A Burnt City
Introduction
While filling out my hexes for At the Base of Blue Mountain, I've normally elected to try and take a minimalist approach to anything that isn't a dungeon or point of interest you'd explore with via dungeon crawl procedures. Almost everything is just a few sentences, a few paragraphs if something is particularly complex. In the process of cutting things down, there's one point of interest that has stuck in my mind, so I figured I'd expand upon it in an afternoon and throw it up on the blog. Enjoy some purple prose, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Content Warning: Dismemberment, Body parts not where they're supposed to be.
Desolation is a town that never was. It has no past, no future, and exists only as a soot stain in the dirt of my id. There are three parts to Desolation.
Part One: The Approach
The ground around Desolation is covered in a thin layer of ash. What remains of the town is shaped like a horseshoe, with the open end pointing out towards the southern waters and the closed end shattered into flaming splinters. There are no buildings left standing.
There are small bits of gravel embedded into the remaining wood. The ruins are either pulverized or still smoldering, but despite it all the gravel is everywhere; peppercorns in a thin brine of broken beams and bad blood.
| Result (2d6) | Bauble Found |
|---|---|
| 2 | A small wooden figurine of an old man, saved from the desolation by miracle. The wood is much older than it appears. |
| 3 | A beaded earring from the Quochay. Its previous owner was exiled for bringing forbidden technology onto the back of Quochay's Regret. |
| 4 | A small turquoise gem, embedded in the now toppled door of a small home. Its partner is in a stone fist in a library deep within the mountains. Together they spray oil and flame. Separated, they cause ancient stone brows to furrow in concern. |
| 5 | A fragment of pottery from a funerary jar. It depicts a great lord bestowing water upon… something. The rest is gone, shattered into pieces too fine to reconstruct. |
| 6 | The tusk of a Zentive carved into a smoking pipe. It was taken from the Zenti in an act of rage from a spurned lover. Smoking from it channels some of this rage. |
| 7 | A large glob of beeswax and a writing tablet. There are words on the tablet, written with an arcane stylus. They contain the secret to calling plants from the ground (Entangle, once). |
| 8 | An obsidian spearhead. The tip is chipped off at the end, but otherwise it functions quite well. |
| 9 | A small wooden bowl still full of some sort of soup. There is an eye floating around the rim of the bowl. Drinking it (including the eye) gives the last moments of its owner: a quick end at the hands of a basalt monstrosity. |
| 10 | Excavation reveals a fire pit. In the center is a half-burned wooden water droplet. |
| 11 | The core of a Grem, ochre servitors searching the countryside for something. Can be filled with water and used as a grenade. |
| 12 | A beautiful orange figurine of an old man. Incredibly valuable. |
Part Two: The Statue
In the center of the desolation a small circle has been cleared of ash and debris. In the center of the circle is a statue depicting an old man (the same from the baubles found above). His eyes are warm and he is smiling beneath his drooping mustache and beard. His face has been smeared with paint and his nose is broken off.
At his feet are piles of beautiful textiles and valuables. Some are bloodstained. Most are at least slightly torn.
Part Three: The Trail and Pile
The trail of destruction (and the ash, which is easier to spot) continues into the hills around the town. At its end are 6 holes filled with viscera. The remains of the villagers have been separated by body parts, with separate graves for heads, arms, legs, and torsos. The heads are all crushed.