My players are going to be embarking on a journey back to Hex from the far north (long story as to how they got there), so I decided it was finally time to draw a proper map of the region. It’s pretty huge, so as with the city maps, I’ve added some smaller images of particular areas of interest, and the larger file can be downloaded from the link below:
Print copies of Genial Jack: Volume 1 are now available from Exalted Funeral at a discounted rate!
In the meantime, I am hard at work on Volume 2, set the dripping depths of Jack’s Entrails…
Mark L. Chance of Spes Magna Games gave the first issue of Genial Jack a very nice review and also wrote up two Fomorian subraces, which are a perfect addition to Volume 1.
In addition, he’s put together a full adventure set on Jack, The Barnacle Barrow of Blunderbuss Cairn, written for Dungeon World, though it could be easily adapted to plenty of other systems. It’s a great little dungeon that fits very well with the other content for Jack and Hex. The undead pirahnas, walrus-based curses, and horrific wound-pit are especially good (also The Slimy Salmon is a great name for a Jackburg tavern).
If I were running this I would probably cut down the travel time to reach the Flukefort, but that’s about it. I’m very pleased people are enjoying the first volume and making stuff inspired by it!
Here’s a short list of the various books, films, and games that were particularly inspirational in designing Hex and the setting around it:
Just a head’s up to anyone looking to snag a copy of Genial Jack: Volume 1 – the Lost Pages store will be closed the rest of this year. The PDF remains available at DriveThruRPG.
Update: The store has been re-opened.
In the meantime, enjoy this preview from Volume 2, which details the Entrails…
Sound: Dry, rasping echoes rebound through the stone columns, emanating from the eroded beak of the idol within.
Smell: Damp stone, rotten seaweed, the inscrutable must of forgotten aeons.
Sight: A series of bizarre structures are embedded in Jack’s guts: shattered columns of stone, partially eaten-away by acid, covered in barnacles and seaweed. Coiled columns flank a sloping ramp leading up into the remnants of some broken temple, a ruin from one of the Ancient Jackburgs of the past, lodged here half-digested. Inside the ruins, bas-reliefs on the walls indicate the temple was built by an octopoid civilization, depicting many of that tentacular people offering sacrifices to the Thousand-Suckered-One. An idol of the many-tendrilled deity looms in the darkness; its eyes are huge, yellow jewels. An Intelligence (Religion) check of DC 10 identifies the Thousand-Suckered-One as a deity said to hail from a different universe, having squirmed its way into this one for reasons unknown. It is devoted to change and mutation, delighting in metamorphoses of all kinds.
Peril: Anyone removing one of the jewels by hand suffers a curse and must make a DC 20 Charisma saving throw to avoid one of the following effects; using a tool or Mage Hand grants advantage on this save. The only way to avoid the curse entirely is to somehow dislodge the jewels without touching them directly. Remove Curse or its equivalent removes any permanent effects.
| 1d6 | Effect |
| 1 | A swarm of crabs hatches in your stomach. They claw their way out, dealing 4d6 piercing damage as they rip through your belly and gush out in a chitinous torrent. |
| 2 | Lose your fingernails and then your finger-bones and cartilage as your hands gradually transform into starfish-like tube-feet, permanently decreasing your Dexterity by 2. |
| 3 | Your tongue swells and sprouts suckers as it becomes a massive tentacle. It is highly prehensile and can be used to manipulate objects up to 10′ away. It is so big, however, that you can no longer speak and must use writing or hand-signals to communicate. |
| 4 | You are wracked with excruciating pain dealing 6d6 necrotic damage as your bones metamorphose, pushing their way to the surface of your skin to become a chitin exoskeleton. If you survive the transformation your AC is increased by 2. |
| 5 | A bioluminescent bulb sprouts from a stalk on your forehead, glowing with the intensity of a torch. Stealth becomes impossible unless you are fully covered or totally unseen. Cutting off the stalk deals 1d6 damage and leaves you badly scarred. |
| 6 | Your legs meld together and swell, bones dissolving, as your lower body becomes that of a giant slug-like creature. You can now climb on vertical surfaces with your normal movement speed but jumping is impossible and boots unwearable. |
Plunder: The Eyes of the Octopus-Idol are worth 1000 gp each to a collector; there are six in total. Once removed, the jewels themselves are not cursed. These scrying stones grant disadvantage on the saving throw of anyone being scried through them. However, anyone who uses one of the Eyes to scry in this fashion will dream of ink, atramental darkness, and the cold, coiling embrace of tendrils, cursing them with nightmares and denying them the effect of one restful night’s sleep.
My approach to DMing favours the specific over the procedural. However, like any DM I still enjoy a random table from time to time.
I’m planning on including various tables like this in the Hex Gazetteer. The goal will be to provide DMs with a very quick but very unique, quirky, interesting NPC every time without having to make multiple rolls for species/profession etc. The same philosophy will be applied to encounters and events to make the city feel like it’s overflowing with strange delights and horrors round every corner. The sheer volume of them, like the sheer size of the map, should make Hex feel inexhaustible without using procedural generation techniques.
| 1d100 | Character |
| 1 | Sir Aart Vex, a Slumsknecht – a gnome lancer clad in scavenged oddments of armour and riding a giant rat steed. Eager for adventure and possessed of an antique and lunatic chivalry. Charges a 5 sp toll for use of his “manorial alleyway.” |
| 2 | Blind Sheila, a gorgon whose eyes have been removed and whose serpents have all been defanged, snapping gummily at any who touches them. Sheila’s a member of the Beggars’ Guild and knows many strange secrets from the world’s youth which she’ll divulge for those with sufficient coin. |
| 3 | Imogen Lowchurch, last surviving member of the Sixty-Six Rodents, a gang the Crowsbeak Thieves’ Guild destroyed in the Moulting War between criminal organizations in Corvid Commons. Grimy, vicious, wanted by the Crowsbeak, and filled with righteous vengeance. She lives in the sewers, having escaped the wrath of the victors above. |
| 4 | Sebastian Rut, cambion artist and hired assassin, exquisitely handsome and perfectly merciless. Long black hair kept in flowing curls around his delicate ivory horns. He paints macabre masterpieces with the blood of his victims. Wanted with a 1000 gp reward; rates vary from 100-500 gp for assassinations. |
| 5 | The Husk, an otherwise nameless man who wanders Corvid Commons with ponderous tread, enormous cysts slowly growing on his exposed skin. These cysts are actually incubating the larvae of a being the Husk refers to as “the Angel” which he claims to have met in the Old City. When the cysts pop, the larvae emerge – whining worm-things with grotesque little humanoid faces, like monstrous “Cherubim.” The Husk nurtures these beings somewhere in his underground dwelling, a sewer-hovel he calls “the Cathedral.” No one has seen one of the creatures pupate. |
| 6 | Stained Bill, a wild-eyed vagabond, mute, with swirling, magical discolourations all over his skin. The amorphous patterns leech into any organic matter he touches, causing people to grow feverish, fruit to rot, meat to spoil. Reputedly an adventurer whose entire party disappeared in the Old City; only he returned. |
| 7 | Zelda Scratch, a bearded lady and footpad; she skulks in the shadows, twirling her goatee in one hand and her blackjack in another, waiting for likely marks to cosh and rob. Wanted for theft, for a 50 gp reward if brought in alive. |
| 8 | Lizzie Sneer, a twelve-year-old pickpocket and member of the Jackdaws with a +6 to Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) checks and a taste for expensive jewellery, some of which often decorates her ears, neck, and fingers, despite her otherwise bedraggled appearance. |
| 9 | Rumkin the Bold, a waspkin youth with delusions of chivalric heroism and a sword frankly far too big for him. A useful hireling on sojourns to dangerous locales. Absurdly muscular for a tiny waspkin. |
| 10 | Adrianus Gaunt, a veteran of the Moon Wars and member of the Beggars’ Guild. His time in the Wolsfwald on the borders of Erubescence left him badly scarred and afflicted with lycanthropy, which he treats with a diet of wolsfbane and powdered sliver; nonetheless, he is subject to partial transformations into lupine form, his teeth occasionally becoming fangs, patches of fur sprouting across his body. If caught by the Warders or City Watch he would doubtless be quarantined in Catch All. |
| 11 | Matthias Wode, disgraced City Watchmen, drunk, thrum addict. His limbs gradually fade as his beard and hair lengthen and his mind and liver rot. Does occasional work for the Crowsbeak Guild, whose bribery cost him his job. |
| 12 | Toothless Gwen, a wizened, grey-haired soothsayer, can cast Augury for a mere 10 gp, throwing a handful of her own loose, glyph-etched teeth against the wall of the alleyway to prophesy weal or woe. |
| 13 | Jenny Greenbeast, a Crowsbeak thief cursed by a magistrate for her crimes with the Curse of Terrible Volume: every breath, word, stomach-grumble, or sneeze she issues is deafeningly, astoundingly loud. |
| 14 | The Possum, true name unknown; an escaped inmate from the Institute for the Magically Insane. Due to an enchantment-gone-wrong he believes he is literally a possum and can be found hanging upside-down in unusual places. A member of the Beggars’ Guild, though not an especially productive one. |
| 15 | Sir Bartholomew Meddling, a Slumsknecht obsessed with justice, who enforces ludicrous feudal laws within his tiny demesne, wielding a massive zweihänder as he serves as judge, jury, and executioner. |
| 16 | Chanterelle Tombsworth, one of the few ghoul courtesans outside of the slums of Shambleside – an “exotic” companion working at the Black Leash, said to have studied for several years at the Académie Macabre before a scandalous expulsion. Rumour has she is the latest muse of Vittoria Wolfsheart, Hex’s foremost playwright of gruesome tragedies and twisted dark comedies. |
| 17 | Chartreuse, a fungoid footpad who confuses their marks with clouds of soporific spores. |
| 18 | Father Ezekiel Mottlehead, a vagabond priest of the Hanged God, wanders Corvid Commons with a sacred noose around his neck, preaching the doctrine of his strange northern deity and offering to perform hanging rituals to induct passersby into a new order. The official Church of the Hanged God in Trollhome have disavowed his activities. |
| 19 | Snips, a rogue barber-goblin from Delirium Castle. He gives excellent haircuts with his sharpened nails and teeth for only 1 sp. |
| 20 | Winnie Coldpalm, a ghoul scavenger fresh from the catacomb. Sells corpses stolen from the crypts for 25 gp each. She idly chews on the merchandise. |
| 21 | Margery Shackleton, a cheeky Roofsguard who likes practicing her archery on rats and other vermin from several storeys up. Has been known to shoot hats off heads or weapons from hands. |
| 22 | Zibb, a homeless gutterpuck. He rapidly changes forms – donkey, dog, cat, giant cockroach, pigeon – to delight passersby. The Beggars’ Guild usually don’t mess with fey, but his gig is becoming profitable enough to attract their ire. |
| 23 | Buggle Fogwit, a slack-jawed, fish-headed dagonian member of the Stench, whose mildew reek is coupled with a disgusting piscine stink. Fights with a spiked club with poisoned spikes. |
| 24 | Gregor “Whipstitch” Scald, one of the Bonesaw Boys, whose favoured weapons are sharpened surgical scissors wielded like punching daggers and who has developed a taste for humanoid kidneys. |
| 25 | Telepathic Tabitha, a mind-reading vagrant and Senior Mendicant in the Beggars’ Guild; can cast Detect Thoughts at will for only 1 sp per minute. |
| 26 | Brother Gloaming, a monk dedicated to the Shrouded Lord, known to appear when sacrifices are left at twilight. His features are obscured by the black garments of his order, but his voice is thin and needle-like. He has been entrusted by the Shrouded Lord with knowledge of bloodlines – calling on the power of the Unspeakable One, he can tell any person the names of their parents and grandparents. |
| 27 | Archibald Slack, a balding, clever-faced conjuror from Fiend’s College, often found perusing the length of Tatterwing Way in search of banned grimoires that even his institution’s library won’t stock. Has a toad-like imp named Skroi for a familiar. |
| 28 | Simone Vertices, a wide-eyed gnome novelist slumming it in Corvid Commons, often found scribbling down stories in the dark corners of the Thieves’ Quarters seediest bars. She is reputedly working on a romance about Crowsbeak and Ravenswing thieves falling in love, the aptly titled Love Among Thieves. |
| 29 | Theophilus Grubby-Hook, a philosophical cutthroat and leader of the Tailfeather Fops, much given to existential navel-gazing after relieving his victims of their purses or lives. Blonde, pretty, and terribly tiresome at parties. |
| 30 | Patience and Languor Weevilbane, conjoined twins in the Ravenswing Thieves’ Guild renowned for their good looks and expertise in picking locks. The Weevilbane twins each have +8 to checks to open locks and are surprisingly nimble. |
| 31 | Nurse Nigella Mothsbrain, the only female member of the Bonesaw Boys. She’s quick with the chloroform and gas grenades – both useful for subduing potential victims – and an ether-addict, much given to ether frolics. |
| 32 | Jorok Mosshide, a trollblood brawler and drunken lout prone to making outrageous and dangerous bets when he’s in his cups (which is always). |
| 33 | Verena Ratsbabe, a rag-and-bones woman and scavenger from the Midden; one of her hands has wriggling centipedes in place of fingers, courtesy of the eldritch pollution in that district. She sells various curios and junk, some of it magical, often at bargain prices. |
| 34 | Desdemona Subtlety, a fence specializing in jewellery and objets d’art. She wears an elaborate porcelain mask magically animated to move with her features; none know what her true visage looks like. Some claim she is one of the Fair Folk. |
| 35 | Anaximander Thrush, Solicitor – a lawyer with offices in Golemsgate, frequently to be found in the Witching Hour and other establishments meeting clients. Corpulent, friendly, incredibly intelligent, with a selection of fabulous wigs. |
| 36 | Bonifacius Lamentable, a bony leech-collector, often seen on Widdershins Way hawking his wares to the sick. He shambles out to the Radula every dawn, wading into the shallows to attract each day’s catch; his legs are badly scarred as a result. |
| 37 | Prowl the Silent, a waspkin pickpocket missing her wings – they were cut off by the Bonesaw Boys and sold to the alchemist Angelique Duvide for her shop, Queen’s Crimson. Prowl runs with the Jackdaws and is a favourite of Sly Rufus. +7 to Dexterity (Sleight of Hand). |
| 38 | Yawp, a Brickwose on a shamanic quest from his tribe, the Bat-Eaters. Missing his ears, covered in elaborate ritual scars, and seeking the head of Agnes Greycheek. |
| 39 | Palace-Pate, one of the Fair Folk, who has an entire palace populated by miniscule sprites growing out of his head. He speaks with a thick accent and refuses to discuss the palace; some have speculated he is simply its bearer. |
| 40 | Elisabeth de l’Abysse, a dhampir bastard from the Crimson City of Erubescence. A sensuous killer, monster-hunter, mercenary. She finds the eternal night of the Midnight Market soothing. |
| 41 | Henry Snoresby, out-of-work actor turned Crowsbeak thief. Leading man good looks, but totally wooden on the stage. He’s decent as a pickpocket, though: +5 to Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) checks. |
| 42 | Ratgirl, a vigilante dedicated to “cleaning up Corvid Commons,” an insane, impossible, and seemingly suicidal quest. Decked out with magical equipment, she also possesses a preternatural sense of smell and the ability to hide in shadows, scurry up and down walls, and similar abilities. Although she appears quite young, her actual identity is unknown – theories claim she might be a student at one of the magical universities, a rich brat from Fanghill, or an avenging demon. She dresses in rat-fur clothes and wears a gruesome rat-like mask. |
| 43 | Danielle Periwinkle has the lower body of a gigantic earwig, ever since she stumbled waist-deep into a pool of alchemical sludge in the Midden. She’s made the most of it and now runs a thriving rickshaw service – just 2 sp to reach anywhere in South Hex. |
| 44 | Geoffrey Clattersoul, a Royalist who insists that Xavier Soulswell is the true ruler of Hex and that the city state must be restored to an absolute monarchy. Scrawny and unconvincing; even the aristocratic Slumsknechte find him vaguely obnoxious. Hands out pro-monarchist pamphlets to anyone who will take one. |
| 45 | Alaric Mulderwood, a self-taught necromancer who specializes in reanimating body parts. Accompanied by a retinue of crawling reanimated hands and arms, hopping legs, and murmuring heads, embalmed and tattooed with glyphs. His shop hauls itself about south Hex. |
| 46 | Houndmoss, an emancipated homunculus encrusted with grey lichen; member of the Beggars’ Guild. A talented street musician with the panpipes, accompanied by a troupe of Charmed raccoons. |
| 47 | Many-Blades, a Lengian mercenary swordsman, highly skilled with his mismatched swords, who hangs out at the Ignus Faatus looking for work. He wears a suit of impeccable spidersilk armour. |
| 48 | Arthur “Sniffer” Slumply, a curmudgeonly Roofsguard, highly skilled with a crossbow. A nasty spell left his vision damaged, so he wears black glasses at all times, and aims partially through a highly developed sense of smell. |
| 49 | Deirdre Scrunch, a changeling street-witch and occasional arsonist with a talent for evocation and ever-shifting hair (length, colour, texture), who is always accompanied by her gutterpuck companion Scuttle. |
| 50 | Big Urk, a diminutive fungoid and Crowsbeak enforcer who likes the sound of breaking bones and collects the fingers of those who refused to pay their protection. Generally accompanied by 2d4 Crowsbeak toughs. |
| 51 | Millicent Briar, a demure cambion girl of seven who insists she is the Endbringer, a descendent of the Archdemon Moloch, and will break the Seal in Little Pandemonium to usher in an age of brimstone and become Queen of Hell. She is a powerful sorcerer for such a young girl, though much given to tea-parties with broken dolls in the back-alleys of the Commons. |
| 52 | Oswald Tealeaf, a gnome tinker and knife-sharpener who can impart a +1 bonus to damage to any slashing weapon for 1 gp; the bonus lasts for one encounter. He can also cast Mending for 5 sp. |
| 53 | Gutwrench, a Brickwose often seen carrying her twin boys on her back while raiding. A muscular woman of short stature, her preferred weapon is, appropriately enough, a gigantic wrench; she has a dented manhole cover for a shield. Her tribe are called the Drowned Rats. |
| 54 | Barbaros Khatun, a freelance mercenary and veteran of the endless warfare on the Purple Plateau, broad-shouldered, big-bearded, one-eyed, wielding a symbiotic sword and a shield fashioned from the carapace of some otherworldly monster. Hireable for 10 gp per day. |
| 55 | Gerrit Impsboon, an eldritch tattooist, sinewy, covered in squirming, tiny sigils; slighted points ears suggest he may be a changeling. He can provide a Thief’s Mark to those with Guild affiliation for 100 gp. |
| 56 | Ursula Killing sells jinxcrows, wheeling dozens of cages filled with them in a ramshackle cart. Each crow costs 100 gp and has one random first level spell memorized. A few prized crows worth 250 gp each have memorized a second level spell instead. |
| 57 | Abbey Slugswallow, a black-market apothecary; she runs a nomadic little shop selling illicit scrolls of Remove Curse to dodge magistrates’ maledictions, along with various illegal poisons. |
| 58 | Delilah Deadrose is a Wraithwaste survivor who spent several years in Catch-All. The disease is cured, but her entire left half is spectral, passing through solid objects. She can see spirits and other Ethereal creatures with her left eye. She now finds her employment as a courtesan on Heartbreak Street. |
| 59 | Jacoba van Snout, a Ravenswing illusionist, Fledgling rank, trained at Umbral University. Dark of hair, heart, and humour, she delights in particularly gruesome illusions, often pranking those she meets by magically simulating her own grisly demise. |
| 60 | Damien Shrug, a Ravenswing Talon with a stone arm courtesy of a magical trap he triggered during a burglary. Likes a bit of shadetea at the Dark Drop and similar establishments. The arm does prove somewhat useful in a fight. |
| 61 | Persimmon Swig, a farmer who got lost on his way to St. Monstrum’s Gate. He is, frankly, pretty terrified at this point, and could someone please help him find his way out of this horrible place? His sheep must be missing him! |
| 62 | Captain Joost Lijkburger, a crooked member of the City Watch sometimes glimpsed in plainclothes meeting his contacts at Sallow Sally’s or other establishments. Meaty, pig-eyed, scarred of face, small of brain, large of appetite, bad of breath. |
| 63 | Calliope Tumbledown, a skilled lock-picker, pickpocket, and Ravenswing Fledgling, often found honing her skills on random doors and purses throughout south Hex. Short, cropped hair, a quick smile and quicker fingers. |
| 64 | Byzou, an emancipated demon possessing a large doll resembling a well-dressed boy of noble birth, cracked and fissured with unholy energies, glyphs adorning its cheeks. He is a member of the Magpie Consortium and an expert on diabolic artefacts. |
| 65 | Razor the Droll, a waspkin satirist who writes and illustrates for the column “Razor Wit” for the seditious newspaper Counterspell. He has an impressive moustache (especially for a waspkin) and a flair for caricatures. |
| 66 | Phillipe Trench, a Crowsbeak second-storey man cursed by a magistrate for breaking and entering. He is deathly phobic of open windows as a result of the curse and compulsively closes them in any room he is in. To be honest, open doors aren’t great, either. Or trapdoors. Or manholes. Or latrines. Cabinets. Closets. Any opening, really. Could you close your mouth, please? It’s disturbing. |
| 67 | Luciana Fenris, an adventurer-librarian, tawny-haired and ruthless of demeanour; she is employed by the Institute of Omens and is often found in Crowsbeak Commons in search of certain volumes sometimes for sale on Tatterwing Way. |
| 68 | Edwina Ramsfoot, a Bloodworm tough renowned for her skill with whips. Statuesque, no-nonsense, enjoys the fights at the Butcherbird Fighting Pits on Shrike Street. Heavy Incarnadine user. |
| 69 | Acrid “Doomblade” Morrigan, a pretentious teenage poet and freelance mercenary who dresses all in black leather armour and carries a gigantic sword. He’d be completely laughable were it not for his genuine martial and magical talent: he’s a sorcerer and swordsman of considerable natural ability. A would-be adventurer, he’s looking for a party to accompany, and can be quite an asset for a group willing to put up with recitations of extraordinarily overwrought and melancholy verse. |
| 70 | Persephone Lilac, an adventurer of some renown, dungeon-pale and strangely scarred, is unstuck from time, skipping across its surface like a peddle across a lake. Ever since she ran afoul of the Sundial-headed Knight in Elfhame she experiences every other hour of time, disappearing for an hour and reappearing with no memory of the interim. The time between skips is very slowly shrinking. |
| 71 | Klub Stoneclaw, a trollblood cook, hulkingly muscular and massive of belly, jovial of disposition; renowned for his eel-tarts, which he sells for 5 cp each from a little cart. Beautiful runic tattoos on his expansive biceps and forearms. |
| 72 | Amelia Flinch, a former Hexmarine in the navy, who fought during the Ichor Wars. She is now a Roofsguard, but still walks with a limp due to the living shells embedded in her left calf, courtesy of parasite-guns of the Gelatinous Empire. |
| 73 | Xanthus Joy, a Ravenswing burglar renowned for his beautiful golden hair, obsession with stealing sacred artefacts, and daring approach to thievery. A libertine, and the subject of many romantic fantasies in Corvid Commons and indeed throughout the city. |
| 74 | Otto de Wilde, sometimes said to be the strongest man in Hex, though there are rivals for that title, particularly among the trollbloods. This seven foot-tall, hulking man – a Bloodworm enforcer covered in crimson worm tattoos – can bend steel bars and perform similar feats quite easily. He occasionally fights in the Butcherbird Fighting Pits. |
| 75 | Varicose Strum, an elementalist who specializes in blood magic, controlling people using their blood or animating gouts of the stuff to form weapons, armour, servants. Debonair, epicene, slender, chalk-pale, dresses all in red. |
| 76 | Sister Stygian, a cultist of the Shrouded Lord who appears to petitioners on moonless nights. She is swathed in back cloth but is long of limb and carries a censer of velvety incense. The Shrouded Lord has entrusted her with knowledge of the secrets of death, and for the right sacrifice she can discern the cause and time of any person’s death, though never the identity of their killer. |
| 77 | Flamingo, a fungoid fence of the Magpie Consortium, bright pink and sweet-smelling, covered in vivid sacs, usually clad in voluminous dresses with dozens of Pockets of Holding sewn into the fabric. |
| 78 | Gabrielle Ankh, a rag-and-bones woman whose junk-cart is piled high with musical instruments, rusty firearms, bent cutlery, and a live bird’s nest with her pet jinxcrow, Giltbeak, whose ensorcelled, sigil-graven beak has been known to occasionally transmute objects to gold for a few brief moments when pecked (the result of a spellshower – see Phenomena for details). |
| 79 | Astra Scudd, a gnomish poison-seller with terrible chemical burns, false teeth, and a cheerful manner. |
| 80 | Musty Moll, a member of the Stench, one of Noisome Nancy’s lieutenants. Skeleton-thin and brown-toothed, with sharpened iron implants in place of nails. She has a serious Ghostdust habit and sees spirits everywhere. |
| 81 | Ezra Metatron, a priest of the Thousand-Suckered-One, who frequently ministers to the poor in Corvid Commons. Massive of girth and of generosity, he and his acolytes distribute medicinal tonics, food, and religious pamphlets. His limbs are puckered with angry red scars from his ritual couplings with the Cephalopod Saints in his order’s temple. |
| 82 | Judith Swanskull, a cambion gunfighter and highwaywoman of great derring-do. She often lounges in Corvid Commons in-between jobs on the road. There’s a 250 gp price on her head. Crimson hair and vestigial bat-wings courtesy of her succubus mother. |
| 83 | Wendolyn Froth, a Crowsbeak thief caught and cursed by a magistrate to be followed by a miniature stormcloud for the next six years. It rains down on her in a soft drizzle most of the time, but begins to pour rain if she lies, and electrocutes her if she commits any outright crimes. Currently a member of the Beggars’ Guild. |
| 84 | Chrysanthemum, a renegade homunculus in the Ravenswing Thieves’ Guild – cheeky, preternaturally stealthy, specializing in “hiding in plain sight” as a house plant in the homes of the wealthy. |
| 85 | Maxime Smack, one of the Jackdaws, a dagonian orphan just out of her larval stage, mottled yellow-brown scales, often found selling scavenged treasures culled from the muddy depths of sewer-tunnels. |
| 86 | Nibbling Oliphant, a second-rate pickpocket and Tailfeather Fop with expensive taste in clothes but clumsy fingers. He tries his best, but ever since the mousetrap incident his game’s been off. |
| 87 | Dorothea Rabid, a voluptuous ghoul courtesan expelled from the Courtesans’ Guild for murdering a client for unknown reasons. Moonlights as a freelance assassin. Huge yellow eyes. |
| 88 | Gash the Bodger, a waspkin messenger and petty thief who is also a minor mechanist, building rusty clockwork toys from scavenged scrap. |
| 89 | The Switchskin, one of the Fair Folk, who during the day is a manic, violent, whimsical, lecherous prankster, and during the night is a preternaturally calm sage of immense wisdom. He can occasionally be seen in The Lady with the Bloodstained Fan on Carrion Street. |
| 90 | Harry Sluaghwarren, a ghoul costermonger who specializes in eels, hot and jellied, avaliable with pie and mash. His cries of “JELLIED EELS” and “EELS ’N MASH” can be heard for some distance. |
| 91 | Virgil the Noseslicer, a terrifying Crowsbeak cutthroat, beloved in some circles, known for his dislike of the City Watch and his keen ability to detect plain-clothes officers (“Noses”). He keeps a grisly series of trophies – literal sliced-off noses – on a string round his brawny neck. |
| 92 | Charles “Pighead” Perrottet, a criminal originally from Erubescence, captured by Hexian authorities and polymorphed into a pig as punishment. He was liberated and partially transformed back, but the Dispel went badly wrong dueto some wild magic current or the incompetence of the caster (he insists the latter) that has left him half-human, half-pig, permanently. A member of the Crowsbeak Thieves’ Guild. |
| 93 | Empty, a shadowmilk-drinker who has not spoken in thirteen years, black of eye and lip, nondescript of clothing and face. They appear unpredictably when jobs need doing, without being summoned or contracted, and inevitably do whatever needs to be done, exhibiting an incredibly broad array of skills in exchange for coin, usually only a guinea (1 gp). Those that refuse to pay Empty for their labour are cursed with nightmares of unbelievable horror for weeks or months on end, sometimes going permanently mad. |
| 94 | The Vinemother, an aged druidess who lives in Mooncross but journeys across Hex planting tiny plants everywhere she goes, nurtured with magic, in a vain but endless war against the industrial sprawl of the metropolis. Long white hair strewn with leaves, clad in ragged garments of leaves and vines. |
| 95 | Notch, a Brickwose warlord usually accompanied by a band of 2d6 marauders, inevitably on a raid for food, clothing, and thralls; covered in scars and wielding a serrated glaive. |
| 96 | Backbreak Ben, a wiry but muscular ghoul gladiator renowned for his signature spine-snapping move in the Butcherbird Fighting Pits. Actually quite a gentle soul outside of the Pits, but an utter maniac within them. |
| 97 | Corina Crumbsmoot, a pockmarked, taciturn woman; a dead-cart driver, she rolls through Corvid Commons every Boneday collecting corpses to sell to the Reanimators’ Guild in Shambleside. She pays between 10 and 50 gp per corpse depending on its species and state of decomposition. |
| 98 | Carmelita the Crustacean Courtesan promises an unforgettable experience for the discerning lady, gentleman, or any who lieth betwixt. Half-transformed during a magical accident into a hybrid of woman and shellfish, her exoskeleton glistens with cheap gemstones, adjacent to pearlescent human flesh, advertised from the delicate balcony from which she beseeches passersby. Those with sufficient coin (100 gp) to patronize her boudoir will also find her rich in philosophical conversation. |
| 99 | Cynosure van Rump, a scrawny anathemist covered in eldritch tattoos, who summons tentacular horrors from distant dimensions through his guts – his belly expands rapidly and he vomits forth stomach-conjured monsters. Perpetually ill-looking. |
| 100 | Jangling Jane, a lockpick-merchant. Most of her merchandise is contained in her gigantic tunnelswine-leather coat, from which her epithet is derived: hundreds and hundreds of lockpicks, skeleton keys, and specific keys to doors scattered throughout the city, which she sells for anything from 5cp to 1500 gp. |
If you like what you see here and want to read more of this larger setting, check out Genial Jack: Volume 1, including NPCs, districts, and playable species in a city within a giant whale.
The first issue of Genial Jack is available for purchase in Print + PDF from DriveThruRPG!
Some reviews of Genial Jack: Volume 1:
Genial Jack is a serialized setting of nautical weirdness and whimsy – horrors and wonders from the deep, mysterious isles, absurd pirates, surreal monsters, sentient storms, and, of course, a whale the size of a mountain. Each volume will reveal some aspect of the bizarre seascape traversed by Genial Jack, beginning with an account of Jackburg itself – the ramshackle, symbiotic city built atop and within the beneficent Godwhale.
Within the first volume you’ll find:
Inspired by the likes of Gulliver’s Travels, Tales of Baron Munchausen, and New Weird urban fantasy, Genial Jack iswritten for 5th edition but easily adaptable to any fantasy tabletop game.
The party decided to go to Erubescence – a rival city state of Hex and it’s occasional ally in local wars – to seek its help in dealing with the vengeful ghosts of the Penumbral Empire.
So, that means I had another map to make.
If you like what you see here, I’m actually publishing parts of this campaign world sequentially. The first two volumes – Genial Jack: Volume 1 and Genial Jack Volume 2 – are available for purchase in Print + PDF at DriveThruRPG.
Here are some close-ups to show how detailed this got. For the most part I’d say this one is even more detailed than the Hex map when it comes to individual structures.
The map is the same size as the Hex map. It looks great printed out, and a good spot for a cat to nap!
Here are two sample streets from the Hex Gazetteer I’m working on, and the factions associated with them. Every street in Hex is receiving similar treatment.
Colourful silks flutter in the greasy breeze, courtesy of the costermongers hawking rags and stolen clothes along the alley’s length. Some strangely tattooed, malformed people mingle with the crowds.
Encounter: A thrashing, skinless, tentacular blob – a Cancroid – bursts forth from the Anathemist Commune and rampages towards the party, gibbering in Aklo and leaving a trail of sizzling, poisonous blood. 1d4 Anathemists emerge after it.
Anathemist Commune: A small commune of Anathemists – warlocks dedicated to summoning and conversing with the denizens of the surreal dimension of Anathema – operates on Tailfeather Alley: about a dozen men, women, and epicenes of various species, elaborately tattooed, many with tendrils in places of arms, blooms of additional eyes along the sides of their heads, polypous growths, masses of waving cilia radiating from their backs, and other mutations, the result of exposure to the reality-warping energies of Anathema. Their rundown commune is covered in arcane graffiti; the windows display weird lights during the night. The leader of the commune is Zachariah Finch, a wild-eyed man with a mass of tiny crab-pincers sprouting from his face like a chitinous goatee.
Mister Pincushion’s Petticoats and Pantaloons: The curious specimen of the Fair Folk known as Mister Pincushion has claimed this shop as his own. An almost perfectly spherical elf whose body is pierced with thousands of tiny pins, whose fingernails are needles, and whose hair is an endlessly growing mane of yarn and other fibres, which he can grow in a multitude of colours, this mincing, surprisingly dextrous creature makes garments in this sprawling tailor’s shop, often with Faerie glamers woven into them, unbeknownst to the purchaser. The garments are of decent quality but bizarre cut; Mister Pincushion seems relatively unconcerned with wealth, and appears to be running the shop as part of a kind of working vacation from Elfhame “for a century or two.” Rumour has that he was banished by Queen Mab for unspecified indecencies. When not in his shop he can sometimes be found drinking at The Lady with the Bloodstained Fan on Carrion Street.
Tailfather Fops’ Hideout: The ostentatious hideout of the Tailfather Fops can be found here – a shabby but well-decorated rookery where the louche decadents of the Fops lounge about smoking black cigarillos and swilling absinthe between robberies. They are often seen strolling down to Heartbreak Street with full purses and swaggering strides. Their rookery itself is adorned with all manner of stolen finery, jewels, fine clothes, and other gewgaws. In the basement is a secret entrance to the sewers which the Fops use to come and go discretely.
Illicit apothecaries, dodgy alchemist’s shops, unlicensed surgeries, and similar establishments advertise with grotty wooden signs and tinted lamps shaped like hearts, livers, brains, and other organs, presumably to indicate specializations. Members of the terrifying surgeons-cum-street-warriors known as the Bonesaw Boys hang about here, selling illegally obtained humanoid limbs and organs.
Encounter: Trapped cobblestones (see Phenomena) often protect this street from the Watch and other non-thieves. There is a 50% chance of encountering 2d6 Bonesaw Boys who may menace the party demanding money, blood, or body parts.
The Mists of Memory: A sign out front of this shop has a list of prices: “Minor Memory Modification – 50 guineas,” “Temporary Amnesia – 100 guineas,” “Mind Wipe – 200 guineas,” and the like. In the window are displayed a whole series of model heads like those of mannequins, painted with phrenological diagrams. A humming human woman with a severe grey bun, Griselda Flex, is the proprietor of the shop; its interior is filled with charts and models both mundane and magical, all of brains, skulls, and heads from a wide variety of species, including all the sentient species of Hex. She can cast Modify Memory and variants of the spell for the prices advertised outside.
Dr. Murgatroyd’s Cures & Curses: Judging from the somewhat anguished noises emanating from within, this decrepit medical establishment is not quite up to the standards of the physicians in Caulchurch or Ambery. Inside is a dirty waiting room with incredibly gruesome and dubiously accurate anatomical dolls that can be disassembled and reassembled. Dr. Murgatroyd himself is here at all times of the day and night – a gnome man with tinted glasses, generally clad in a soaking crimson coat and carrying a serrated saw, clockwork drill, or some similarly macabre medical instrument.
Dr. Murgatroyd sells discount Potions of Healing (Common) for 40 gp each, though in addition to healing 2d4+2 hit points they have a 50% chance of having a bizarre side effect. Roll 1d6: (1) begin growing a third arm with a mouth on its palm that speaks in an uncanny version of your voice – when fully formed, the arm detaches, dealing 1 damage, and goes its own way; (2) your stomach murmurs in dead languages for 24 hours, creating disadvantage on Stealth checks; (3) you are blinded for 24 hours but experience bizarre visions of what may be the distant future, gaining Inspiration; (4) every orifice begins bleeding slowly, dealing 1 hit point of damage per hour for the next 1d20 hours; (5) you begin puking torrents of slippery fish (treat as the Grease spell) for one minute; (6) your teeth have turned to gold, permanently – each is worth 5gp if extracted, but eating can be a bit tricky.
Queen’s Crimson: This large reagent shop is often visited by reputable mages throughout Hex, albeit in magical disguise. It openly sells many prohibited alchemical reagents such as human kidneys, dagonian eggs, waspkin wings, vampire blood, and gorgongas. There are even globules containing captive puddleweirds, which can be hurled like living grenades. The proprietress is Angelique Duvide, a tall, skeleton-thin changeling woman with a too-wide smile and eyes that don’t ever seem to blink.
Perhaps the most ridiculous gang in Corvid Commons, the Tailfather Fops are a collection of well-dressed footpads with pretensions of sophistication. An independent gang with ties to the Ravenswing Thieves’ Guild, they nonetheless pay a cut of their income to the Crowsbeak Thieves’ Guild to continue operating. They specialize in robbing shops in richer parts of town, blending in with the well-dressed crowds and artfully stuffing goods into the many pockets of their elaborate frock coats. In other instances they have been known to hold up carriages and wagons, adorning their faces with masks of porcelain or papier-mâché. The Fops – led by the sighing philosopher-thief Theophilus Grubby-Hook – are sworn enemies of the Stench a few streets over, and their bloody skirmishes have interrupted many a night’s sleep.
Clad in the beaked masks and antique robes of old-fashioned plague doctors and wielding an eclectic range of repurposed medical equipment, the vicious Bonesaw Boys are brutal cutthroats sworn to the Crowsbeak Thieves’ Guild. They operate throughout the Commons and surrounding districts, ambushing lone pedestrians at night and harvesting their organs, which they sell to Dr. Murgatroyd on Widdershins Way, or to unlicensed reanimators like the Marionettist. The leader of the Bonesaw Boys is a sentient tumour known as the Goiter, excised after it kills its previous host, inevitably some wretched sod who owed the Boys money, and forcibly implanted into a fresh victim. Apart from the Bloodworms they are the most feared of the Crowsbeak vassal-gangs, though they prefer to take their victims alive, for experimentation. Their hideout is off Cruel Claw Alley.
The characters in this session were:
XP Awarded: 1500 XP
The party had discovered fell news indeed – that the spectral city of Penumbra, returned out of the mists of the Ethereal Plane to haunt its destroyers, had manifested on the slopes of Mount Shudder, and had been the force behind the evil winter that had wracked Hex earlier in the year, and the attempt to barrage Hex with tidal waves by disrupting the sleep of Genial Jack. Having thwarted these attempts – and the efforts of Penumbra to obtain the Book of Ghosts from the Catacombs beneath the Gilded Graveyard – the party took a breath, seeing to other matters that had gone unattended.
First, the party allocated the funds obtained by the auction of magic items in Jackburg, providing these funds to Cogswright & Associates in Mainspring so that they could begin construction of a vessel in order to sail amidst the Outer Spheres in the Luminiferous Aether.
The gnomish illusionist Yam, meanwhile, was noting the bizarre permutations the Book of Chaos was wreaking upon their apartment. Alabastor – currently a ghost, possessing his own corpse – had learned to summona new familiar, an owl named “Owlistair CrOwley.” An odd name… but there were many odd things in Faerie, from whence the owl appeared, a servant of the mischievous Queen Mab, with whom Alabastor had forged an eldritch contract. Sister passed some time with Parethena Quell in Jackburg, admiring the Coral Fortress. Caulis, having put Hargrym’s soul to rest, enjoyed a few moments’ peace, its tower no longer haunted. Armand, meanwhile, busied himself with more of his strange botanical experiments in his greenhouse, concocting antitoxins and exploring the possibility of vivimancy, much as his counterpart had in the alternate universe he had briefly visited. Garvin was pondering his own mysteries, looking into the suspicious activities of the Horned League of Behemoth Bend, the cambion thieves’ guild of western Hex who, he believed, might have been observing the party’s behaviour…
It is to Comet, however – Comet the Unlucky, magister-cursed to suffer a headache in the presence of Sap from the Elder Trees, Comet the impassioned and stout-hearted – that we turn our attention. Comet, having been harangued out of his home by Crowsbeak enforcers, had settled in the Feypark, sleeping rough among the trees and animals of that place. Due to the park’s vicinity to Faerie, the animals of the park had acquired the ability to speak, and many had their own secret villages and outposts. Comet was busy introducing some of the waspkin from the Thirteenth Queen’s Hive to his animal-friends when a squirrel approached him, hopping along the ground at great speed. He was clad in elaborate livery and wore a plumed helmet and a sword at his waist.
“Comet!” the squirrel declared. “Protector of the woodland. Champion of the under-trodden. Friend of the forest. The Princess Elaine Longtail begs an audience with you, on a matter of greatest urgency!”
“An audience with me?” Comet said. He had been telling the forest-creatures tales of the party’s adventures for some time. “I’m sure I’m happy to meet with her. What seems to be the problem?”
“We cannot speak of it here!” the squirrel declared. “Too many ears may be listening… but please, bring your friends, the great heroes you have spoken of so many times! We have great need of your aid!”
Comet’s waspkin friends at the Hive, at his request, flitted out throughout the city with messages to members of the Variegated Company, gathering them to the Feypark. A short time later they approached the glade where Comet was living.
The squirrel herald led thr group down a winding path and into the depths of the Feypark. Asthey moved closer to the park’s center, the manicured lawns and flower-beds became increasingly overgrown, giving way to rambling woodland. Soft music seemed to play from somewhere distant, and the trees rustled with a too-intelligent susurrus.
Presently, they came to a wild clearing next to an iridescent pool. A massive old tree stump mouldered near the water’s edge; as they drew close, they saw it was encrusted with miniature fortifications, squirrel-sized. Approaching, the party was met with a sudden, bristling mass of squirrels on the battlements, longbows and slings at the ready, tiny arrows and pebbles nocked.
“Lower your arms!” the herald cried. “I come with friends from beyond the park!”
Presently, the gates of the fortress opened, and another squirrel emerged, dressed in a fine gown and bearing a sceptre.
“May I present Her Royal Highness, Princess Elaine Longtail!” the herald proclaimed, while troubadours blew a fanfare from tiny trumpets.
The party politely introduced themselves. Yam was rapt with delight.
“They’re SQUIRRELS!” they said.
“Your Highness,” Comet said. “My companions and I are here to aid you. How can we be of assistance?”
“We came here to help… squirrels?” Armand muttered to Garvin.
“This seems interesting,” the thief replied. “Give them a chance to say what this is about.”
“Word has reached me of your deeds,” the Princess squeaked. “I humbly beseech thee on behalf of my people for your aid in a matter of great urgency.”
“What ails you, your Highness?” Sister asked.
“The Royal Seat of Knothole Manor has been seized by the forces of the salamander-warlord Urdox the Slimy and his wicked fairy allies,” Princess Longtail said. “With foul enchantments and an army of vicious insects, lizards, mercenary sewer-rats, and other vile creatures, Urdox assailed the Manor and took my father, Grand Duke Richard Longtail, hostage and prisoner. I was able to flee with what remains of our forces, but many good beasts were slaughtered in the battle. I believe that the salamander lord is in league with the evil Faerie Lord Arawn, who seeks the destruction and decay of the park and all living things within it. Noble Comet, I beg your assistance in cleansing Knothole Manor of Urdox and his minions. Should you perform this deed, it will be necessary for you to assume a form suitable for entering the Manor – for if Urdox were to see you approach in your current form, my father’s life might well be forfeit. A drink from yonder pool shall render you and any boon companions into the shape of beasts, able to enter Knothole Manor stealthily.
“As reward for this deed, apart from the gratitude of my people, my father will grant you lands and titles commensurate with your valour, for many noble-beasts were slain in the battle, leaving their lands lordless.”
After some discussion, the party agreed to help Princess Longtail to rescue her father and defeat the loathsome Urdox. One by one, the group drank of the magical pool, and one by one they assumed new shapes.
Alabastor became a rat, a bit tattered but dapper all the same; he remained undead, a cadaverous vermin. His new owl familiar hooted in surprise at the sight of his master transformed into such a tasty treat. Armand became a hawk, imperious and regal, sharp of eye and talon; Comet transformed into mole-form. Sister expected to become a spider, but instead found herself transformed into a rabbit; it was Garvin, instead, who assumed a spider’s shape. Yam blinked huge eyes, having transformed into a bush baby, while Caulis transformed into a bristling hedgehog. Eleyin was delighted to be larger than her master, capable now of bearing Caulis into battle.
Shrunk down – their garments and equipment sprinkled with water from the pool to similarly diminish them, temporarily – the party conferred in the squirrel fortress, debating an approach to Knothole Manor via air or underground tunnel. They They settled on a subterannean approach, mole sappers having dug into the roots of the great tree. They reviewed a map of the Manor:
The plan would be to enter via the dungeons amidst the roots of the manor, then work their way upwards through the Barbican and into the upper levels if needed. Sister prepared a portal in the squirrel fortress using the Portal Chalk, so that later they could let the squirrel forces in, and a signal would be given via magical fireworks to coordinate an attack from the air. So agreed, the party traveled through the dank underground passage dug by the mole. Comet himself breached the final layer of dirt with his newly-acquired mole-talons.
The tunnel opened into a dark, dripping cave with walls of earth. Roots protruding from the ceiling sipped from a dank, stagnant puddle that occupied most of the floor, fed by a leaking storm-drain that bisected the cavern. At the far end, a series of carved steps led up to a stout, round door. Scum covered the surface of the stagnant pond.
Comet examined the pond carefully. “There’s something moving down there,” he whispered to his companions. “Be careful in getting across.”
“I have an idea,” Armand said. “Yam, you know Ray of Frost, yes?”
“Mhm. I see where you’re going with this.”
Together, the two mages began freezing the surface of the pond to create an ice-bridge. Yam conjured a pair of skates and began skating down the bridge, humming to themselves.
For a moment, the graceful Yam seemed poised to elegantly skate the length of the ice-bridge – until a spear hurtled from the gloom, knocking the gnome of their feet and into the filthy water! Three toads burst from the water, sentinels dispatched to guard the lower levels, and a fierce fight ensued, spells and spears flying. One toad leaped on its powerful legs and swallowed Sister whole. The beleagured rabbit cast Inflict Wounds and burst out from the toad in a shower of gore and necrotized tissue. Meanwhile, Alabastor’s familiar slew another, and the last was felled with a Cloud of Daggers that reduced it to shreds before it could raise the alarm.
The lower-level guards dispatched, the party caught their breath and healed their wounds, collecting a brass key from one of the toads. The party climbed a flight of stairs, up towards the dungeons of Thornwall Barbican. First they discovered some a chamber filled with crates and chests – stores and supplies for Knothole Manor, as well as the castle’s archives. They pressed on and discovered the dungeon itself, the walls made of roch to prevent burrowing animals from escaping. A dozen cells with bars fashioned from nails or other metal oddments lined the rough-hewn corridor. Within the cells were animals – mice, squirrels, voles, and the odd rabbit. There were perhaps twenty of them all in all.
“Ah! Were you sent by the Princess?” one of the squirrels said.
“Yes!” Comet replied. “We’re here to help retake the fortress. We’ve got a key – hold on.”
The brass key taken from the toads proved efficacious, and the captured castle guards and servants were freed. They would need to be equipped with weapons to be truly useful, but at least the party now had a proper force inside Knothole Manor.
Alabastor and Garvin scouted stealthily ahead, aided by shadows woven about them by Sister. They crept through the winding dungeon halls, roots protruding from the walls and ceiling, and discovered the gaolor: a fat, glossy centipede, a key-ring hooked round one of its many limbs, coiled up and sleeping. Garvin fired a Bolt of Silence to plunge the room into silence, and he and Alabastor assailed it, battering the vermin badly. It initially fought back, snapping its poisonous chelicerae, but eventually put up its numerous arms in surrender. The pair confiscated its keys and stuck it in one of the newly-emptied cells.
“Where is the Grand Duke being held?” Garvin asked, his hand crossbow trained on the creature.
“In the Greenkeep!” the centipede hissed, suitably intimidated. “Up in the highest tower, under guard by Keenfang the serpent.”
The Variegated Company continued their ascent, moving stealthily through its tunnels. They entered a dank chamber with roots curling from the ceiling, blocking advancement to the upper levels of Knothole Manor. A pair of lizards with halberds fashioned from pen-knife blades guarded a portcullis, its crank to one side. Comet, undetected, loosed an arrow, dispatching one lizard instantly as it struck him in the throat and pinned him to the wall. The other, pelted by spells and crossbow bolts, was beaten unconscious and tied up in a corner.
Sister scrawled a portal using the Portal Chalk, opening a door back to the squirrel outpost, telling the troops gathered there to await the order and to prepare weapons to arm the freed prisoners.
The party continued through the dungeons. They found a cellar, wooden kegs and barrels stacked along its walls, along with other receptacles – including several human-sized bottles and similar containers, stolen or scavenged from the world above. Along one wall an entire bottle of champagne was still stoppered. Three drunken lizard guards had tapped a bottle of Sarcophagus Pale Ale from Bier Brewing in Shambleside. In their intoxicated state they were easily dispatched and taken prisoner.
Garvin used his Gloves of Thief’s Sight to investigate a nearby chamber. He discovered a barracks in some disarray – bunks and tables scattered about or tipped over, bloodstains still spattering the floor. Weapons and armour were heaped in piles around the chamber, many made from penknives, nails, and other oddments. Lizards and amphibians filled it, sharpening weapons and coraking to one another. He crept to the next room, discovering three mangy-furred sewer-rats wielding tridents fashioned from dining forks lounging about a table playing cards here, betting using tiny shards of glass and miniscule gold coins. Their leader joined them at the head of the table: a towering rat whose ears were adorned with rings and whose pink eyes glowed in the gloom. Leaning against one wall was her weapon – a kitchen knife, which she uses as a greatsword.
The thief described the towering rat to the captives.
“That’ll be Julia,” a rabbit said. “Julia Bloodwhisker. Head of the Stormrats – mercenaries Urdox hired. They live in the sewers under the Feypark.”
“I have an idea,” Alabastor said. “Are there any other leaders in the Manor? Factions within Urdox’s forces?”
“There’s Tatterwing,” the rabbit said. “A pseudodragon, sent by Arawn. And Mugwort, a sprite in Urdox’s services. And, I suppose, Duskjaw, the monitor lizard, a foreign warrior. He claims to be from the desert of the distant south, but he’s probably just escaped from some magician’s menagerie.”
“That’ll work,” Alabastor said. “You take up a position in the cellars. I’m going to try and lure them down.”
Alabastor entered the chamber; as a rat, he reasoned, he would not be immediately suspicious.
“Brought some rations,” he said, putting several cursed plums supplied by Armand’s greenhouse. “Oh and, ah, Tatterwing wants to see you,” he added, lacing the words with a hint of magical Suggestion.
“Hmph, the bat wants to see me, he can come down himself,” Julia hissed. “What regiment are you with, anyway?”
“Uh… I…” Alabastor stumbled. He pushed out mentally, trying to possess the rat-mercenary, but her mind repelled him; his body had crumpled to the ground, and the rats clustered around it in confusion. Flitting back to his cadaverous form, Alabastor drew a deep breath, sitting up, his eyes ablaze, his Fey Presence giving him a look of macabre gravitas. “I am a servant of the Faerie King of Death, Arawn!” he proclaimed. “Flee before me!”
“Ugh,” Julia said. “One of Mugwort’s stupid pranks. That foolish fairy will rue the day… I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.” He stomped off upwards, heading for Mugwort.
Alabastor, meanwhile, glanced slyly at the remaining guards. “Hey,” he said. “Now that your boss is gone, you boys fancy a drink? We broached a cask down in the cellar.”
The rat-mercenaries looked from one to the other, waiting for Julia’s footsteps to recede, then followed Alabastor into the cellar…
…where the party and their animal soldiers awaited, the champagne bottle aimed at the door. With a deafening pop the cork flew across the cellar, breaking the neck of the first of the Stormrats!
The rest of the mercenaries were swiftly dispatched by the assembled forces. While the forces loyal to the Princess and Grand Duke Richard Longtail got into position to fully take the Barbican, the Variegated Company ascended to Heartwood Hall.
The party entered a vast hall near the heart of the tree, illuminated by occasional window and phosphorescent fungi, stretching upward. At its centre, the core of the tree – the heartwood – was still intact. Stairs wound up the ornately carved wooden walls, leading to workshops along the sides of the hall, including a smithy and carpenter’s shop. The stair continued to climb up to a hole in the ceiling, leading to the Squirrel Cotts above. Marring the heartwood itself was a dark stain, spreading slowly from a wound in its side.
Caulis investigated the stain. It appeared to be fungal rot, seeping into the wood, tendrils of disease winding up the tree.
“I don’t like this…” Caulis said.
“Let me see what I can do,” Sister said, ministering to the tree carefully. She cast a healing spell, and some of the stain retreated, restoring some of the tree’s health.
Above them, flitting to and fro through Heartwood Hall were several mosquitoes, some bearing spears or crossbows – apparently drawn by the sound of the spell being cast. The party stealthily made their way into a nearby carpenter’s workshop off the main hall to avoid detection. Here they found a mess of tools and loose wood, thoroughly ransacked.
“Hmm,” Garvin said, eyeing the far wall. “There’s something odd about this shelf…” With a spidery limb, he pushed the shelf inwards, and it revolved – a secret door, leading to a stairway that wound up through the tree! The party hastened upwards, managing to avoid the mosquito guards of Heartwood Hall and the forces stationed in the Squirrrel Cotts, as the stair brought them all the way up to the Rotten Tower.
The passage opened into a small chamber behind a rotten arras. This the party dilsodged, finding themselves within a large chamber carved into the interior of the tree, which looked to have once been a resplendent hall of tapestries depicting the history of Knothole Manor and its inhabitants – the forging of treaties with local beasts, the hosting of Seelie fairies in the great hall, battles with rats from the sewers. One scene portrayed the Manor’s squirrel warriors defeating a human looking for a cheap meal, trussing him up with vines. However, fungal infestation had destroyed these beautiful hand-woven images, leaving them mottled and twisted, threads fraying and discoloured. Gigantic pink puffballs of mould protruded in bulbous clusters from the walls and ceiling, while fat red toadstools emerged from the floor.
Armand – fascinated as always by all things botanical – took a sample from one of the puffballs. Despite his care, the sorcerer caused the puffball to explode in a cloud of poisonous spores, causing the party to rapidly retreat. Several of the fungal puffballs were trembling strangely, as if they too would soon explode.
They entered a domed room which might once have been a ballroom or a dining chamber; teeming orange growths now utterly consumed it, eating away at the floor and walls. The ceiling and upper walls were covered in mucilaginous clusters of glossy white eggs. The bones of squirrels, mice, and other animals carpeted the floor of the room. Comet, in mole form, burrowed into the wall of the room, hoping to excavate a clearer path. The party followed, and the improvised passage brought them to an ornate mechanical elevator extending from this section of Knothole Manor upwards. However, vines and fungal growths had clotted the machinery, and the elevator was stuck in the shaft.
Yam, thinking quickly, rubbed some Salve of Sentience into the vines, awakening them to life.
“Hey, vines,” Yam said. “Uh, you mind moving out of the way?”
“Begone intruders!” The rustling, newly-sentient vines hissed. “Befoul Knothole Manor no more.”
“We’re in the service of Princess Longtail,” Yam said with great solemnity. “Please, we must ascend, if we are to cleanse the Manor of evil.”
The vines rustled to themselves, then, seemingly convinced, began to withdraw, allowing the elevator free acess to the upper levels. The party packed themselves inside and began their ascent.
The elevator came to a halt and the party stepped out from it and into an ancient-looknig structured. Moss had infiltrated the resplendent chapel of Knothole Manor – a shrine dedicated to the tree itself, whose image was carved our of the far wall. Small niches honoured other figures important to the Manor’s inhabitants, such as Titania, the Faerie Queen, and Oberon, her sometimes-husband and Lord of the Hunt; the Green Man, a nature god popular among the woodwoses in the Tangle, was here reproduced as a Green Mouse, fur transformed into moss and leaves. The pews here were totally overgrown with lichen.
Vines along the walls of the chapel had born succulent-looking berries of two types: orange and purple. Of these, Armand took careful samples.
The party set about exploring the other chamber of the Moss-Chapel. They soon discovered a chamber containing an ornate reliquary , overgrown with vines and lichen that seemed to spill out from the carved wood of the box. Several rotting corpses were snared in the vines – two sewer-rats and a lizard. Visible on the lizard’s body was a ring of keys. Carved on the wall was what looked like a series of musical notes. After several touch-and-go attempts, Garvin obtained the keys – a key with an acorn bow, another with a leaf bow, and a third with a mushroom bow – avoiding the grasping stranglevines that tried to snatch him.
Caulis, attempting an unusual tactic, distracting the stranglevines by disguising itself as a sensuous dryad, dancing lasciviously to attract the vines’ attention. The vines twitched, moving towards the alluring illusion, allowing Alabastor to swiftly open the box, plucking a simple wooden flute from within.
“Aha!” Caulis said, inspecting the instrument. “A Flute of the Forest – and this must be one of the tunes for it.” The homunculus gestured to the notes on the wall. “Play them, let’s see what they do!”
Alabastor played a brief tune, discovering that the Flute allowed him to Speak with Plants – though the vines were currently whispering “sweet nothings” to the illusion, to his mixed amusement and disgust.
The party also discovered a belfry with ornate stained glass windows depicting what looked like an army of trees, unrooting themselves from the ground and marching, animals held within their branches as they war with an enemy army of evil fairies. Hanging from the ceiling of the belfry was an ornate bell of copper hue, a crack running down it. A vine served as a bell-rope.
“I’ve heard of these,” Comet said. “A Verdurous Bell. They awaken the trees… best not to ring it save as a last resort.”
Searching the belfry, Alabastor turned up a few more notes for the Flute of the Forest – a different song.
The Company pressed on, discovering a guard-chamber with a stair leading up into the Greenkeep, sealed behind a portcullis. The gate guard was a towering monitor lizard – clearly not native to Hex – and his scorpion pet, infested with some sort of crimson fungus sprouting from its arachnid head. Theysurmised this was the brutish Duskjaw, mentioned by some of the prisoners.
Alabastor’s ghost discarded his body temporarily and possessed the scorpion, striking at Duskjaw. Yam, Armand, and Sister struck with spells, while Garvin and Comet sniped from the back. Duskjaw managed to strike several vicious blows, one sending Comet flying, but was overwhelmed before he could raise the alarm. The massive creature toppled and fell to the floor with a thud; they confiscated the Crown Key it bore. The party proceeded to the Greenkeep, stealthily creeping in shadows conjured by Sister’s shadowy spiders to avoid detection from Keenfang the serpent.
Two lizard guards with halberds were positioned at the door of the tallest tower. Alabastor – back in his rat-shape – distracted these by telling them that wine had been opened back in the guard barracks, and that he would cover for them. The deception accomplished, the remaining party members crept from the foliage and opened the door with the Crown Key, ascending a flight of spiral steps to the tower-top.
Within a cell at the very top of the tower, a bedraggled, aging squirrel with grey fur and an august mien sat on the edge of a small cot, clad in tattered garments unbefitting his noble bearing. This was obviously none other than Duke Richard Longtail himself, kept as a hostage.
“Your Grace,” Sister said with a bow. “Your daughter sent us to rescue you. Her forces await our signal to retake Knothole Manor.”
The squirrel duke stirred from his meditation, fire in his eyes. “Then by all means, give it! We shall fight the scaly bastards off yet!”
Yam proceeded to ignite magical fireworks from the tower-top, while Sister, sketching a chalk portal, gave the signal to attack.
Fierce battle was joined, the freed prisoners in Thornwall Barbican battling with the Stormrats and other mercenaries below, while a crack force of squirrel commandos poured into the Greenkeep through the portal, supported by robin cavalry. The tree of Knothole Manor shook as swords and spears struck shields. The squeaks and croaks of battle echoed through its hollow halls, the blood of toads, lizards, rats, squirrels, voles, and rabbits mingling. Insects swarmed, directed by the sinister Mugwort, though when the battle was finished, the strange fairy creature was nowhere to be found. Vines – directed by Alabastor’s Flute – strangled many foes in the Moss-Chapel.
Eventually, the battle brought the Company and a ragtag band of animal warriors to the centre of the Greenkeep. The remains of the Grand Hall dripped with slime, the tapestries on the walls sloughing into putridity, stagnant water pooling on the floor. Presiding over this decay was a massive crimson salamander, clad in rusted plate armour that looked like it might have been made for a particularly elaborate Hexian puppet. He was accompanied by two bodyguards: a lean, albino rabbit with pink eyes and a massive slingshot, and a malignant, hulking fey – though less than two feet in height, at this scale the insect-winged brute was a towering presence. A massive map of the Feypark, marked with stones to indicate armies, occupied the middle of the Grand Hal, while a force of lizards and sewer-rats bristled with weapons, the last of Urdox’s troops.
“FOR THE FOREST!” Comet cried, swinging his hammer, Chainbreaker and cracking skulls, his dancing rapier skewering troops to either side.
“Arawn take you!” the salamander cursed, drawing a small magical dagger – at this scale, the size of a gigantic claymore – and wading into battle, immediately decapitating a squirrel warrior rushing towards him.
Yam filled the mind of the hare with visions of torment, and the creature quite literally “bounced” – dropping its weapon and fleeing.
Sister and Alabastor waded in with spells. Conjured spiders burst from swelling buboes everywhere the spider-cleric touched. Blasts of eldritch force tore enemies apart, blood spilling across the map of the Feypark. Armand seared and electrocuted, reducing Stormrats to ash.
Garvin, lurking in the shadows, fired a poisoned bolt, wounding Urdox badly under the arm.
Caulis, seeing the sprite attacking Yam, conjured illusory vines; the sprite believed itself entangled and thrashed, unable to escape the grasp of the tendrils in his mind.
Comet, meanwhile, closed in for the kill. He hammered at Urdox repeatedly, Chainbreaker uttering revolutionary slogans, Comet cursing the salamander tyrant. Urdox landed a terrible blow, nearly severing one of the ranger’s limbs. Another caught him in the torso, drawing blood. Undeterred, Comet darted round the side of the towering salamander, while Madame Sanguinaire, his dancing sword liberated from the armoury of Delirium Castle, fenced with Urdox, keeping him occupied long enough for Comet to launch himself at full speed, Chainbreaker swinging. With a mighty blow, the hammer shattered the knee of the salamander, bringing him to his knees. A second block cracked his skull, dashing his brains across the floor.
When the dust cleared, Urdox and his forces were dead, fled, or vanquished. As Grand Duke Longtail’s forces secured Knothole Manor once again, Caulis studied the map with some consternation. It seemed to show other trees in other parts of the Feypark, marked with a mysterious black mark – the sigil of Arawn.
“I fear this may not be the only tree assailed by Arawn,” Caulis muttered.
“Arawn?” Comet said.
“An Unseelie King. One of the four rulers of Faerie, along with Mab, Oberon, and Titania.”
“Hmm. A fight for another day, perhaps.”
In the meantime, however, rewards were in order. The Grand Duke had ordained that, given that several prominent nobles had been slain in the battles with Urdox, the party would be granted their vacant titles.
Yam was made Earl of the Pellucid Gazebo, a delicate structure made of glass deep in the Feypark, watched over by robins and other birds sworn to the Grand Duke.
Armand was made Earl of the Orchidarium, a large orchid garden nearby, tended by many voles.
Alabastor was made Baron of the Rosepatch, a rose garden home to many mice and shrews.
Sister was made Baroness of of the Viridian Maze, a hedge maze not far from Knothole Manor, home to numerous rabbits and moles.
Garvin was made Baron of Lilypad Isle, a tiny island in a pond nearby, with frog villages about its periphery.
Caulis was given a special title – Archbishop of the Manor, sworn to keep the realm protected from spiritual forces of darkness and decay.
Finally, Comet, hero of the day, would be made the Marquis of Westbridge: a small footbridge over a stream in the park to the west, encrusted with the structures of the squirrel-kingdom.
These rewards bestowed, their bellies full from the victory banquet, the Variegated Company departed the now-happy halls of Knothole Manor and returned to their previous forms and sizes, perhaps with a certain wistfulness. This chivalric romance in the Feypark was over. Penumbra, remnant of a dead empire, still menaced the spires of Hex.
The Company began walking through the forest paths, back into the city.
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