Places of Adventure: The Bloody Forest

I love random generators as inspiration - no doubt about it. I've also been rocking the point-crawl with my players and it has been fantastic. This area does not exist in my campaign right now, nor may it even, but I wanted to post up an example.

The Random Action
Starting here: http://meta-studios.com/dg/dungen.html we get this point-crawl map, which is a perfect start to a location ... which I shall name the Bloody Forest! The meta-studios site is definitely one of my go-to places to get things started.  The site provides much more detail, but I'm really in it just for the maps.

Next up, I run Tablesmith with the tables I've been creating.  They are looting from TONS of different sources as well as plenty of material that I've written up myself. If you use lots of random tables but don't know about Tablesmith, go check it out. This is some of the best money I've ever spent on software!

Results from Tablesmith tables:

	Location (1 of 5): FangClaw territory (Perilous) Site: A neglected machine factory. Unintelligible whispering can be heard from somewhere deep below. Site: One man mini tank with machinegun, improved ones implanted with a human brain and a mechanical voice box Site: A wandering moon rises above the inkfish sea.
	Location (2 of 5): Bound Patchwork Lord (Perilous) Site: Lair: Unique Site: A luxurious sailing yacht. The hull is pierced by several large holes. Site: Compound: Steam plant burns coal or wood to provide mechanical energy Site: Lair: Local Site: A mangy old lion turned man killer from desperation Site: Drinks for the hero. 
	Location (3 of 5): Endless Tower of the World (Dangerous) Site: Minor Ruin: Hospital (1in6 mental facility) Site: Officer executing trooper with pistol Site: Spaghi the flexible of flexible morals and inflexible broomery, a glorious explosion of the masteries of rope magic is essential to attain the truth of the knot without resorting to the sword of the swot.
	Location (4 of 5): Cavern of Dragons (Unsafe) Site: Some young priests practicing being hermits for initiation Site: Strange feral animal d4 1=odd hybrid 2=escaped from lab 3=mutant 4=undead Site: Minor Ruin: Long abandoned fenced construction site with pond and vegetation Site: Knight Spider and the Slug.
	Location (5 of 5): Closed Silver Mine (Perilous) Site: Wilderness Shack: Hair covered mutant boys driven from home by ignorant Site: An ancient ossuary beneath the Winter Palace in Petrograd, Russia. A colossal alien device stands here, surrounded by a miasma of noxious fumes. Site: A hook horror lives here with piles of bones Site: Karizon the Transmuter's Crypt, he studied shape shifters and now crypt is home to a family of doppelgangers and their pet mimic Site: Kudras's Crypt, the snake dancer who kept performing into her 80s in the courts of the city. Some say she was leader of a cult of snake worshiping vampire lovers. Murderers staked her and her followers interned her in the Crypt then committed suicide.Gloomy teens into poetry often come here

Sweet!

Putting It Together

Looking at the area theme, the Bloody Forest, each Location gets a new name to scribe it and the map gets adjusted.

Thick lines heading away from the locations indicate connections to other Areas, the red line means there is some sort of a major dungeon.

I don't know where these lead yet, but likely to other forest locations - this Area seems like part of a much larger forest Region.

The Bloody Forest has many strange things haunting it because of the Endless Tower of Worlds. That junction point has been the source numerous things from other worlds, dimensions, and planes entering Eradu. The forest was once a peaceful sylvan location, but the now-sentient former inhabitants are at odds with the current residents.

From glaning at it I can see a few dungeons and tons of NPCs waiting to be interacted with.  How does the Spider Knight feel about Nicodemus, the mangy old lion who runs a small tavern he uses to poison and kill travelers he feels are making things worse in the world?  How fucked up are the closed silver mines that stumbled onto an area like the Valley of Kings ... but for vampires and worse?

With that written up I've got a couple of Factions, some fun themes to work with, and a reason for some of the super weird shit happening. Also, this is going to be fun to put together.  I'll create separate posts for the different Locations and their just waiting to burst out.

Session Report [T9 & T10]: Exploration and Trouble

Two Session Reports in one post? Again?  Yes ... and we are playing tomorrow

Session 9: The Tower & the Rain


The Players

• Canker - a lost soul that is greasy greasy
• Phi - probably human with a protective instinct and nasty daggers
• Creasy Silo - Wizarding his Arcanity TO THE MAX
• Ariana - the divine adept of Ra blassing, healing, and smashing
• Freddicus - his bioluminescence got a glowing review

The Action

• Continued exploration of the Flooded Tower
• Numerous, but now avoidable bolt traps all over the place
• Down a long corridor the party discovered a room covered in once colorfully painted city diorama
• At the end was a strange well
• After much investgation, the well is a portal to some great city, but it needs to be filled with the tears of children and widows
• The party encountered an Umbriate Expeditionist from the Patchwork
• There was some confusion, and a terrible battle ensued
• In the end the Umbriate fled, but not before a shield and flinloque were destroyed, as well as Ariana almost turning to stone and Creasy nearly falling into the well
• More exploration revealed a tomb of a precursor with a huge stone SPHINX
• The riddle was answered correctly the first time, and treasures revealed, including a rod very similar to the one Cornelius wielded.  Creasy has it.
• Creasy also gained insight into the creature in stasis on the dias
• Using a terrible spell and aided by his companions, the imprisonment was lifted - temporarily rendering the place of power powerless
• the sparrow-headed creature awoke in a furious mood, threatening everyone
• He is the Sparrow Prince, a consort of the Queen of Spring
• He didn't know the war was long over, nor that it is said the Queens of the Four Courts are now vampire
• The party left the flooded tower and the Sparrow Prince flew off
• He bestowed a boon on some of the party, feathers to ingest to gain his aid
• As he flew off, he mentioned something about the "Storm Children"
• The thunder and lightning flashed in a strange chant, and Creasy, struck by a bolt of lightning, learned the chant welcomed the Sparrow Prince back and was vow of vengeance to kill the humans
• Creasy broke the spell the the tower collapsed as the toxic river consumed it.
• The party is standing in the rain ... 

Session 10: Liberation ... and Endless Trouble


The Party

• Phi - protector of the God Queen
• Freddicus - historian and adventurer
• The Traveller - at one with his barbarian nature
• Zigfried - robot arms and a need to tinker
• Ariana - cleric of the one god the sun god Ra!

The Action

• Standing outside of the collapsed tower, the party witnesses 4 of the "ogres", each with human faces pulled over their own faces as masks, watching the party.
• After a few moments, the ogres threw out large, bloody burlap (actually made of spun hair and sinew) sacks.
• Inside were several bodies of what were determined to be the slaves that Cornelius was breeding
• Throwing out their previous thoughts of running to safety like wimps, the party decides they need to finish this situation with the harvest ... an army of savage things is not something to be responsible for.
• While wandering deep into the Flesh Forest the party encountered a bio-mechanical harvester, a foul creation of the Flescreater sorcery mingled with technology!
• The party messed it up - hard core!  They were climbing all over it and ripping it apart - but it was The Traveller, ignoring pain of the scything blades (that instantly infected the wounds with maggots) who destroyed the thing with its own blades.  Unfortunately, this also caused some woe to Phi, Freddicus, and Ariana.  It was a grand battle.
• The party also discovered some strange tubes buried under ground that seemed to be feeding the trees - some sort of protein-based irrigation system
• they followed it deeper into the flesh forest, breaking bones and limbs to hack their way through; dodging pendulous breeding cysts covered in bristling black hairs.  It was unpleasant business.
• Eventually the party came to an area of barren land - and in the center was the tower of Cornelius the Harvester. 
• It was made of brick and living stone, and was decaying and falling apart as the party watches - thin  stinking fluid bleeding out of it as clots of brick and rotting mucus rained down.
• After shutting off the protein vat, the party braved obvious danger and went inside and began looting the place as it fell down around them
• The action here was fast and furious - things fell on people, gouts of corrosive good sprayed in people's faces, walls collapsed, but the party shored things up and keep looting.  Time was short to be sure.
• Then suddenly from the edge of the forest an army of slaves (now called the Savage Breed) stormed in toward the tower.
• They witnessed some of the party flinging things about and joined in! 
• As the party moved out, the savage breed continued to destroy, until the tower collapsed in a repulsive mass of quivering decayed flash and crumbling wet stone.
• Then the 100 or so Savage Breed that were watching from the edge of the flesh forest stepped out ... and the celebration began!
• The party celebrated with these strange primitive folk and earned a special place in their legends and history - as redeemers who slew the vile demon Cornelius!  
• The party left after healing, and made their way toward where they believe Haven to be
• The Gnome Tower, from which the party once escaped, is standing again
• The party made their way through the Thin Trees, catching glimpses of ruins and other sites and discovered the hidden passage
• As they decided to camp in the cave at the bottom of the passage, they also investigated the really terribly rickety looking rope and plank bridge that separates the black cliffs and from the white cliffs over a chasm nearly 200 feet into a raging white water rapids.
• A hawk of prodigious size flew over the party and clearly landed on the black cliffs.
• The wilderness is a dreadful place...

Also, Phi has recovered his memories of being a paladin and Freddicus is an Archaeologist (Indiana Jones style, of course). FUCK YEA!