous vaqueros saddle their dromedaries, count their charges, and get ready for a bug hunt.

D20 Fantasy: Garden Of Thorns

The dying woman spoke. Fulan frowned, unable to make it out through the fluid filling her lungs. He rose, wiping his blade on a dead orc's buffcoat. To her credit, the adventurer did not cower as he approached. The warrior squatted in front of her; bare feet protected from the malpais by a quarter-inch of gnarled calluses. The outlander's eyes met his, bloodshot and hateful. She gurgled the word again, loud enough for the entire warband to hear.

"Cannibal". 

Fulan threw his head back and laughed, the cruel sound echoed by the other soldiers who spoke her foreign tongue. He moved to strike her with his cimeter, but she did not flinch. With a grin, he severed her potion bandolier. The warrior scooped up the bottled spells and beheld their contents, ignoring the string of fresh epithets and curses the owner levied at him. 

Mummia from Hogman's Plain. Mellified man from the Hot Lands. Troll's blood from the Peat Bogs. Changeling skin, Umber eyes, Naga fangs, Medusa hair, Minotaur horn. She drank the corpses of thousands, yet cried over his sacred rites. Were these not men? Did they not think, speak, love, and hate?

His eyes flicked to her defiant face, then to the barrels of carmine she'd been transporting. Payment for services rendered, for powder and shot delivered to the hated dogmen. His calloused thumb brushed against his own musket. He was sorely tempted to spark his flinted skin, to watch her face explode into vaporised meat. To leave her ruined corpse to the beak things and bonehounds and ghuls. But it wouldn't be right. She had fought well, nearly punching through his ambush with fire, faith, and steel. 

So he knelt before her and began to cut.

D20 Fantasy: In The Desert

 

The priest gently held the elf's face in his gauntleted hands. Then he began to squeeze. They screamed, face turning wonderful hues of red, white, purple, and blue as their blood vessels exploded. He dug around with his thumbs until they felt wet; vitreous humor soaking the maille as cerulean eyes turned to jelly. The elf gurgled curse after curse, withering body and brain. But Iron Hand girded his flesh and Oil Lamp lit the way. He brought his palms together and their bones broke like a bird's.

...

A stench woke the priest from his dream. Acrid and sharp, it struck his throat with a dull pain he found vaguely pleasurable. He lay on a filthy stone floor, bound with rawhide. Shame flushed his wrinkled face. He'd been paralysed, or charmed, or slept, or laid low by any other myriad of low-level tricks. 

Then he saw his companions and had to choke back a laugh. The fighter snored, drooling into his beard. The thief was trussed up on a spit like a suckling pig, slathered in the eucalyptus oil that must have roused him. Best of all was the wizard, hairless and naked but still held aloft by his spell. Their captors, clearly baffled by the dwarf's persistent levitation, had anchored him to the floor with a length of rope. 

Like the bloated corpse of a stillborn babe, leashed to its mother's womb.

The priest rose, breaking his restraints in one smooth motion. The room was dark and hazy, lit only by the fire beneath the roasting halfling. He made out a vague shape at the edges of his perceptions and surged forwards. Bright red eyes turned to meet his. A flash of recognition played out across the priest's brain. The ochre soil. The shade of the acacia. The crimson orbs staring at him from the sea of grass.

He closed his eyes and the spell harmlessly washed over him. He didn't need to see to kill. The form of the beast was strange, but close enough to a man for his practiced hands. His fingers found purchase in its filthy silk tunic, then dug into greasy flesh. The monsterman brayed like a donkey, releasing hot breath that reeked of eucalyptus. He heard its friends surround him, felt them stab their blades into his back. Through the armour all it did was bruise. The priest breathed in, savouring the moment. He wrapped his hands around its fat head. He felt around with his thumbs.

Then he began to squeeze.

D20 Fantasy: Among The Noisy Heavens

A gang of outback drovers had an arrangement with a local outpost of Mi-Go vivisectionists. They'd offer up the occasional outlaw or captured autochthon for the aliens to chopshop. In exchange, the Million Favoured Ones left them and their sheep alone.

But the bugs appear to have broken the pact. The stockmen's flocks lie dead, decapitated and covered in bizarre burn marks. Strange lights buzz in the skies. Roadwardens investigated the attacks, but only one came back - sans half his skull. He rambled about stars trying to eat him. Then his brains fell out.

A CLOSE SHAVE - Grapes Of Wrath Dungeon

William Blake

"A mad king crawling like a hunted beast into a den among the rocks; his tangled golden beard sweeping the ground, his nails like vultures' talons, and his wild eyes full of sullen terror. The powerful frame is losing semblance of humanity and is bestial in its rough growth of hair, reptile in the toad-like markings and spottings of the skin, which takes on unnatural hues of green, blue, and russet."
Alexander Gilchrist (1863)

Puer Delicatus - A Delta Green Scenario

Fee Fi Fo Fin

The blog is called "Federal Agent Make-Believe", yet it never posts Delta Green content.

How curious...

Three Generic Minidungeons

I need to round out my hexcrawl with some dungeons to plunder, there's too many unmapped locations filled with hordes of high HD monsters. Dungeons are a style of play with far greater options for risk mitigation.

This post uses the "Generic Maps" in the Monster Overhaul. I haven't used any of its statblocks, because I don't know how well they map to OSE and I'm already referencing three different bestiaries.

Minidungeon - Consecrated To Father Flint

Gwion Gwion

KNAP THE BLADES 

CUT THE EYES
SWALLOW THE COALS
CLUB THE SNAKE
STAB THE SNAKE

EAT THE SNAKE

Flintman war chant, transcribed from rock art

Minidungeon - The Golani's Gaol

Renate Löbbecke

In a valley north of the Bloody Marches, a benevolent nature spirit has doled out free healing and resurrections for generations. But after magical plagues destablised the region, the medicine man was swarmed by hundreds of desperate pilgrims.

Sensing opportunity, the Druid Mafia militarised the shrine and imprisoned the Golani. They claim to be protecting the spirit and his patients, even as their violent excesses grow. Bribes, beatings and rape are commonplace. Their quarantine camps are overflowing with the sick, injured and mad. 

But who's gonna do anything about it?

Minidungeon - The Sacked Monastery

St Mary, East Somerton

A rural church is razed by a vengeful band of escaped convicts. When a squad of soldiers is sent to reopen the monastery for business, they find it overrun with maneating monsters, mutant plantlife and security constructs gone rogue.

Someone needs to clear the place out and get the agrimancy flowing again, lest there be famine.

Minidungeon - The Sinking Tower

Sintra, Portugal 

With the help of a contractually-bound djinn, Ingmaind the Ascending is building his retirement tower in the Bloody Marches. Unfortunately, the wizards planted his foundations in a swamp and it's  perpetually sinking. He's already lost four levels, but just adds a new floor each time.

His genie, unhappy with the construction delays, hires adventurers to fix the sinking foundations.

Minidungeon - The Troll's Toll

Pont Valentré

It's well known that Trolls live under viaducts. No one really knows why (including Trolls). So when some Serpentmen found Lemuria the Green beneath their bridge, they didn't bother evicting him. Instead, they did a recruitment pass. After careful negotiation and a longpork signing bonus, the snakes had an immortal maneater to guard their river checkpoint.

Centuries later, Lemuria still dutifully mans his post. He really enjoys being a tollman, so he's not bothered that his employers have stopped paying him. Or that they're all dead. 

How's the saying go? Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life.

The Serpentmen's Sacrament - Masterpost

 A low-level dungeoncrawl complete with murderous Dwarves, undead Serpentmen and a fountain of infinite healing that definitely doesn’t have awful side effects. Designed for Old School Essentials.

The Grug In The Dark - MCA

Choose rockbanger. Choose berrypicker. Choose black fur and matching war mask. Choose flint tool stolen from shaman with wide range of fucking attachments. Choose bang away at mind-numbing, sanity-crushing thing from beyond stars, wonder whether grug better off stuffing rock in own mouth. Choose Chieftain in Yellow and wake up wondering who grug are. Choose 9 kilogram retirement plan. Choose go out with rockbang at end of it all, PGP-encrypting last message down securely laid smoke signal as Rust Covered Arrowhead wetgrug bust into cave.

Choose one last Night at the Bunga.

Choose Moss Covered Arrowhead.

By Fee Fi Fo Fin, on Blogspot