Let's Crawl! New Moon Barrens, Part 3: Monstrous Encounters in the New Moon Barrens

[This one's been sitting in the drafts a while and I've moved on to new campaigns but I figured this should be posted for posterity! Enoy :]

Now that we have a hexcrawl procedure, we can get to the fun part, actually filling in the world here. However, it has changed somewhat since last we saw it.

Glow Up. 

After rereading THIS (and not wanting to fill in over 100 hexes again) I decided to revamp the old hex map into something more interesting and digestible. Observe the Poison Swamp in Hex 5.00 and the UNASSAILABLE CLIFFS OF THE FOUL DARK MAGE MEZZIZAR in Hexes 9.02 and 9.03. The Barren itself is now ~100 ft. lower than the surrounding geography, fitting of the Krakatoa equivalent explosion that happened there a century ago. The dotted purple lines are ley lines a la Dolemwood and wherever they cross you can find wizards, points of power or dungeons. 

The Barrens Proper

(The Brown area in the center)

Ok so take Death Valley and put a moon above it in a geostationary orbit. Now fill it full of Mad Max style barbarians, Moon Beasts, ghosts, androids and a triumvirate of beholder, dragon and lich and you got yourself a great place to adventure! Or die! Probably die!

Ten years ago, a Conan-type named Dyn Cryf ventured into the New Moon, intent on getting to the bottom of its water theft. While he was never seen again, a few days later the New Moon pulsed, cracked and released a shockwave that tore asunder everything within almost 20 miles. 

Its now a desolate place, but certainly not an empty one. While I don't exactly know why the moon is here I have a few ideas brewing. It represents a warp in the Rainbow Veil, a great border between Reality and Un-Reality, a place here things That Aren't Quite Right come from, such as the beholder milling about. The Prismatic nature of the Veil is under strain and so its guardians are also being summoned here, great Reds Knights and Yellow Emissaries, trying to figure out what's going on. The Moon is almost certainly some great technological marvel from forwards, backwards or sideways in time, possibly with a broken AI. From it spills forth Moon Beasts, Moon Men and Moon Goblins. 

Techno-aberrant prismatic space-time ruptures are common here, usually in the form of holograms, glimpses into alternative timelines and the summoning of aberrations. This of course gets Arthur C. Clark-ed into tales of ghosts, portals and monsters that populate the tables below. 

2. A Dragon

 I already have two other dragons in other parts of the map and I decided they probably want no part of the nonsense going on over in the Barrens. So, I added a third. A weird one. 

What are dragons? In my games traditionally, they are symbols of avarice and mania, each one obsessing over a unique material in addition to gold, their draconic lust. They are products of enormous hoards, spontaneously appearing from them, wholly formed, or else they are kings or adventurers who obsess and hoard enough, long enough. I think this one was a combination, a Warrior-King, an Atilla type, who raided and raided and plumbed the depths of even older Elvish tombs for riches. Soon he became known as the Wyrm of the West or something fearsome like that, and it's only a matter of time before someone like that becomes indistinguishable from a dragon. 

Suppose that dragon was cutting up the region when a multidimensional bomb when off, scattering their mounted hoard to the winds. And so a ghost remains. Or is it two realities on top of one another, a blurry figure occasionally quantum tunneling? For a king and the land are one, and his land has been warped. And a dragon losing his hoard has more reason to haunt a region than any other creature. So he hangs around, haunting his old fields of probability, seeking his lost treasure. 

So, when a 2 comes up, players will hear the sounds of battle on horseback, smell blood and iron, see the shine of gold and feel power. Spoor will be the muted modulated sounds of a man's screams and a dragon's roar interplayed on top of one another. And should they run into the dragon itself, it will be invisible. Sometimes. Like a radio trying to tune into a fight with a dragon or boxing a dragon's shadow. So why does it scream like a man?

This also means I'll need to seed a lot of cool treasure in the area. I think each piece collected should a). give you cool warrior-dragon-king powers and b) get the shit haunted out of you as you increase the likelihood you collapse his probability field. Getting all the pieces should probably summon him. Perhaps he'll reward his faithful servants. 

3-5. Moon Beasts, Moon Men and Moon Goblins 

Warped in from gods-know-not-where, Moon Beasts are medium to huge creatures, one enormous jaw with multitudinous grasping tentacles, which they drag themselves around with. Possessing some strange semblance of intelligence, the roam about the Barrens looking for people to capture. They have a stupefying prismatic ray attack which lowers intelligence and a song they sing from their crystal hearts which infects the mind of the unintelligent with moon sickness. Once infected, victims can only stare blankly upward and sway. This makes them easy targets for the Beasts who then carry them away, back to the Moon for some nefarious purpose. If they aren't hungry, in which case they eat you. 

This is sort of their MO

This was also my first real experiment with writing monsters using Mindstorm's nested hit dice. We'll see how it pans out in game. 

Greater Moon Beast [HD 8, MV 12, M9]

Moonskin - While in sunlight, the Moon Beast is impervious to harm. This is common knowledge. However, this could be negated by shadow, a blanket, paint or anything else that prevents sunlight from reaching its skin. This is less common knowledge. 

Tentacles x 4 (1 HD per). Grab and slam for 1d8 damage. 

Cavernous Prismatic Maw (3 HD). Can bite for 3d8. The Moon Beast spends 1 round charging up a stupefying prismatic beam which it sweeps in a 90-degree arc in front of itself. Being struck by it reduces Intelligence by 1d6+1. Its heart can be seen during this time, though it is protected by Moonskin.

Crystal Moon Heart (1 HD, Lethal) When the Moon Beast screeches, save vs terror or become moon sick, unable to do anything but sway and stare upwards at the moon. Creatures with 3 Int. or less automatically fail. Its crystal here vibrates sickeningly in its gullet during this time. 

I wish I had a snazzy way of formatting it but there it is. I think it's a good monster for a few reasons. The sunlight puzzle has no predetermined solutions but you can't brute force your way through it. With equipment as simple as a blanket you could defeat it, but so too could you cover it in flour, lure it underground, or quite simply, come back at night. It rewards planning. I'm really hoping the first time the players encounter one, they realize its mouth is big enough to hold them while it closes and they smash its heart, instantly killing it. 

Moon Men

Moon Men however, are entirely different operators. Basically, I think they're the insane minions of the New Moon, whatever that means. I love using androids and all the tropes associated with them, so I think the moon men will be some mix up of Men in Black, androids and doppelgangers. I imagine their skin ripples and can mold itself so they can pass as ordinary folk, probably to aid the Moon in its now failing infiltration. They're probably also twitchy as all hell, broken down, gone rogue or truly believe they are who they're impersonating. Or perhaps they're reinventing themselves, since their "god" went spastic. The party stumbling onto a group of malfunctioning androids, armed with primitive spears, worshipping a defunct AI as a god? Rad.

The players will encounter two types, the first groups of ragged, half-human insane types and more well to-do, pre-transformed Infiltrators. 

Moon Men [HD 1 and up, MV 10, M12)

1d6+2. Each group will have one Android Captain (HD 4), 1 Android Soothsayer (2 HD, has a semi-working connection to the New Moon) and a Great Pod (4HD) with them. Their great pod is a piece of tech, hidden within a ceramic vase or other that they can charge up at, attempt communication with the New Moon via and use for other such android-y things. While it functions or they're radioed into it, they are deadly and organized. A Captain can use it to power an artefact.

Radio Pack and Antennae - The Soothsayer will have a backpack which holds a transceiver. While it works, they are extremely coordinated and have perfect communication. Destroy it and all other Moon Men will spasm for a round and then act as if stunned on subsequent rounds. The soothsayer will spend a turn fixing it. Each Moon Man also has an antennae connecting it to the soothsayer.

Synth Skin - Given time, the android can assume the form of a humanoid, its skin supple, transient. The new skin can be original, bespoke or a simulacrum of another humanoid. Save vs Terror the first time you see this occur or gain 1d6 Terror. It has damage reduction of 2.

Insane Circuitry - The android has no glands to give it fear and to stay it from its mission. It does not make morale checks. It may consider retreat, diplomacy and fighting to the death in equal measure but always logically. It's also fucked somehow:

1. Fried CPU - Breaks down if it has to fight more than three enemies at once
2. Frayed Wires - Lightning arcs off of it when struck, striking a random nearby source of metal, usually an allied moon man
3. Faulty Actuators - If it is knocked down, it is unable to get up
4. Defunct Sorting Algorithm - During a fight, cannot tell friend from foe easily or from far away

Moon Goblins [HD 1-1, MV 11, M6]

Moon Goblins round out the regional trio of weirdoes brough by the New Moon. I think they're more like stowaways on the New Moon, though on some days, goblins come from the moon, speaking to their mercurial nature. 

<Aside. Goblins come from everywhere and can be found everywhere. They are dark fairies, and psychic leftovers and also magic. Where refuse piles up and mixes with negative energy, goblins arise fully formed. Where ley lines cross they claw their way from the earth like tubers. The Mother of All Monsters births them from her back like a great Surinam Toad. They are magic's answer to convergent evolution, the same form being reached many different ways. Goblinization instead of carcinization.>

They are like ordinary goblins, but albino with rheumy red eyes, wrinkly little bodies and longer ears. They have more skin than they ought to have and sharp little claws. When their teeth fall out, they replace them with shards of metal from the Moon. They are generally less malicious than their cousins and speak of "going home" and "hating the oscillations". They struggle to pay attention because they are out of sync with time here, drifting forwards and backwards relative to local time. They may perceive questions from several minutes into the future and answer them before you ask them or answer one again from several minutes ago. This gives them awful headaches and they'd rather avoid you. They're extremely perceptive to the moon and its changes, even more than the Moon Men because they understand it on a fundamental level, not reliant on its insane AI. 

They're a bit fuzzy about time and space here, making fighting them difficult. They may wink out of existence, only for the moon to drag them back here 12 feet to the left and 15 seconds ago. They can blink around and the more of them there are, the easier this is to control making fighting a horde near impossible. They may all jump to a minute into the future, all on top of you or coordinate arrow fire through time and space. 

However, they are generally docile and wish to go "home" rather than be here and they hate moon beasts with a passion, for they happily gobble the goblins up rather than kidnap them. My guess is that Moon Beasts capture human, the Moon men replace them, and the poor capture human after being drained of excess water, is turned into a moon goblin and used for labor. These are the lucky ones that escaped. 

8-9 Global Threats 

The Eelmen used to thrive here, before the moon took all the water away but they've adapted quite well. Ever seen the video of a moray eel come out of the water or crawl around on land? With most thirsty, they've taken to "puddle jumping" ambushing from the murky ever shifting lakes to hold their territory and building simple stone forts around lakes that last the longest. During thunderstorms they march, happily. 

Their goal is comically evil. The Moon has sucked up enough water over the years to flood the Barrens twice over. They plan on boarding the Moon, maneuvering it over the lawful lands to the east, and dumping it all at once. They could probably do it if they could take care of the Eye Tyrant Zargon, who lairs directly under the moon. 

Let's Crawl! New Barrens, Part 2; Syncretization of Hexcrawl Methodologies

I remembered what I called this campaign two years ago! The New Moon Barrens, on account on of the new moon warping into existence over the land and the barren landscape it created its aftermath. 

It originally started as a challenge or experiment to take all the material I'd written and cram it all into a 50 by 50-mile map. I've written a lot more since then so that's a bit moot and so I'm going back to make something original again if my addled brain can still do that.

 This post was originally going to be about the regions of the map, but I realized I have so many different ideas for organizing a hex crawl, I'll have to standardize it first. We'll start by analyzing a few approaches I like, looking at how I've used them in the past and then looking at some other approaches to try to jazz things up. 

Two great posts for designing random encounter tables are here at Pencils and Paper and a tweaked version of here, from Necropraxis. 

I love Pencils and Paper's approach for its simplicity and regionality. A dragon should appear on every 2, it's in the damn name. If this were Blades in the Dark, I'd put a blade at every two and some dark on every 12. If I had a good dungeon generator, I put one on of those every 12 but alas I can't design them any way but bespoke, so wizards will more than do. Gives me and excuse to put a laughably evil wizard somewhere. 

Its regionality is also fantastic. Having a separate set of 4 for every region is fun and might bring an area to life more or reward players who think about that sort of thing. I think the results should be more deadly or dangerous in order to do that. Perhaps a three should the Fairy Wolf King of the southern forested region or at least one of his lieutenants. A four, five or six could be other important movers and shakers in that region, just less powerful of a faction/subfaction.  

7 and 8 will be "Global" threats e.g. types of creatures I want found everywhere. For this game it will probably be the dreadful eelmen and degenerate elves seeking to reclaim their home from an ancient past. 

9 and 10 will be Themes and Conflicts. I like a certain kind of gonzo in my games and paradoxically at the same time a certain kind of fairy tale vibe. Its a world where laser pistols and the power of True Love go hand in hand. Themes might be the sacred three traits magic cannot effect, True Love, Innocence and Justice. They might be simple memorials to such a time or NPCs who embody those traits. Knights on a quest might show up here for any of the three reasons. The gonzo might be Men Out of Time, with laser swords and pilot suits, seeking a crashed space plane or a dark priest fighting off some other worldly tentacled beast. Honestly knights can go there too. Knight is a concept not married to any one time or genre. 

Conflicts might be more like classic fables of old. Two wills in contest the PCs have the chance to effect. Great giants playing chess, but you cannot pass unless you help one of them. A talking oak and a field of wheat in argument about the wind. A tiger having crashed a delegation of deliberating prairie dogs, hungry. These will be the same as "Scenes" discussed later. 

Next, lets investigate the infamous engine of the OSR, the Overloaded Encounter Table. 

Despite having used it in a limited fashion in games for dungeons, which I think it lends itself quite well to, I have not had much success with it for hex crawling. I dislike fatigue as a random component (it calls to mind the infamous rest turn you must take in a dungeon every 6 turns from 1974 D&D) due to the non-random nature of acquiring fatigue. It should be the result of player choice, such as a forced march or a desperate run. However, I think there are other ways to present players with choices that involve the loss of rations or hit points. Swarms of hungry insects, scavenging dinosaurs or one very fat persistent bear could result in this dichotomy (fight the bear for the sandwiches or just let him have his fill). Or perhaps the result of fatigue presents another choice, representing some thickening of terrain or increase in its difficulty. A briar patch gets added to the hex. Go through it (1 harm) or go around quickly to keep pace (+1 fatigue) or better yet, go around it at a normal pace and add +1 day to the hex (-1 Supply and a "win" for the DM and the use of the encounter table).

I think Locality and Expiration by themselves work quite well but together step on each other toes. Stretching my brain, I could come up with 5 or 6 changing localities such as tides, wind direction or the like. Maybe the song the singing rock plays? The mood the lone storm giant mentally projects with its giant mind? Which goblin tribe currently has the ire of the mad beholder who they play pranks on? With some prep I can make good use of this on a hex-by-hex basis but Expiration could simply be moved to the secondary table under Locality. For example: on 1 in 6 when you roll Locality, the locality expires.

Hex Kings

I know what I'll do to replace Expiration: add what are called Hex Kings. A Hex King is a big, bad nasty piece of work encounter. Usually, an apex predator like a dragon or the like, it's a creature or small faction that is the dominant force in the (usually) geographic region, and who makes their presence known clearly by leaving spoor everywhere. When you roll a 1 on the overloaded encounter die, you roll 1d6 again and consult the Spoor Table to see how close you are to bumping into King Kong or the equivalent.

The tracks and traces are inspired by this underappreciated post from The Retired Adventurer. I think I'll make a handout for the players to track the regional and global encounters this way. 

Hex Spoor Table 

1. The Hex King itself. Roll for disposition, distance and surprise if you like. 

2. A Lair. Determine however you like whether the monster(s) is here, there or anywhere. I like Classic D&Ds percent chance of finding a sleeping dragon in a lair. A d100 is also a good candidate here for something more granular. Increase or decrease the odds if the monsters is nocturnal, diurnal or crepuscular if you use six watches like I do (dawn, day x2. dusk, night x2). A big bad like this may have several lairs, some long since abandoned. 

3.  Fresh Spoor. The King is close. A classic example is a destroyed campsite, bodies torn apart in the manner of the monster's choosing. Could also be left over meals, nests or feces. 

4. Tracks. Can follow or avoid. 

5-6. Traces. Evidence the thing is nearby with elements unique to each encounter. 

This is sorta where we hit out first road bump. Dragons, should they be allowed to show up as both encounters and as hex kings? With a little math, dragons are showing up 1/216 + 1/36 times or a little over 3% of the time. This seems about correct. Besides some Hex Kings will not be dragons. 

Second road bump, and our first opportunity to syncretize, is do non-hex king random encounters not have traces, tracks or spore? Obviously in a real world they must, so it seems like the answer is: when you roll a 1 on the Overloaded Encounter Die, determine the encounter (a la Papers and Pencils) and then roll on the Hex Spoor Table to add the spice. It will require some interesting considerations (what does a Reoccurring NPC's lair look like?) but I live for the improv and hopefully it will encourage some exploration and hex filling as well, especially when we consider some other interesting sources. 

Other Interesting Sources 

Arnold K did indeed fix hex crawls. 

I loved the granularity of The Alexandrian's Hexcrawl essay and it was my primary source for the better part of two years while I ran Ghost Town Gunfight, my 5e western-medieval mashup. But it (or perhaps I) left something to be desired as I fumbled though each hex, hiding the route from players and fiddling around deciding distances based on overland move speed. Perhaps with more practice and speed I could get it down but I think its granularity is a strike against it.  

I loved being able to roll a fist full of d12s and know the future of their next day of travel. I loved checking for a second encounter after the first was experienced and couple with the old school disposition rules, one of the coolest fights I ever had, organically appeared. Goblins (neutral to the party) meeting them players at the same time I rolled rainy weather and then triggered a second encounter in the form of a mated pair of thunderbirds (hostile) led to an awesome fight of watching how the native goblins fought off the birds and the players emulating and later befriending them. They were even gifted a thunderbird feather after the fight as a kind of magic wand. It was totally and unplanned and the oracular nature of the dice was fruitful. 

But the tracking of their adventure mile by mile was tedious and distracting for me. 

The Goblin Punch hex crawling rules track the days in the hex rather than the miles in the party so to speak. Rather than seeing how many hexes players could blow though in a single day, hexes take a number of days to enter. It also encourages hirelings, my favorite aspect of the game in order to any serious kind of off the trail exploration. His hex synthesis also encourages the kind of kismet you get from my earlier example.

However, it's not clear to me when the hex synthesis is supposed to be done, seeing as its to compliment already known keyed hexes, what he calls Hex Content. If random encounters are determined at the table and key hexes are already finished prep, I intend to use them as soft prep first and to determine them at the table second. While the map should theoretically already be completely keyed (it is not lol) these synthesized compliments can be done in chunks around where the players are exploring as they go there. Its more economical prep. 

In the same way 1974 D&D encourages you to fill your dungeons with what you want in them first and then randomly determine them second, I'll do the same with the map. First a la The Alexandrian, I'll try to fill in as many hexes as I can, drawing on sci-fi and fantasy for inspiration. From there we can fill and supplement hexes with the Goblin Punch rules. 

Final Notes 

I have two final changes to the Overloaded Encounter Die: Percept and Advantage. 

Percept has been subsumed by the Spoor Table, where encounters get some kind of clue already, save for 1 in 6 where the creature bumps into them. So here instead I think I'll put something like Scene or Denizen. A humble encounter akin to a fable or folk tale, it gives chatty charismatic character an excuse to talk to locals, collect rumors and go on "mini-quests". These encounters might include talking trees or animals, cantankerous goblins, grumpy trolls and mischievous sprites. Anything to make the woods and plains they'll be travelling a bit more fantastic, not unlike Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions or something from The Hobbit. These would be more akin to Goblin Punch's Dynamic Sites, soft encounters.

<Tangent. Sometimes I fear my players loves these scenes more than they do dungeons or adventuring. My favorite use of this was a taking crow, thirsty and trying to fill up a water filled vase with stones from the Aesop fable the Crow and the Pitcher. Should the players help him out, he'll give them news with a bird's eye view. Should they spurn him, he'll do the same, for the bandits up the road. A fun little thing.>

Finally, Advantage. This one has always eluded me. In a dungeon it makes sense. Empty rooms are important to the ecology of any dungeon expedition (I always aim for about 50% monster and treasure free rooms per dungeon). But in the wilderness? The abstraction is that you move quickly from encounter to encounter, skipping the empty in between, for what?  Just to be given more nothing? Players already rest at night. However, I still vibe with a "nothing happens" result. Like Miyazaki's Ma, silence in between adventuring is ok. Instead, I think this time will be for NPCs to prompt the PCs for conversation, question or story or make an extended morale check. If it comes up during a rest watch, then perhaps it'll be an opportunity to increase morale, especially if libations are poured. Maybe something out of Dolmenwood's campfire mechanic. Or a good time for a fight to break out, something to be stolen or fingers to be pointed. I do love conflict. 

In conclusion I think our Procedure is going to look roughly like this:

Hex Crawl Procedure

1. Encounter. Roll 2d6 for the encounter at the same time as 1d6 for the Spoor. 

2. Setback. Terrain determines a setback that forces choice between harm or hunger. Should be linked to a dynamic or "soft" site

3. Hex King. Roll on the Spoor Table. 

4. Locality. Bespoke per region. Expires on a 1 in 6. 

5. Scene or Dynamic Site. A harmless excuse to talk to locals, bother fey or gather rumors. 

6. Ma. Time between claps. Or NPC interaction, questions or conflicts. Check hireling morale

Encounter Table

2. Dragon

3. Regional, Powerful Faction

4. Regional, Faction 1

5. Regional, Faction 2

6. Regional, Faction 3

7. [Recurring NPC]

8. Global 

9. Global 

10. Theme or Conflict 

11. Story or Aftermath

12. Wizard

A New-ish Campaign: New Moon Barrens

 

I've never played a Zelda game but that's pretty raw. 

I did it. I slew the greatest beast the hobby has: THE SCHEDULE. About two years ago through sheer force of will I carved out a chunk of solid time-stream dedicated to D&D and gaming on Thursday nights and got some other busy adults to do the same. It's wonderful. But its online and online games just don't hit the same as in person games sometimes. As such I have used up more mojo and wrangled a group together for a Sunday evening game of either B/X or Original 1974 D&D for an in person game! Now that the hard part is done, I have to do the other hard part and prep the damn thing before next Sunday. Luckily everything a DM writes is never wasted; if you get nothing else from this post understand that all prep, even unused is just biding its time to be used again. 

The Challenge: A Campaign within 50 sq miles 

I want to run a sandbox hexcrawl I never got to use and maybe throw a few old modules on top of it as well. I'll also draw from my last few years worth of dungeons that can be reused for fresh faces. And I want to cram it all into 50 sq miles worth of space just to see how a small scale campaign with a real tight focus feels. 

Goals: Put together everything I've learned reading blogs and running game to make a tight focused sandbox game. 

First we'll need a map. 

 

Hey look, a map.

With each hex being 6 miles its 72 x 60 miles which is close enough to 50 x 50 for me. Maybe I'll cut off the last two columns if I can't find anything inspirational to put there. 

A point of light setting, the only friendly civilized parts of this region are the two forts with towns and the town in the center, Tarnburg. Putting them in the middle makes it less likely to wander off the maps back towards civilization, The forts are ruled by a feuding baron and duke, technically part of the same empire but like the houses Harkonen and Atreides on Arrakis, they despise one another and secretly aspire to conquer the other. A few conflicts prevent this. For one the giant fucking moon that hovers over the desolate wastes in the middle of the map. 

Conflicts 

An enormous moon, probably a few miles wide, warped into existence a few thousand feet above the lush grassland about a century ago. It immediately began sucking all the water up from the region with some kind of tractor beam/reverse gravity, drying up the marshland and plains. 

<Tangent. I much prefer plains and savannah over woods in my games. Maybe my characters were abused one to many times in endless same-y forests of the games of my youth but I find flatlands much more inspiring. The megafauna and ecology of the Serengeti are endlessly inspiring especially when extinct creatures of the past make up part of the food chain. If I need forests, a copse of plains trees will do fine>

A local Conan type flew up there in a chariot pulled by cockatrice, or so the legends go and disappeared. While he never reappeared, days later, the moon made an enormously loud pulse, with a shockwave like Krakatoa, destroying the town beneath it and further flooding the region from the tsunami that followed from the water of the Great River. It now only intermittently sucks up water and a hundred years later he's worshipped as god-hero and saint by the locals, his priests forming a cult of bodybuilding, swordsmanship and athletics. The cockatrice (think more velociraptor that turns you to stone instead of chicken) has become a locally protected animal and to kill one is considered bad luck, at least by the hero cult. Ordinary folk avoid them.

However, the moon continues to be an issue, sucking up precious water at a much slower rate, but every full moon releasing some and dripping all the time but not at equilibrium and every month, the dry earth creeps closer to the food supply of the region. The ground, sucked dry of its aquifer, can barely hold the water, leading to flooding. Huge puddles, like shallow lakes appear and disappear with the weather. And during the thunderstorms, the Eelmen raid. 

Eelmen 

The Duke and Baron each were tasked with dealing with the forces of Chaos to the West, a land in permanent dusk. The Eelmen rule it, under their brooding and petty Eel King. Nobody knows where eels come from, only that Eelmen are made from them. Obviously, the answer is spontaneous generation, arising wholesale from the guts of river mud, crawling to the river and swimming thousands of miles upstream like medieval rats from cheese cloth or goblins from refuse and negative energy. The Eelmen catch them and grow them in cold pools and feed them a diet of human blood, ritualistic fat and bones, so many bones. Often they'll simply toss still living humans they capture into the pools, and like piranha, the elvers strip them of flesh. The fat makes them crave the calcium in the bones of these unfortunate souls. They will need it for what happens next. They grow huge and contort, rubbery skin thickening, primitive lungs ballooning in too-tight ribcages and pectoral fins stretching as heavy bones grow painfully in them forming long thin razor sharp four-fingered hands. The slimy mutants are dragged from the pool, forced to take on air, cough up dense phlegm from pharyngeal jaws and given a hooked spear, the signature weapon of the Eelmen. 

This YouTube video is 15 years old. It only went up to 240p. But it is exactly what's in my head. Exactly. 

Eelmen are made, not born. And they are made to hate. Proud, agile and clever they embody all the worst traits of their hungry primitive kin. They use hit-and-run tactics, ambushes from the pools that form in the desolate lands under the moon and raid under the cover of dark during thunderstorms. In combat they are merciless, hooking with spears, tripping and disemboweling, coming to finish off a foe later. With two sets of jaws they are infamous for biting and not letting go, even in death. In fact, if losing a battle to a mighty foe they may simply latch on before being killed to slow their enemy down, giving their comrades an advantage. They do this not to aid their allies but to spite their enemies, ultimate sore losers when their deadly pride is wounded. Their bones are cartilaginous and they can squeeze into spaces of creatures a quarter their size, lacking collar bones like cats. Their two weaknesses, besides arrogance and love of betryal, are their slow speed on dry land, slithering (or sidewinding to "run") and their need to stay damp. A dry Eelman will suffocate within a few days, but not before making others around it as miserable as it can.   

 They despise each other only slightly less than the other denizens of the area. It is because of them that the Baron and Duke are afraid to openly attack one another. Like a Mexican stand off, all three factions are waiting for the other to play their hand. Simultaneously, all three are trying to ascertain the secrets of the mystery Moon, gleaning great power within if the remnants that fall from it occasionally are anything to be seen. So they send adventurers! (A rival adventuring party of Eelman would be fascinating).

I have a few other conflicts going on in the background I may incorporate as well. Elves being up to no good and something about a Rainbow Veil being shattered and its denizen pouring into the Mortal World to stop the Unreality from entering will be present. But we can save that for a later post. Next post on this new campaign we'll churn out some hopefully solid encounter tables.