A Quick Cairn-Able Character Generator

 

A quick, and partial, conversion of Spwack's delightful Finders Keepers generator into a Cairn format with some tweaks here and there. For use with an upcoming one shot.

To Swallow a Spider

Once, there was a young milkmaid. Fair-haired and soft-hearted, the envy of her sisters and the pride of her family. Day by day she milked her family's two cows and carried her pails through the winding village roads, warm and joyful faces greeted her at each delivery. 

On one such ordinary spring day she saw a shadow fallen along the roadside, couched in mud and grime. The shadow hacked and coughed, no shadow but a haggard old woman in deep- painful throes. As the milkmaid neared the shadow resolved to a cloaked, old woman- heaving on all fours and mewling in the mud. 

A hand shot out from the shadow of the cloak, the hood falling, and the old woman pled to the milkmaid "Oh golden-haired maiden, please! But a drink of your sweet harvest would set my humors right!" The fallen hood revealed the gurgling buboes and boiling warts that sloughed about her stricken visage, and terror beat its drum in the milkmaid's stomach. She cut wide around the woman and turned her face away, hurrying along her route.

With another hack and bloody cough the haggard woman pled once more- but the milkmaid hardened her heart and took to a run. Hauling herself to her knees, the witch then gestured and damned her curse to the milkmaid: 

"May you be ruin! May your beauty be your bane and your heart be hollwed! May your presence curdle the virtues of good men and may you be a crawling hive! May you die unburied and only then succumb to the rot you spread!" 

And with that last issue, she heaved her final breath and fell stricken in the mud, the terrified milkmaid fleeing along the road. 

The curse laid by the wayside witch festered in the milkmaid's mind, but she dare not repeat it for she feared the torch. 

That day, the milk she delivered was found to have spoiled overnight.

All through the night, the milkmaid tossed and turned with dark dreams of crawling claws and the evil eye, ever glaring. But, she woke and set to housework before making her deliveries as normal. All through the day, she would swat at an especially persistent fly and would jump at every shadow she saw.

It did not take long for the milkmaid to realize the witch's curse. At first, the hens stopped laying eggs- with their final clutch found rotten and molded. Not long after, the cows stopped giving milk, and her families' debts began to pile. 

Next, her father was stricken with a terrible sickness that soon consumed her sisters and mother as well. All bed ridden but the maid herself, who now was plagued by the flies that found her throughout the day. She slapped and swatted, catching hundreds until the house was empty of them, but then come morning a cloud of the biting, buzzing, swarming menace was back and stronger. 

The very frames of the house began to sag, mold sporing in the corners and consuming the rafters. One by one, the milkmaid buried each of her family in the churchyard, and with each death the village turned. Day by day, they shut their doors to the milkmaid and turned their faces to her plight. What's worse, those who did still speak with her told of the villagers turning cruel to one another, spats and fights sprung up among the kindest of folk and a hate boiled in their hearts. 

Despite her plight, a rowdy crowd of suitors began to plague her home- each a young farmhand or apprentice from the village who began turning to a cruel visage spotted through a window or a figure standing in the dark of the wood. They quarreled in her yard and pled for her hand- though the maid shut them all out of her home as she saw their teeth sharpening and eyes yellowing day by day. 

One night, the maid shut up each window and barricaded herself inside as the shouts became cackles and the suitors beat upon the home. Howling and shouts from outside ebbed and flowed, smoke and iron were on the wind and she sat up swatting flies all night, daring not to sleep.

Come morning the maid discovered what had become of her village and her home- now sagged and mold-ridden it would not stand another night. Blood spilled throughout the village, homes burnt and twisted- cruel faces smiled down at her from hanging bodies in the square. All that stood was the church. 

She sought sanctuary inside with the young priest- himself bloodied and bereaved by the terror of the night before. In begging prayer, the milkmaid came to realize the issue of her misfortune- as she choked and coughed- a black clot of wriggling flies coming up in her hand. Using a silvered plate as her mirror, she watched as the biting flies that plagued her would one by one issue from her mouth.

The church filled with these flies and everywhere they touched began to rot, benches falling to pieces, stone spotting with mold, hanging cloth shriveling and flower turning to fungus. Despite the horror unfolding, it was the priest's eyes yellowing and breath laboring that finally drove the milkmaid to flee and lock herself in the undercroft. 

In desperate prayer the maid sat by light of a single candle, the flies buzzed angrily around the locked crypt. The shroud of biting darkness swallowing up the light bit by bit- it parted suddenly as salvation crept into the candlelight.

Palm-sized, rose red, legs clean and sharp black, eyes gleaming with quiet hunger, the maid's mind slowed and began to set cold and clear as she made eye contact with the great spider.

Perhaps not an answer to her prayer, but a solution to her plight. The maid wiped away her tears, her heart emptied of fear. She reached out her hand to the spider.

Bringing it to her lips, she opened her mouth and the spider crawled inside with measured care, fluttering step by step down her throat.

It did not take long for the flies to stop, as the spider swallowed them up. Not long after, the spider too swallowed up the maddened priest outside.

The maid stood in the rotten chapel's archway and faced a new morning, the corpse of her village strewn about in front of her- but the rot stench could not bother her anymore. Fear and sorrow too, the spider swallowed. 

And still, it was hungry.

Tatum Cho

 

"The average person swallows 8 spiders per year. Susan Spidermouth, who swallowed 30,000 spider eggs thus becoming the ultimate spider incubator, is an outlier and should not be counted."

Tarna the Spider-Maid

8 HP, 8 STR, 14 DEX, 14 WIL (d6 dagger or d10 bite)

• A pretty young woman, cannot speak. Her insides are hollowed by the spider that symbiotically lives inside, keeping her limbs moving. Hungry. Can eat curses.
  
• Charms as per spell and can kiss a willing target to spit a Hollowing Spider into their mouth.
• Critical Damage: Paralyzes target (d8 DEX damage) with a spider-kiss. 
  

Hollow Zombie

4 HP, 6 STR, 6 DEX, 6 WIL (damage as weapon)

• An unwilling host to a Hollowing Spider. Hungry.
• Young Hollows are ravenous and mindless. Older Hollows can mimic human behavior but cannot speak.

 

An aside on curses.

There are many kinds of curses, from little malisons that bedevil a wayward adventurer to bloodline-tethered divine retribution. 

Some tables never use curses, some do. Delta did a good look at the history of the curse, Jon of Medieval Melodies did a look as well, and Noisms wrote a bit about curses as insanity too. I'm most partial to the table of flavorful curses from Swords & Scrolls.

Let's take a gander at what a curse looks like mechanically from something like Lamentations of the Flame Princess (though this is similar to most retroclones' format of the curse):

Bestow Curse (the reverse of Remove Curse) can bring about any number of unfortunate effects upon a being, determined by the caster and Referee. Some limits of effect must be enforced. Typical possibilities are limited to no more than a –2 pen alty to saving throws or –4 to hit, an ability being reduced by 50%. These effects can have any number of creative symptoms. The victim can avoid being affected by Bestow Curse with a successful saving throw versus Magic.

For best effect, players getting cursed should have a bit more flavor to it than just the modifier penalties above, and and iteration of a straight Remove Curse should be used with caution. A setting environment filled with curse-slinging witches and undead loses its luster if you can just hit up the local cleric for your monthly curse-check and get an inoculation just in case.

Curses should be unique and curses should have weight to them. To lay a curse is to set wrong a right, bend fate to a twisted bend and set a foul spirit on someone. 

In the worst of cases, anyone can lay a curse with their dying breath and enough vigor behind it- at the cost of the curse-layer's soul becoming that maleficent spirit enforcing the curse- and no curse worth a soul should be something generic.

A curse should have two components. 

1: A unique effect that impacts how a character functions in the world, whether this be changes to rolls or NPC reactions- make it work within the fiction and make it be felt.

2: At least two ways to break it. Some unique format is best- as with Noisms' take of unique breaking conditions to be met- but make sure that the player knows how to break a curse. Both a unique condition and some ludicrously expensive resolution as a backup would do the trick.

Knave Campaign Postmortem: Yonwell

I've been delaying and delaying closing the page on this chapter, but:

The Bell Ringers have made their last journey together. 

Adventures So Far:

Report 1(Not Really): Clowns, Handspiders, and Lions

Reports 2, 3: Ew, Gross

Report 4: Generic Wizard Tower

Report 5: Pepper Dies (Again)

Reports 6, 7, 8: Don't Go To The Library

Reports 9, 10, 11, 12, 13: What's the Worst that Could Happen?

A Recital

Since our last recap, there have been many sessions with new players and deadly adventures. The guild finally entered into Honorwatch, the dread keep ever on the horizon. The first foray brought them through the hidden tunnels uncovered by Corin the Smith. While they found great fortunes within their brief exploration of the dark tunnels, they very quickly were forced to flee from wights and knights that haunted the halls. A chance encounter with the bandits holed up along the south road to Yonwell breeds enmity as they suffer heavy "taxation" from the bandit king in exchange for free passage and sanctuary.

Rallying once again from Yonwell, they journey with a larger party to Honorwatch itself and seek a ground level entrance. On the way, they battle with the notorious drake, Kesselwyrm, before reaching the decrepit town on the outskirts of Honorwatch proper. There, Stratford Slee meets his demise under a cavalry charge of dead, and the party escapes into a hidden tunnel in a ruined chapel. 

From here there were lengthy trips into the fetid halls- treasures were won and nascent adventurers were slain. Retreating back to Yonwell the guild sought treasures in the east, across the Greenspine and in the court of the rumored Fairy Queen. They journeyed there and defeated devious traps, attended a strange party, and were cast out by attendants of the fae court. High up in the mountains they broke upon a golden tomb and robbed it of its worth before returning to Yonwell once more. 

Here, the core of the adventuring party began to move (literally) on- and I decided the time was nigh. These adventures ended not with a bang or TPK (as they'd always thought it would)- but as must always happen, the wheel of time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. 

Max Bedulenko

In the Beginning

I made the Yonwell campaign about two years ago with the intent to run it with a rotating cast of players and focus on exploration of the world and dungeon crawling. In many respects this was a success, and through ~11 players the group forged a guild, fought a war, brought rune magic into the world, and much much more. 

Knave was my system of choice here mostly for ease of pickup for newer players and simplicity- encouraging the more modern-system focused players to engage with the world over the system itself. I also experimented with many, many rule tweaks and procedures, system changes and add-ons. Some were dropped, like the death and dismemberment table, but others such as the simplified hexploration procedures stayed relatively unchanged. 

>>Messy and unedited house rules heavily borrowed from others here<<

In fact, contrary to my usual tendency to over-worldbuild, Yonwell started extremely light on work after prep of the initial 10x10 hex area immediately around the town. The world doesn't even have a name, still (only a single player asked about it, once), but thanks to really leaning in to only preparing things the players will interact with it felt like all of the prep that I did saw use. Dungeons were lifted wholesale from other products, including the Tomb of the Serpent Kings, many Trilemma adventures sites (handwolves were put into a random encounter list after finding them in the glossary, they grew to become a frequent comedy encounter), the previously discussed rune dungeons, the entire Freeport adventure, and more.

In memory of loyal party donkeys Ser Dunkelton (RIP) & Dunketello

 

Last Questions: Secrets Unveiled

And now, before closing the curtain on Yonwell, there were a few questions from my players to answer. 

 

Forrest White

Q: What was up with Honorwatch?

A: Honorwatch started as a big ruined fort on the hill, some skeletons on the random encounter tables for the surrounding plains, and the warning from the first npc out of town to not sleep within sight of it. After a few early sessions, it took a more developed role as the world got fleshed out wherever the players interacted with it. So, let's dump some lore.

There were Duke Conrad of Yonwell, and his brother Duke Konrad of Honorwatch. Naming conventions aside, years ago the Duke of Yonwell plotted against the Duke of Honorwatch- intending to kill him and seize Honorwatch. Honorwatch itself was a bastion of researchers, having a grand ruin underneath the castle proper, and the Duke of Honorwatch kept the peace honorably in his lands until his brother's betrayal. 

Essentially, the Duke of Yonwell made a secret alliance with the Witch Queen and gifted a cursed amulet to the Duchess of Honorwatch. The amulet corrupted the Duchess and eventually laid root and turned the lands into the Witch Queen's native swamplands, marshy and riddled with vampiric thorn bushes, allowing the Witch Queen's magics enough ground to teleport directly into the ruins beneath the castle. 

The ruins, as was discovered by the Duke of Honorwatch, were a great pristine seal- over some great power sealed away by the ancients. There were three swords that acted as keys to open the seal, and at the time the Duke of Honorwatch had located two of them: Eventide and Hierophant. The Witch Queen sought to harness this power herself, and tried to break the seal without the third blade. Her attempts backfired and she barely escaped the site alive- but the seal's magics brought the curse of undeath to the Duke of Yonwell and his lands- binding them to keep the seal intact.

This all draws into the further lore backgrounds of what was sealed and why- but essentially what we had was a snakeman empire overthrown by men who discovered how to wield Godbound-tier magic. They overthrew the snakemen and built a great utopian empire, with six of their number being the de facto pseudo-pantheon. Over time, they began to restrict who learned their magics, as in the hands of any lowly peasant it could destroy the works of kings. Eventually their empire grew more and more insular, elitist, and cruel. One of their number attempted rebellion, and trained legions of commoners in secret. A great war, sometimes known as the Runic War, scarred the land and broke the empire. The remaining five were not able to kill the unnamed sixth, but were able to erase their name and form and seal their seat of power- but in doing so had to seal away their greatest magics.

Time passed and they ancients sealed their greatest city and all its technology behind the mighty Shieldwall mountains, chaining another of their own who had become corrupted to guard it eternally (this being Azamax the Cursed). The rest scattered, with some being lost to time, others still live in the setting (The First Wyvern, the Lich King). Eventually, the much less magical civilizations of the world were formed and after many many years we have Yonwell- just 20 hexes from the sealed magical city and ten from the great seal underneath Honorwatch. 

All this was in no way in place at the design of the campaign, and it wasn't until they discovered the teleporter cairns some 15 sessions in that it was set in stone. At the beginning, all I had was Honorwatch being a cursed castle and there being big mountains to the way way north that hid something. 

Ben Zweifel

 Q: What was the deal with the teleporter cairns?

A: That was how to unseal the city behind the Shieldwall. Two hexes out of Yonwell and not discovered until 10-12 sessions in to the game, there was a monolith just in the Shellwood atop a cairn. The party fought a vampire-vine-beast inside and explored the remaining three rooms. One held dozens of stone statues of people in various stages of life, another held the tomb of one of the five Ancients as well as a pool of magical healing water, and the third held the teleporter. 

It's a simple system, there's a crystal that powers it and the players had to find it (stolen by the vampire thing) and activate the system. There were four reels filled with symbols that could be lined up into combinations of four and a lever. The way it worked was a simple dialling system, put in the right combo and teleport to the corresponding cairn. They had already worked out the address of the cairn they were in and were satisfied to leave- but one player wanted to try a few hunches. 

Fortunately for them, I had planned for that. The first success was all four Tree symbols- this led to the "Cathedral". It was a building set beyond the Shieldwall and filled with six statues, one smashed, each which when touched would give a vision of the corresponding cairn. Each statue looked like one of the six ancients, and if all six cairns were activated then the barrier in the cathedral blocking the exit would be broken. 

The second successful combo was the four dragons, which led to a floating castle above the bay of the lost continent Wyv. The sheer number of wyverns around the castle led to the players to quickly decide to leave and not come back- unfortunately for them. 

Q: Is magic everywhere now? How will it affect... things?

A: Rune magic is, at least. The players were already seeing some fall out from when their lantern boy taught all the other lantern boys how to make magical rune-powered light, and they also taught even more to a second henchman. Rune magic was one of the magics sealed in the Runic Wars, being the easiest for the common person to use and benefit from. 

It will take time for people around the world to see the old runes in ruins are working again and figure their inner workings out- but what happens once magic is readily available for even the lowliest peasant is anyone's guess.

Q: If it had gone on for long enough, would we eventually have gotten involved in the southern wars, or is that an off-screen thing? 

A: There's a physical line drawn south of Yonwell that the players were told we don't go to. Conceptually, this is because the south lands are filled with mundane war and generally suck, so they left and came to these frontierlands by Yonwell. Mechanically, it encouraged players to explore north out of Yonwell- but no, there were no plans for the south lands- players were free to name the wretched and boring countries of origin for their characters at will (all I can remember were Florida and Ohio). 

William Stevens

Q: Was there a city in the far north past the dragons or am I mistaking?

A: "DRAGONS?" was written all over the player map at various points- but I believe this refers to the area north of Starmoore. North of that destroyed town was a narrow coastline hedged by brokenlands, which opened up into a grand plain spiked with plateaus atop which were the Dragon Baronies. These were to very feudal-themed cities which maintained knights that rode atop drakes as well as legions of footmen that were used to battle each other and the seasonal tide of orcs from the east. 

Q: What did we not get to that you are most disappointed about?

A: I could have directed or hinted better, but that floating island with wyverns? It was empty. There's no monsters or ghosts or ghouls or even wyverns inside it. The only things inside were treasure and the means to move the island at will. It was a giant flying castle filled with treasure that you could just move wherever you wanted it to- but as it turns out the wyverns outside were so scary the players just never left the parlor. 

Let's take a last quick tour of some of the mysteries and denizens around the world of Yonwell- and reveal just how poor my hook management was for this campaign.

Chaim Holtjer

A freshly excavated tunnel in a farmer's lands lead through the snake-emblazoned temple deep beneath the earth, scales slide against stone as the ancient necromancer prepares his next concoction- oblivious to the rediscovery of his laboratory.

In the deep cavern beneath the Ranger's Guild, a brass brazier burns fiercly outside the Unbroken Tomb, its contents awaiting the worthy.

Undolant the Purple hums a merry tune- conjoining the last set of arms to his new batch of handwolves.

Atop the Greenspine, the bumbling grobkins work in their stolen brewery, feeding the great hunger that commands them. 

Thunder rumbles from the mouth of the Castle Demon- squat among the glassy ruins of Starmoore. Furtive figures dart to and from its hidden passages, stoking the flames of its dreaming engine.

Deep in a snaking cave a not so ogreish scholar connects wires and cables and invokes the ancient oaths, trying to resurrect his dead god.

Vibrant greens choke out the twisting red vines creeping at the heart of the Shellwood, a silver pond undisturbed at its heart. 

Balanced on the fanged mountains in the sea north of Shellport, the ever-fought battle of ancient automata continue in blasted halls and spiralling stairs.

Down dark alleyways and behind closed doors of Gnarledshore, the remnants of the snakeman empire conspire and plot- dreaming of their empire's return.

The great pale ziggurats of the dead in the far east mill with tired corpses under the empty eyes of the Lich King.

Coins tumble from enormous piles of treasure heaped amongst the far mountain altar as Azamax the Cursed's flaking gold scaled-head considers the horizon.

The priestesses of Magda offer a freshly harvested crop of Man-Locusts to their False Mermaid gods, feeding the beast they build in their temple.

A new bandit king crowned, the roads from Shellport to Yonwell prove to be ever valuable- as long as they pay their taxes to the Duke.

Ribboned trees line the forest paths where half-elves tend to the ghosts of the dead play court with their Half-dead queen. 

Drake-mounted knights dive and cut at hordes of pallid-fleshed orcs in a pitched battle on the plains, banners unfurled and blood splattered.

Bristling black spines and fiercely cut chitin adorn the blood red Wyrm that emerges from the ruins of the blood altar- now fully recovered it sets its eyes to reclaiming its title.

Centaurs skirmish with the twisted minions of the Witch Queen in the snowy hills of the Beastwarren. From her fetid pit of Felltine, she howls and slinks; plotting anew to break the seal.

High amongst ancient pine trees, the feathered Serpent Lord glides in search of prey- and vengeance.   

In taverns throughout the bustling city of Yonwell, stories are told of adventurers mad and mighty- and the bells they rang and the tales they sang.

The high bell tolls at her shrine and Alia wishes safe journeys to a fresh faced band of adventurers and their dog, eager to make a name for themselves on the frontier.

Through a Nearby Mirror

Tim Hansz

All in all, I'd count this grand West Marches-ish a success. Knave was a good choice to be sure, but I don't think I'd choose it again for a longer campaign like Yonwell ended up being. It could have been my tooling around with the system constantly that made it into something I didn't quite like- but either way it'll be good to go back to something with a bit more structure and classes, even. 

Long ago I had found hexcrawls to be an intimidating prospect to set up- with there being dozens of guides and articles on how to do it properly, on how the procedures need to be, on how to build the world- but ultimately focusing on smaller 10x10 hexes to start with and keeping things flexible the first few sessions worked wonders. 

 

Above is the real- actual-, current and up to date map for Yonwell as well as the player made map for comparison. Each little yellow tag- for those not familiar- is where I made an entry for that hex- an encounter or something similar. Astute players of mine may notice there are many hexes that they explored which do not have an encounter shown on my map. To them, the answer is I Improvised A Lot. Sometimes they were encounters or locations I knew I wanted to use and just waited for a good time to adapt them- sometimes it was a roll on some roll-up tables to make the place on the spot- but something I really leaned on heavily throughout the game was improvisation and not sweating the prep- and to my mind this ended up being fairly smooth with only a few bumps.

Looking back at it all and reminiscing, there's plenty I would have done differently if I started again today- and that's just fine. I had a great time running this world with all my players, and now it's time for the next adventure.

Thanks for playing