Hex Crawl 23 #241: The Small Hairy Men

Eleven hexes northwest of Alakran.

 

In tunnels and burrows honeycombing this ridge of hills lives from time immemorial a tribe of not-quite-human creatures called the Small Hairy Men. You may treat them as kobolds, except there is nothing reptilian or dracomic about them. They are spindly and hunched, covered in fine dark hair, with a coarse shock growing wild around the head and chin. 

The Small Hairy Men only come out at night, in groups of 4-24, and must live off the proceeds of their hunting in the hills to the west, or on whatever secrets their underground tunnels hide. They only attack at odds of 5:1, and even then will harry with wicked slingstones before closing in with flint knives.

Beyond this, little is known about them, and speculation abounds on what they have at the end of their burrows and whether there are any Small Hairy Women.  They are left alone in general; the best policy is to travel only by day in the region of their ridge. A legend does go about that if you can catch one of them alone, and corner them without escape, they will submit and become your willing servant for life.

Hex Crawl 23 #69: Junjeh's Gnolls

Three hexes northeast, two southeast of Alakran.

 

Using black-feathered arrows, Junjeh's tribe is the rival to Leetakh's gang. They are nomadic throughout their range, carrying their treasure with them, although for day sleeping and camping they do tend to favor a few water holes known only to them, as well as some defensible positions in the low northern hills.

They serve the other head of that dual demon, Mormo, who represents terror. As such they are viciously aggressive and calculatingly cruel. As of the end of the campaign they have not yet been decisively defeated, though they were on the losing side of the attempted invasion of Shasari by the blue dragon Razisiz.

The order of battle is as follows, again using Altered Beasts, Gnolls for special types:

Leader: Junjeh, Gnoll Warchief (at basecamp 25% of nights, otherwise on patrol)

Basecamp: Cave mother, 18 whelps, 2 cave gnolls (who carry Junjeh around on a throne of bones), 2 giant hyenas; and all the other gnolls during the day

Patrols (x3):

• 7 Hyena Mothers and Sisters (normal gnoll warriors)
• 2 Rageborn sisters
• 7 males (armed with slings; normal gnolls with only 3/4 of the hit points, worse arms and armor)
• 1 giant hyenas (mount for the strongest warrior)

As they raid and trade, their treasure stash is always in flux. Currently it consists of: 

• Black velvet mask stitched with silver thread (45gp)
• Cloth-of-gold vestments (250gp)
• Silver ewer (50gp)
• Small mirror set in a painted wooden frame (25gp)
• A magical staff, made of crooked dry wood carved with twisted blood-rubbed lines, that Junjeh uses to control birds when needed (once per day, dominate beast spell, for 1 hour)
• Junjeh's escape policy: a potion of shape change into a locust for up to 12 hours
• Junjeh's dire barbed longspear: +2 enchantment, if intentionally stuck in target for one melee hit does an equal amount of damage coming out on the next attack opportunity, no hit roll needed.
  
• Thirteen zircon gems each worth 100 gp
• 2300 gp in coin, mostly low-value (in pack on a basecamp giant hyena) 

NOTE: To easily remember NPC names, I sometimes reach for pop culture and celebrity resonances, as I did with the James-Earl-Jones-styled Kokumo. Junjeh and Leetakh are thus named after the best known members of this classic band.

Enemies of Vegankind

For gaming campaigns that aim for weirdness, whimsy ...

or simply things that kids can hack and slash at without too much moral injury ...

let's imagine some of the standard humanoids as semi-sentient plant creatures.


TOMATO GOBLINS

Unclothed, they appear as limbs and torso of tightly coiled, hairy green vines, surrounding fruity inner organs and supporting a bulbous head with pointy ears and an evil little face that -- according to the goblin's age -- is green, yellow, orange, or lighter and deeper shades of red. They give off a characteristic sharp green smell.

They are usually wrapped in cast-off pieces of clothing and armor, armed with sharp spear-sticks for poking and throwing.

When one is fatally squashed, pulp and seeds spatter everywhere, and if allowed to grow, one seed equals one future goblin.

The existence of these creatures is one reason tomatoes are feared. Adding to this reputation, a tomato goblin will on rare occasions become infected with green, horned, noxious worms (treat as the worms of a Son of Kyuss).

EGGPLANT HOBGOBLINS (Aubgoblins)

These larger creatures are built and scented similarly to tomato goblins, but their vines are more yellow, their heads and organs various hues, some a very deep purple, some mottled with ivory white, some fully albino. Their age can be seen from the head and jaw, the young rounded and egg-shaped, the older more elongated.

These "aubgoblins" are less impulsive and more strategic than their tomato cousins, but speak the same Nightshade language. Their heads are packed densely with spongy, pale matter, within which a few dozen seeds can spawn new aubgoblins if the old one falls. Human-sized, they take care to select the best martial equipment from battlefields they loot, and usually have at least medium armor and 1-3 weapons including a shield.

PUMPKIN BUGBEARS

Their tall, rangy bodies covered in dark green leafy hair, vegetable bugbears sport a broad, squat, orange gourd on their shoulders. Born blind and faceless on the vine, their rite of maturity has them carve their own features into the pumpkin, letting out the inner, flickering glow of a corrupted soul. They move in absolute silence, and can dim their jack o'lantern light to firefly brightness when they don't wish to shine in the dark.

Stealing material from farms to clothe and arm themselves, they wear burlap sacking, tarpaulin canvas, pot-helm and pan-lid armor, all tied on with frayed rope. Their preferred weapon is a heavy piece of log with pounded spikes, bolts, or an embedded plowshare at the business end.

Having no seeds with which to reproduce, bugbears clip and plant grafted vine segments from their bodies that new ones may grow. Their penchant for stealing and frightening human children may stem from the inadequacy of their family life.

Mad Archmage Campaign: Village Invasion

I realize these play reports may  not be the most exciting reading, but hell with it, I do need to document my campaigns like this, and it helps the players if this kind of collective memory is preserved.

In the meantime, I do have about three more meaty posts on the slow, slow go.

And still bummed I have to miss Dragonmeet this year.

Session, Nov 30, 2014

Fingauble, the wizard who had been paying the Lightning's Hand party to grant access to the library of the Mad Archmage, opened negotiations with the Muleteers for a cheaper deal if they could find out the secret to opening the doors, which he thought was a password. After reviewing their analysis of the 25 puzzle rooms he opined that they must have made an error somewhere, and that there should be a way to determine in what order the path adds letters of rooms to the word. The Muleteers inadvertently gave away their guesses about the password to the final interior door of the library, which Fingauble "charitably" repaid by casting a Detect Magic spell for free. Fingauble further agreed to give the party 50 pieces of gold and a scroll and holy robe that would help in fighting the demons in the upper castle cellars if they gave him the secret to entering the library.

The next day, Grimnir wandered off and the remaining Muleteers headed to the Castle to study the puzzle rooms. On the way, they were approached by a pack of five beak dogs, which their tame beak dog seemed all too eager to meet. As the beak dogs loped toward them, they staked down the tame dog and opened up with missiles. The pack charged and managed to seriously injure Erasmo's head and arm, also giving Titus a good scare with a near-miss beak to the throat, so that against such odds there was no such choice but to flee. The beak dogs soon freed their fellow beast and after a short test of dominance accepted him into the pack. With what remained of the day the Muleteers decided to make haste to the Grey City, leaving the still-injured Nixington and Erasmo in Garyburgh to heal more.

On arriving at the Silver Eel Inn these travellers found a large beer cart parked outside and a drinking contest about to begin courtesy of the Fickle Firkin brewery. The contest was eventually won by a dwarf (of course) but for a while Winmore held him neck and neck, and got a forty ounce bottle of beer as a runner-up prize. The members of the party were wheeled into their rooms afterward.

Back in Garyburgh, in the common room of the Wizard's Wench, as the end of the evening drew into sight, a peasant ran in shouting "Orcs in the fields!" The initial order of battle of the defenders of the village consisted of the barkeep and a following of drunkards; Captain Rurik and a detachment of six Grey City-State guards; the novice adventuring party Free Roamers, down to four active members after taking injuries in a fight with kobolds; the five-strong Lightning's Hand, their lightning wand, alas, depleted; and the weakened, leg-maimed Muleteer wizard Nixington.

The night was wracked by strong-gusting winds and rain. The defenders saw torch lights behind a line of trees and charged there, only to find the lights were an illusion, and came back to find the village green surging with Bloody Axe orcs, the same tribe seen and fought in the dungeons. Nixington, exposed, almost took an arrow. Spellcast and sound fighting held off the central thrust of the attack, but not before another Free Roamer went down injured. Fingauble came down the stair of the inn, grumbling about roisterers outside disturbing his sleep, opened a window and casually lobbed a ten die fireball into the midst of a cluster of orcs before heading back upstairs.

But on the flank, fighting between the houses, orcs slaughtered the barkeep and drunks, then outflanked and slew all but one of the guards. An old man was spotted at the back of their ranks, consorting with a baboon and two young, strong fellows - the same group the party had heard tell of before, travelling to Garyburgh and then vanishing. This old man was a spell caster, incapacitating foes with stinking vapors and placing a charm on Rurik. When the flanking group emerged into the square and saw charred bodies and smoldering grass, they beat a retreat into the night, Rurik among them.

In the morning after the slaughter, it became clear that no law or government would be left in Garyburgh, as Pennypacker the tax collector loaded a cart with worldly goods and family and set off back to safer places. For now, it was enough to bury the dead: 10 humans and more than 20 orcs. One captive orc commander remained to tell the tale.