(I'm in the process of cleaning out my draft folder, neatening up and releasing some unfinished things as they are. This is a suburb from Infingrad I had originally intended to release in PDF format. Here it is in a perfectly playable blog format. I've cut the suburb in half from its original size but there is still plenty here).
Caprick Pools:
Overall Description:
The border zone between Caprick Pools and other suburbs is a few blocks of bare earth; undulating, hyperorange rust filing dunes. The roads are uneven and in disrepair, buildings are often abandoned. The rust sand is moist, muddy and sucking. Fallen and crumbling structures can be seen half drowned and sinking in the rust dunes.
A zesty, shimmering, metallic smell wafts from Caprick Pools. It smells too clean and is slightly intoxicating.
The suburb itself is one of raised stone boardwalks and walkways. These link stilted, narrow and often towering buildings. The buildings have a square, stone pagoda-like quality. Stairs feature prominently, circling and crisscrossing the exterior of tiered buildings. Often exterior walls are missing from a story - replaced by busy colonnades of square columns.
Beneath the stilted buildings and boardwalks are the pools and the sludge. The pools are thick, near solid quicksilver of light cyan. They would be picturesque if it wasn’t always dark and they were not toxic. An iridescent sheen coats the quicksilver. The sludge is a wetter, more dangerous version of the outlying rust dunes, imbued with the slow wet quicksilver of the pools.
The Sludge: Like very slowly acting quicksand. You will drown in it if you stand in place.
If a being comes into contact with the sludge test CON, if failure, d6:
- A milky, cloudy pale colouration infects the skin, splotches of translucent flesh all over body (-1 CHA).
- Roll a d6, the flesh on 1-2) Feet, 3-4) Hands, 5-6) Face, rots away in patches and is replaced with dry and stiff quicksilver coating on bone. Negatively affects appropriate statistic by d4.
- Teeth, hair and fingernails liquify and are replaced with dry strands of quicksilver.
- Tongue liquifies to quicksilver then dribbles down and dries upon chin and chest. Can no longer talk.
- Sculpted suit of dried quicksilver forms around body, permanent +d4 to AC but -d6 DEX.
- Roll a d6, the flesh on 1-2) Feet, 3-4) Hands, 5-6) Face, is covered in dried quicksilver for d4 days. At the end of that time the quicksilver cracks, crumbles and falls away - taking the flesh with it. Negatively affects appropriate statistic by d4.
The Pools: Grasping heavy quicksilver. You will drown in it if you are not pulled out quickly. Any who step foot into it instantly start to sink. Test STR to get out (needs some point of grabbing).
If a being comes into contact with the sludge test CON, if failure, d6:
- Roll a d6, the flesh on 1-2) legs, 3-4) arms , 5-6) head, rots away completely and is replaced with dry and stiff quicksilver coating on bone. Negatively affects appropriate statistic by d6.
- Eyes, teeth, hair, fingernails, liquify to quicksilver than melt away, lost forever.
- Arms and legs fused to torso by dry quicksilver. Now immobile.
- Entire body coated in everswirling quicksilver, +d4 to DEX, STR and AC test CON each day, if roll fails, die.
- Always feels ill, all tests Rolled with Disadvantage, once a day vomit d6 HD1 quicksilver worms that want to kill host. Test CON every day, if roll fails, die.
- Body completely covered in dried quicksilver for d4 days. Quicksilver melts away and reforms into a quiksilver doppleganger at the end of that time. It slinks away to brood and plot the murder of its original form. Has the same stats values + 1 as copied being.
Local Populace:
- Pale Horns: Mangy, pale goat people. Horns huge and shimmering with quicksilver. Wary and spiteful of non Pale Horns. Hateworship the sickness bringing Pools and The Crawling Leviathan that dwells within. Often splashed with quicksilver or limbs coated in the substance. AC12. HD1-4. If armed, will use rusty old harpoon (d6).
- Light Suited Pale Horn: Pale Horn wrapped in light, quicksilver diving suits. Mostly heavy cloth. AC13. HD1-4. Armed with a quicksilver coated harpoon (d6+1).
- Medium Suited Pale Horn: Pale Horn wrapped in medium, quicksilver diving suits. Heavy cloth with chunks of hardened leather. AC15. HD1-4. Armed with a quicksilver coated harpoon (d6+1).
- Heavy Suited Pale Horn: Pale Horn wrapped in heavy, quicksilver diving suits. Heavy cloth with laced with chunks of metal. AC18. HD1-6. Armed with a huge quicksilver coated harpoon (d8+1).
- Hornless: Goat people so rotted with quicksilver sickness their horns withered away or snapped off. Near skeletal. Incoherent, their near sightless eyes oozing tears of quicksilver. AC12. HD1. Claws (d4).
- The Crawling Levithan: An obese and flabby infantlike man, crawling. Tubes emerge from its mouth to cover body. Hands and feet are webbed, and flipperlike. Rumoured to dwell in The Pools.
Suburb Map:
- 7S, Tiered garden of solidified quicksilver, shaped into leering, toothy smiles and jaws. All storeys open, colonnades of decorated columns. Garden is created and curated by Kark Bor a suitless pale horn, skin translucent, hands and arm to elbow coated in quicksilver. He is maddened and sick from his creations. d20 Heavy Suited Pale Horns protect his workshop and gallery and transport works to clients. Lingering here too long is the same as being exposed to The Pools (test CON and consult table).
- 2S, Orok’s Shots, dried quicksilver pellet store (50 gold per pellet). Exposing the pellets to heat causes them to melt, those touched by liquid quicksilver are impacted as contacting The Pools (test CON with Advantage and consult table if fail). Pale Horn Trot Orok makes and sells the pellets, his workshop upstairs. His teeth are fangs and are quicksilver coated. His cheeks, lips and jaw are rotted, revealing quicksilver coated bone.
- A crowd of d20 Light Suited Pale Horns play “Choke Chain”. Entire worldly possessions are put up as a bet, participants both wrap a linked chain about their neck and pull in opposite directions to see who chokes first. Winner gets possessions of loser and gets to roll dead body into The Pools as offering to The Crawling Leviathan.
- 3S, Fighting Pits of The Forgotten. d100 leering and cheering Pale Horns of various suits watch Hornless fight in shallow pools of quicksilver. The fighting Hornless have several layers of quicksilver covering their nude bodies. They rarely survive a few days even if they win every fight. The pits are run by the Heavy Suited Pale Horn, Helk Loken. Her enormous horns are adorned with several quicksilver fused skulls of smaller horned Pale Horns. She will wade into the quicksilver fighting pools to finish fights she deems boring.
- 3S, Pale Horn Tenement Building inhabited by d10 Pale Horn families, patrolled by d20 Heavy Suited Pale Horns. Exterior and interior is covered in large ornately bordered mirrors. The mirrors are decorated with the horns of the dead, often family heirlooms. The inhabitants constantly tend and preen enormous body covering boils they are infected with. The boils leak and weep sizzling quicksilver. The inhabitants are proud of their quicksilver boils and are quick to parade particularly impressive specimens.
- 7S, The Tower of Chain, abandoned quicksilver working factory. The tower is hollowed and open in the centre - most floors a simple ring of balcony and stairs, littered with rusted workbenches and tools. The tower opens beneath to the sludge and the pools. Great cauldrons hanging from chains and pulleys were once used to scoop up and transport the quicksilver from below. A clan of 4d10 diseased Hornless haunts the tower. The are naked, diseased, breed/die with rapidity and weird lengths of chains as flails. They have set up a makeshift traps with the abandoned tools and chain to find secure flesh to eat.
- 3S, Silver Horns Golem Store, owned and operated by Ussa Rik. She crafts golems of quicksilver and the skull and bones of a deceased pale horns. She wears a particularly thick and protective heavy suit while working. She is clean, healthy and upwarped beneath her suit. Silver Golems cost 500 gp for a d4 HD, d6 for stats and 1000 gp for d6 HD, 2d6 for stats.
- 4S, The Moth Burrow, thick and square and blunt unlike the surrounding ornate, pagodaesque local architecture. Engravened with crude moths. Huge stone doors locked fast bar any entry within. Clearly buries deep underground. In fact, The Moth Burrow descends 20 floors beneath the ground, eventually leading to The Alacratic Labyrinth. Heavy stone doors block the way on every floor. Deadly mothmen assassins kill all those that attempt entry.
- 6S, The Harpoonery, Oversized harpoons, favoured by the local pale horns sold here. They are made of dried quicksilver, and shimmer with iridessence. Often engraved with the likeness of rats. Rat harpoons attack as a spear and increase attack die damage by 1 (d6 to d8, etc). Raga Rikss sells them for 200 gp piece. Raga’s hands have been mutated by quicksilver working and are stringy spikeworm masses of dried quicksilver. This appears to help her work greatly. Her store is protected by d10 medium suited Pale Horns.
- A columned mounted stone statue of the The Crawling Leviathan. An obese and flabby infantlike man, crawling. Tubes emerge from its mouth to cover body. Hands and feet are webbed, and flipperlike.
- 6S, Icicles and frost coat the exterior, condensation fog wafts nearby. 3d10 Heavy Suited Pale Horns patrol the building. They wear Blue Black Robes over their suits, these appear to warm them. Droma Ka ice builder of the guild Black Gavel is operating here, experimenting on the The Pools. His ultimate goal is to clean and clear. He has recruited the Pale Horns to protect him and his work. Droma Ka is wearing a Blue Black Robe and appears as as a man encased in thin layer of ice, blue of eye, tooth and hair. He requires assistance installing ice obelisks around the suburb.
- The boardwork has crumbled and collapsed here.
- 1S, Pale Horn Camp inhabited with d6 Pale Horn families. A mess of old iron dome shaped cages, hammered into planks of rotting wood sprawling over The Sludge. Rags and wood cover the iron cage domes to form a tangled squatter camp. Several corpses of Hornless hang as sacrifice and appeasement to the monsters of the The Pools. The residents always want more sacrifices.
- 4S,Dagmar’s Cakes, slightly mutated Pale Horn, Dagmar, serves jellied meat, the processing of which he swears has nothing to do with the quicksilver of The Pools. Dagmar has translucent tentacles for arms, they are rather dexterous. Dagmar swears this mutation has nothing with the quicksilver of The pools. Dagmar is lying about both things and always needs more quicksilver for his chemical workshop upstairs.
- Lighting shaped eruption of dried quicksilver has smashed through boardwalk. About 20 metres tall. Coming into contact with the eruption is as touching The Sludge.
- An engraved ridge serves as a lip around a large hole in the boardwalk. A nearby group of d6 light suited Pale Horns lurks in the shadows, waiting to gleefully push passerbys into the The Pools below.
- The boardwork has crumbled and collapsed here.
- 4S, a stone workshop devoted to the creation of new segments of the boardwalk supporting the suburb. The foreman is the fanged Pale Horn, Vad Gret. d20 Pale Horns chisel away at stone throughout the building. Small stone effigies to The Crawling Leviathan are scattered inside and out, also made by the workers here. Ved Gret is particularly superstitious and will not allow a new segment of boardwalk laid without an accompanying sacrifice to whatever lurks in the The Pools.
- 6S, Cek Berk’s Eatery. Cek Berk is a Pale One, head covered in in short horns - rather than the normal large two. He serves d20 Pale Ones feasts of roasted marsupials (long snouted, six legged, and rather plump). Creature being roasted is the Blue Eyed Audock. It induces hallucinations as a defense mechanism when alive. When roasted properly Audock flesh induces rather spectacular dreams. The second floor and third of the eatery is devoted to lounging and sleeping areas. The fifth and sixth floors are home to the psychedelic Audoc Pens. Cec Berk always needs more Audocks, and he knows they are a pest in nearby Salt Field.
- Stone stairs leading down from boardwalk to The Sludge.
- 2S, Madelk Sob’s Puppets, entire building is swathed in shadows, burning braziers about the building emit too little light. Madelk Sob the Pale One wears heavy black robes, her hands are never seen. She sells what she calls “Shadow Puppets”, man soldier shaped, wooden dolls. Creating a shadow from them and passing a CHA test results in a small shadow golem emerging. All stats of the shadow golem are 1d4 and it has 1d4 Hit Points. Each shadow puppet costs 500 gold. Madelk Sob always is running low on wood for her puppets. She has a Cauldron of Shadows brewing on the top storey her building.
- 2S, Surrounded by 2 storey sentinels of craggy ancient stone, mouths and eyes glistening and dripping droplets of quicksilver. Entrance to the building is a huge stone door, covered in locks. Inside is near endless rooms of bare stone and locked doors, nearly always bereft of ornamentation, utility or occupation. In the center of the facility is a great statue of a gormless man, leaking endless quicksilver from eyes, mouth and nose into a square pool. This slowly leaks down to the The Pools below.
- 2S, A half submerged, quicksilver coated mausoleum devoted to venerable Pale Horns of the past. Replete with statues and relics, with heavy focus on horns and hoofs. Quiksilver drips from everything. Chained to each tomb are vicious and undying Quicksilver Mongrels (Large skeletal dogs, coated in quiksilver. Fang filled jaws compose half of the mass of these lopsided beasts. AC13, 2HD, bite: d10. Bite is as if target has come into contact with The Sludge, roll on table).
- Stone stairs leading down from boardwalk to The Sludge.
