Ghost Towns of the Certopsian

Ghost Towns of the Certopsian

 

The Certopsian Plains, where the shadows of the distant clouds creep long like black burn scars amongst the dry hills, silver sage brush, waist high savannah grasses and dust bedeviled alkali flats.  This clean, hot vastness obscures thousands of years of tragedy and evil, marked only by grit scoured bones and the tumbled petrified timbers of ancient homesteads.  Sometimes these tragedies leak back into the present, manifesting in the form of Ghost Towns, each a unique colony of supernatural necromantic power.  Ghost towns are dreams of the past, and will loom from the shadows of dusk, suddenly revealed in a gulch or behind the next ridge ready to succor weary travelers.  The towns often appear plausible and are not always hostile, but they are inherently dangerous and unnatural. 

Upon encountering a Ghost Town, roll a secret reaction check (with a bonus of 1) on a non-hostile roll the party may interact with town in the normal manner (SEE PEACEFUL INTERACTION below), and may only discover that it was a phantasm when they awake in the morning on the ground or begin to ask too many questions. On a hostile roll the town appears normal until the party reaches its center at which point the buildings themselves begin to stutter between material and ghostly, aging rapidly with leering sagging widows and yawning black doorways that pour out aggressive phantasms. (SEE COMBAT below)

Ghost Towns are incredibly dangerous, even to powerful adventurers or large organized group, as a fully hostile and active Ghost Town may attack with tens of weapon immune, life draining phantasms from all directions.  Towns may be defeated and destroyed, but it is usually advisable to simply flee as the phantasms will only pursue intruders a few hundred feet into the night.

ASE - The Certopsian Situation

I haven't been posting about ASE much lately as my home campaign seems to be winding down as real life intrudes for my players and I play more myself in Pavelorn and Wampus County.  The party has wiped out almost all life in the first level of the ASE (which they out-leveled drastically), and since ASE II isn't out yet, I enlisted the party in a penal battalion of the local enlightened despot's army/guards using their legal troubles as a pretext. After an initial period of annoyance they've had quite a good time and discovered that the war provides opportunities for skilled treasure hunters with limited scruples.

My plan is to turn the pair of adventures I ran for the home party of Huxley, Drusilla, Grimgrim, Lemon and Nell into an adventure along the lines of the Obelisk.  It's less a dungeon crawl and more a hex crawl with a small set battle at the end.  The model for the romp is the excellent 1970's farce/heist/war movie "Kelly's Heroes" - which I know has been discussed before as a basis for an adventure - but seems especially appropriate to ASE's gonzo sensibilities.  Additionally, it becomes homage and not appropriation when I have a dysfunctional robotic tank (a "Steel Leviathan") that says "Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves" (and takes combat penalties each time there is table bickering). 

The Red Demon - Keyed!

A few weeks ago I posted the Red Demon in the Swamp - a map of a moribund ancient siege engine decaying in the swamp.  I posted a monster for it as well later in the week.  Now in it's full glory is the keyed location!  Nine Rooms, two strange and deadly monsters that will tax your players sense of the absurd. Fantastic treasures of both the mundane and the magical variety.  Two tables for random hijinx - one good, one decidedly unpleasant!

Follow this link for a full PDF of for a 3rd to 4th level science fantasy bit of strangeness.

  
Once again - here's the map, download the PDF, ignoring the typographical errors, to find out what those cryptic names mean.

Note: Fixed map quality issue (will Download as PDF without blurring) and added stats I forgot for a monster.

Horrible Frog Monster

A terrible monster of considerable size and ferocity.  I can't say this frog beast is a dragon replacement - but it isn't not a dragon replacement.  I intend to use it as a 'Thousand Towers' monster (aka ASE), and it's what's dwells in the lower hull of my "Red Demon" map.

Caecilian Tyrant attacks

Caecilian Tyrant 

No Enc. 1/(1-4)

Movement: (40')/20' Swim

Armorclass: 5

Hit Dice: 10 HD*

Attacks:1

Damage: 1D8 + Poison/ Special

Save: F 8

Morale:8

Hoard Class:XXI

XP: 3100

Caecilian Spawn

No Enc. 8-18

Movement: (10')/20' Swim

Armorclass: 9

Hit Dice: 1/2

Attacks:1

Damage: 1D2 + Poison

Save: F 0

Morale:12

Hoard Class: Nil

XP:6

The Caecilian Tyrant is a feared alpha predator of the vile fens that feeds indiscriminately on anything smaller than it. Frog-like giants, Tyrants range up to 14' long and can be as wide as 8'. Varying wildly in pattern from the bright color of tree frogs to dull browns, Tyrants shamble on four legs most of the time, and rear up on their back legs only to make aggressive displays. Caecilian Tyrants are fairly quick, and swim well, but they are amphibious ambush hunters and will lay in large pools or mud pits with clusters of their large eyes on the surface. Tyrants are covered in thick scales, this, combined with their poisonous attack, means Tyrants are unused to prey that injures them and will often flee back to their lair if wounded.

Generally Tyrants prefer to lair in dark sheltered places, and their large size means that simple burrows in the swamp mud are insufficient. Because they cannot make their own lairs, Tyrants most often hole up in ruins, and so remain fairly rare, with a single Tyrant, or rarely a small family group, guarding a hunting range of tens of miles centered on the lair.  If they are encountered in their lair, the Tyrant is far less likely to flee and will have a morale of 11.  Caecilian Tyrants are not especially intelligent, having only the limited reasoning of a hunting beast with only a real understanding of how to hunt and live in the wild swamp.

Posion Barb – Tyrants have a mouth full of wicked teeth as long as a human forearm set in shark like rows, but they do not use them in battle. Instead of biting, Tyrants use their frog-like tongues, 12' long and capable of striking into the second row of melee. The tongue is tipped with a jagged bone barb covered in a virulent venom. If struck, a victim must save of die as well as taking 1D8 points of damage from the wound and the deadly poison coursing through it.

Devour – On a natural 20 a Tyrant will not only strike with its barb but wrap its victim in its tongue and drag them into its huge maw. The victim will devoured the next round and slain, but will be able to make a Strength check to break free from the tongue is lieu of an attack prior to being devoured.

Boiling Spawn – Caecilian Tyrants are hermaphroditic and almost universally have natal young encysted on their back. Normally these young emerge in small numbers once every few weeks and, if not devoured by their parent, wander off to grow slowly into new tyrants. When a Tyrant is slain a strange chemical process occurs, within 1-2 turns of death, as the Tyrant's body cools all the young remotely able to survive tear themselves free all at once and launch into a wild frenzy of cannibalism and violence. These creatures are individually weak, but 2D6+6 of them appear unexpectedly and all share the adult Tyrant's deadly poison.

The Red Demon in the Swamp & 100th Post

The Red Demon 1 square = 10'

NOTE: PDF of the whole locale is HERE

So called because of the bright red corrosion marking its huge hull, the Red Demon is an ancient war machine decayed and destroyed, but still menacing.  A large tank like vehicle standing 100' tall and over 100' long, the Demon mounts a massive cannon hanging obscenely from a turret shaped like a grotesque head and rests partially submerged in the noxious swamp.  The Vile Fen is full of such sites, and the Demon is only a small machine, compared to some of the ancient monoliths deeper within its murky embrace

The nearest fishing village knows of it but stays far clear, traditionally because the radioactive sludge leaking from it made it deadly to approach.  The flora and fauna have returned near the wreck in recent years and flourish, but in his youth the headman's local brother attempted to explore the Red Demon and never came back, cementing the artifact's evil reputation.

Within the Demon some chambers have been forced open to the swamp and recently dangerous swamp life including a giant toadypheme have taken up residence in the lower part of the hull.  Other areas of the vehicle have remained sealed, since its destruction ages ago, and hold dangerous unstable explosives, a mad medical subsystem that has reanimated some of the crew, and usable ancient artifacts.

The Obelisk - Extras

THE OBELISK OF FORGOTTEN MEMORIES - HOOKS AND RUMORS

The Hook

Dawn - Vintage Pin-Up, (by Wilson?)

While party is loitering in some den of inequity or passing through a small town, an attractive, young, rural woman approaches the least menacing member of the party and begins a casual chat about the adventuring life.  This is "Dawn" the daughter of a well-off local farmer who seeks to connive, trick or lure the adventurers into performing a daring raid on the Obelisk grounds for her.  Dawn is no simple village flirt, she is a moderately talented young witch from a long line of local practitioners.  Dawn's grandmother was the village herb-woman but died a year or so ago.  Dawn's family, finally successful in the giant beet farming business, would much rather that Dawn marry a member of the local gentry or another successful farmer, as opposed to Dawn and her Grandmother's desire for Dawn to enter the witching trade.  As such, when Dawn's grandma died, her sons pooled some money and had her buried, along with all her mystical paraphernalia at the Obelisk, partially so Dawn would have no way of learning (any more of) her Grandmother's trade.

The Obelisk - The Cult Halls

THE OBELISK OF FORGOTTEN MEMORIES, AREA 8


The final redoubt of the cult of Furter - useful if the players wish to know how Frankensteins  get made.

8. The Cult Halls

Patriarch Chax - Is this merely tasteless or terribly offensive?

The Cult of Furter made themselves a rough home within the recesses of Torpo's Masoleum, having converted old storage and ritual chambers into a barracks, small shrine and reanimation lab to build a Franken-zombie death-squad and complete their takeover of the Obelisk grounds.  They have quite a streamline operation going and can create 1D4 zombies or skeletons a day with the parts they have in storage.  This number will be reduced by -1 if the cult has less than six acolytes available to work on reanimation, but even if only Patriarch Chax is working in the lab.  The chambers that the cult has moved into are generally tiled in rough white green marble that has been crudely smoothed with visible tool marks.  The rooms are lit by oil lamps set into alcoves in the walls and all uniformly smell of cooking grease with a sharp undertone of preservative unguents.  All rooms in area 9 are assumed to have 10' ceilings unless mentioned as being otherwise.

Demons of the North

Unarmored Northern Elf  - Apologies to Booth and Goddard

ELVES OF THE NORTH

I have never liked elves, either as melancholic noble ancients or fey wild creatures.  Orcs are missing from ASE and ASE Elves are morphologically the next step up from goblins on the classic goblinoid tree.  As such I can't help but see elves, specifically these grim man-eating creeps as replacement for hobgoblins/orcs. Sure there are buffoonish Moktars, but they're more savage barbarian man-eaters, while these horrible elves are real monsters.

The Elves of the North are not a friend of man.  Even in a land dominated by megalomaniac Wizards and exotic lifeforms from distant stars or ancient times the Northern elves are a menace.  Of all the elven peoples in the Land of a Thousand Towers the Northern elves remain unscattered and entrenched in their traditional homelands above the great haunted lake known as the Eater of Cities.

Northern Elves are a culture out of time, their ways adapting only slowly to change and their deep cultural xenophobia preventing meaningful contact with most other peoples in the area.  Unlike the Dwarves of the deep hives they do not trade, unlike the Halflings they do not ape human civilization and unlike the Elves of the South they are not wandering hucksters, tinkers and prestidigitators.  The culture of the Eater Elves remains largely as it was when elf-kind was first created by the Hive-Minds: militaristic, arrogant, strict, and stoic.  Northern Elves believe that they are the pinnacle of evolution in the Land of 1,000 Towers and they look down upon other intelligent races.

In addition to their warlike and contrary nature Northern or Eaten Elves view humans as a domestic animal, raising debased human stock as food, labor, and slave soldiers.  Most Northern Elves have never met a human that was capable of speech or complex thought. Elven anthropophagic practices lead even greater distrust between elves and man and Northern elves are likely to attack humans on sight, except for those accompanied by elves, who may receive an offer to parley before having their human "livestock" rustled. 

The Shoal of Grey Bones

THE SHOAL OF GREY BONES

The the area the party was theoretically headed for when they decided to detour to the Obelisk of Forgotten Memories.  I would have given them 9-1 odds of dying on the way, but I like shipwrecks so I still wrote up a table or two. 

Küstenlandschaft - Michael Hutter 1994

The shoal of Grey Bones is a natural, and likely supernatural, magnet for shipping.  Its shallow waters appear to the unprepared mariner as a flat and safe sea while the ancient abandoned lighthouse complex, the 'Tower Plenary' perched on and in the rocks above exerts a malign influence, its abandoned lights reportedly flashing false symbols to vessels leading them onto the merciless crags.  Currents also push abandoned vessels an flotsam onto the grey rocks of the shoals,and over the years a layer of shipwrecks has virtually covered the beaches, sandbars and pools that make up the region.

Among the shoal's gritty grey beaches, jagged cliffs and sucking mud flats many intact vessels can be found.  Some contain treasures, but many are haunted, the lair to wreckers and mad hermits or inhabited by dangerous carrion feeding sea creatures.  Sometimes crews even survive the wrecks and form ad hoc tribes of creature and men from distant lands, hopelessly waiting for rescue.  Below is a list of some vessels that can be found stranded on the shoals.

Wicked Interlopers

The soldiers of Feldmarschall Oberkommando are subject to a brutal training regimen.

Here's a table of random wizards that I am saving for later, Hexamacht will become important if the PC's keep heading into the wilds, but this lot represent his enemies and competition South-West of Denethix.

Ubi Mel Ibi Apes

Wizards are a key element of ASE, individuals of every walk of life driven insane by super-science or sinister magic. Not many are strictly human, and all are very dangerous.  Wizard's represent the real power in the Land of 1,000 Towers and it's only a matter of time before any party of PC's will have to tangle with one or more of them.  Below is the write up for one such Wizard, Hexamacht the Apiagimon. Should my party continue to wander South-West of Denethix Hexomacht has a good chance of becoming a major part of the campaign, either as a patron or big-bad.  I kind of like Hexamacht, he's more a tragic figure than a cackling villain, but that's not going to stop him from being a horrible danger to civilization.

HEXAMACHT the APIAGIMON -Android Entit

Hexamacht

the Apiagimon

Android/Wizard (Fighter 7)

STR: 16 +2 melee hit/damage

INT: 15 (Special)

WIS: 12 No Bonuses

DEX: 16 – 2 AC/+2 missile to hit

CON: 19 + 4HP/die

CHR: 15 -1 Reaction Rolls

HP: 57

AC: -1 (w/DEX bonus)

Equipment: Integral clockwork armor (as platemail +1), +3 Golden nanocluster longsword (1d8+3), Heat-ray beamer (1D8 as laser pistol with 10' cone area of effect), Giant Riding Bee, Pouch of (25)100gp gems. All of Hexamacht's magic items will melt into a fine golden grit within 1D4 days of his death.

Abilities: Resist Magic 25%, Immune to poison, sleep and charm.

Detect invisible (65%), Speak with insects. Regenerate 2HP per round.

Alignment: Lawful – A cold machine intelligence that seeks to encourage agricultural renewal and order.