Six Places Between Here and Blue Mountain

17 Jul, 2024

Introduction

Some chatter on the OSR Discord yesterday made me reread Thulean Echoes and I was inspired to write up the below procedure for Blue Mountain, taking inspiration from Envy’s d20 chaotic places post from a week ago. I don't know if this will make it into the final version (I'm not quite happy with it in its current form) but it was a fun little exercise and I got to make another d6 table :P Maybe someone can take this and polish it up into something for their own use!

Keep an eye out for Blue Mountain, which should be up on Itch within the next 2 months!

The Procedure

How did your party arrive at The Base of Blue Mountain? Roll a d6, then proceed down the table from the result, playing out the scenario described.

This procedure might be evoked by a portal, dream, possession, or death. Portals are strange things, and the age in which they were knowable has long since passed.

Each of the first three locations is intended to foreshadow notable characters and locations and change the initial conditions of Blue Mountain based upon the player's actions. These should be brief, as extending them for too long will only give the players more time to shoot themselves in the foot. The last three locations are suitable to begin play with and can be used without rolling on this table. In that case, or if the result of the original d6 result is greater than 3, just describe the associated vision the players have and then describe them waking up in the corresponding location.

Once again, be quick. This is a TTRPG, not a videogame cutscene. The fun part lies in the choices that come after this.

1. The Hall

The Hall breathes, phlegm-covered flagstones scraping against their neighbors and the thick molten mortar of the walls melting onto the floor in large globs of not-white. The Hall is alive and very sick. It is intelligent, far smarter than it appears standing here in its throat. 1d6 thoughtless creatures pursue the party through nonsensical halls, a sickness given terrible form. Slaying them is possible, even easy; they crumple underneath any blow (as ghouls, 1hp, always lose initiative). Should this transpire, The Portal will not take your party further than The Waters and each will awaken on the beach at TW1 with red macaw feathers clutched tightly in their dominant hands. Aximal¹ dies during the earthquake and his sickness spreads (See TW16).

If one of your party is slain by these creatures, they all (dead included) suddenly awake in SP11. Nothing changes in Blue Mountain.

Eventually, the party will find an exit at the end of the hall. It is always The Portal.

2. The Depths

The Portal dumps the party into an ocean and they sink. Quickly, faster than they've ever moved before, they hurtle away from warmth and are dragged kicking, screaming, and drowning to the bottom of an ocean. Except there is no bottom, and in the darkness something is. The water pushes against the party with the movements of a great something. It hears and is intrigued by the chatter of the players at the table (not the characters). It knows of no other way to interact with a world beyond it than to consume its vessels.

If one of your party is slain by this creature, they all (dead included) suddenly awake in SP11, soaking wet and with black water in their lungs. The person slain can see movement in darkness. After razing Dexomé, the Animated Men will walk off the world into the Black Mist. They will return as the Macaws did, wicked and transformed.

Eventually, the creature will bore of the players and soon the party will pass through the open arms of a megalithic statue, a proxy for The Portal.

3. The View

The Portal places the party on the tip of a tall mountain (See BM16). The sky above the party shatters into a dozen shards, leaving large white cracks not unlike a broken windshield in the sky. The ground below similarly breaks, and the mountaintop the party is situated on is split clean in two. Flip a coin or roll a d2 for each party member (include retainers and hirelings if any are present).

If the majority of the party gets tails on their coin flip (or 2 on their roll), they themselves slip into the Black Mist along with the unlucky half of the mountain. In this case, the party awakens to find themselves in BM16 covered in soot. Upper Shatermo has not been conquered by Middle Shatermo and is instead called SplitMountain. The Kingdom of Shatermo has its eyes on conquest.

If a majority of the party gets heads on their coin flip (or 1 on their roll), they see the land around the mountains slide away into the Black Mist from their safe perch on the mountaintop. The Portal beckons to them, as though it were right in front of them this whole time.

4. The Waters

A small section of hills (see TW1) at the base of Blue Mountain. Below the party, a vast city with megalithic statues is being drowned by an ocean's worth of water flooding through it. That water will quickly make its way to the party. The Portal is still there, although it must be asked about to be noticed.

Staying and meeting the water causes the party to awake in TW1. Nothing changes in Blue Mountain.

Leaving through the portal takes players to the next location.

5. The Blue Mountain

The party appears inside a tall tower (see BM10) at the bedside of a bearded old man in robes. At his side are a dozen living stone statues, craning their lithic necks to hear his last words.

Leaning in to hear the last words of the philosopher king causes the party to awake in Middle Shatermo (See BM14) at the foot of the statue. The Animated Men have plummeted in population; only Granite-96 and Limestone-7 remain.

Leaving the old man's last words to his subjects and asking after The Portal takes players to the next location.

6. The Steel Plains

The party feels as though they don't belong. Loud explosions sound overhead and great steel trees wave and crash against one another in the afterglow of powerful energies. There is a sound like nails on a chalkboard and the crumpling of sheet metal into a cliff face and then all is deathly still and deathly dark except the wind and the electricity arcing between the steel trees.

The party awakes in SP11. This place is not meant to be here.