Communities
There are three types of settlements highlighted on the regional map; a town, villages and homesteads. They are grouped by what realm they are within the borders of, including the ones outside any realm. There are more communities than the ones described in this section, but the GM may simply rule them as too boring to bother with other than a generic rest stop the adventurers go to in between actually exciting events.
Town works as normal – it costs $150 for each party member to stay in town for a week. There are no special restrictions on available items to purchase there.
Villages are smaller than a proper town, with populations over 100 but under 500. If the adventurers rest in a village for a week, it only costs them $75 each a week. The drawback is, shopping for new gear is restricted by the village’s uncertain trade routes or supply lines. Special orders can only be bought at a village if the GM rolls 3d and gets a 9 or less. Gear with special qualities is probably not available unless the village specialises in it.
Homesteads are much smaller than a proper town, often only hosting one or two families living there. Only homesteads with interesting features are listed in this section. (Boring homesteads may be found in any part of the region that is not particularly barren, scrubland or dangerous.) Staying in a homestead for a week will only cost each party member $37…but it may not be worth it as resting adventurers could suffer risks like disease (roll HT with modifiers for terrain) or random encounters (12 or less chance of one per week) that a proper town would be secured against. Buying gear at a homestead will not be particularly likely – forget about special orders or armor, only the most common and basic items like rations or torches are available (and the homestead family may be reluctant to sell too many in case they need them later).
The Captain’s Realm contains 4 interesting villages and 8 interesting homesteads.
Very near to Ruin Six, the village Armcutter is home to a witch by the name of Mary Frogslice. Frogslice mostly lives a quiet life of subtle arcane study and providing wisdom to her fellow villagers on occasion. She is aware something in the Ruin 4 miles to the west could be a problem, but she is confident that she can handle it.
The village Big Log is a stronghold of boot-strapped crooks that watch over the nearby swamp resources found to the east and west. The “soldiers” garrisoned here “protect” Captain Lavigne’s subjects from various dangers and help “collect taxes” from them.
At first glance, the village Wet Wood is a harmless and friendly port for swampers located at the northern point of the bandit mafia’s turf. In truth, it is the central hub of a nasty devil cult that has spread throughout the inner swamp. Captain Lavigne’s apathy towards fighting evil has helped them grow their secretive villainy without fear of the authorities.
A well-loved village and the entertainment capital of the swamp, Mushroom boasts a great beer brewer who has built an entire (petty) business empire of drinking, gambling, sex workers and swamp dining. The soldiers from the west are frequent customers, and even the Captain herself enjoys a beer at the saloon.
Complementing Mushroom, there is a homestead named Little Reed just a few miles east of the village where a talented vinter lives with her extended family. The wine made by the sweet young woman is truly lovely, and the Captain sometimes stops by to guzzle a glass.
Nearby Wet Wood village, a few semi-inbred homesteads Hash Ranch and Holt Farm were established by off-shoots of the demon cult who are quietly co-operating with the wider secret society. The corrupt homesteaders keep an eye on the roads in and out of Wet Wood village for travellers and the military, just in case the cult is under attack or scrutiny – or to prey on stragglers passing through.
North-west of Big Log village, the small settlement of Joker is home to herbalists who harvest the local plants for medical purposes. The medicines make for good exports and an attraction for unlucky travellers stricken by diseases and poisons common to the swamp.
At the far east of the realm, uncomfortably set up in the barren plains, is a tiny coal mine worked by a handful of survivalists and guarded by soldiers. The homestead Blackpowder is a miserable place indeed, made worse by their rival directly north and the enemy military base to the south.
Another well-regarded vinter lives and works at a chokepoint, Fort Grape, at the southern point of the Captain’s turf a short south-east distance away from Ruin Seven. The soldiers very much appreciate the wine, especially as the war escalates.
The Torrent family household in the middle of the realm runs a market for regional imports and exports. It receives goods from all around the Captain’s territory, usually from Joker, Little Reed and Mushroom. Military forces from Big Log patrol here regularly, safeguarding the Captain’s beloved wealth.
Finally, at the far west of the bandit queendom is a tiny hideout nicknamed Point X inhabited by cultists worshipping elder things, just south of a sinister elder thing lair. Happily isolated, the cult is ignorant of anything outside of their petty club of madmen and their idolized horrors.
The Earl’s Realm contains the town, 2 interesting villages, and 5 interesting homesteads.
The town of Steel Ring mostly relies on what it can scavenge from the remains of the old Dwarven settlements to keep itself afloat. In theory, adventurers raiding Ruin Two to the north-east could inject some much needed treasure into its economy, but The Earl is reluctant to poke that particular bear. The seat of the Earl’s power, the town has a population of 2,900 souls and a busy marketplace with a local brewer of note bringing in the merchants and travellers. It also has a devil cultist problem that is carefully infiltrating the merchants and government, hoping to corrupt the levers of power with infernal plots.
The village Blank Stoat in the far north-east is a secure but poor and boring place, usually hosting travellers and merchant caravans just entering the region.
Just 5 miles east of Steel Ring is the fortified village of Fort Carcer, just one of the many military bases the Earl has founded along the southern edge of his principality. It keeps a solid eye on the swamp and the activity in and out of Steel Ring.
Dotted along the border are smaller strongholds, they’re named Fort Loop, Fort Walter and Fort Helios. All of them are home to squads of the Earl’s fighting men.
Right in the middle of the scrubland plains is the Balto Ranch, which hosts an entrance to an underground dungeon that the families living there capitalized on by catering to adventurers exploring it. For a mere homestead, the place offers a surprisingly well-stocked shop to buy supplies at.
The last and most obscure homestead in the realm, Heeler Farm, is at the north of Ruin Two, and it is a home to devil-worshippers plotting to pilfer whatever treasures they can unearth from the ruin (and if they can trick foolhardy adventurers into obtaining the loot for them, all the better).
The Gildemeister’s Realm covers only two interesting villages and three interesting homesteads.
At the western end of the territory is the village Dai, whose people secretly serve the demons lurking to the west. They are paranoid about anyone investigating the lair and make sure adventurers coming to their village are either misdirected or quietly set up for sacrifice.
The village Fabricate is much nicer, located in the forested hills 4 miles east of Ruin Four. The master tailor Sam Adams lives in this village and sells his wares to merchants on their way to market.
On Bell Ranch, a tiny family home south of Ruin Four, the main attraction is Samantha Bell, who is an excellent shoe maker. Again, travelling merchants buy her wonderful crafts for later resale at a bigger market.
Speaking of, that bigger market can be found near the fertile valley, at the homestead of Goodtimes Dell. People with needs, wants and inventory come from all around the wizard lord’s realm to the Dell to do their business. Starstorm himself lives here for most of the year.
Holding down the north-east end of the Gildemeister’s territory, where the bandit queen’s turf is closest and most threatening, is a fortified homestead Fort Hardface. They are on the lookout for the next attack by the swamp bandits.
Another small defensive stronghold is Fort Bane in the north-eastern desert. If the wizard lord gets distinctly annoyed with the bandit queen, he will probably launch an attack on her coal mine to the north from the base here.
Close to Fort Hardface, there is a chokepoint into the realm built around a quality hospital, the best in the region. Named The Broken Mile, the wizard lord’s forces perform security checks on the injured, the sick and those coming into the realm from the bandit swamps. The doctors try not to let it bother them or interfere with the healing.
Midway between the desert stronghold and the hospital is another landmark of military paranoia in the scrub plains, Roughneck Fields. Although the terrain is flat and poor, there are many stretches of medicinal plants to forage in special remote gardens tended by the military corps here. The herbs are sent to The Broken Mile hospital staff but otherwise kept a secret. The chokepoint is meant to both safeguard the medicine and to keep watch on the enemy swamp.
If you need a good metalsmith, you can find a great one in the GreenOver homestead west of Goodtimes Dell on the western border of the realm. The smith lives there with his extended family. Close to the marketplace, he makes a good profit off the war between Starstorm and Lavigne.
Finally, in the middle of the desert, you can stumble across the humble home of Quentin Nine, reclusive master shoemaker. He lives alone, and does only custom work to people who bother to make the trek out this far into the badlands.
Outside of the ruled territories, there are only 2 villages and 3 homesteads worth mentioning.
The independent village of Doomspeaker has strong connections to Wet Wood across the southern border, as both places are footholds of the demon cult. Doomspeaker plays a special part in their schemes, as the village is only 5 miles away from the lair of a powerful hellish entity.
Polestar Village, meanwhile, is a valuable and popular destination thanks to its resident genius weaponsmith and its lively swamping industry. It helps that it is in a relatively peaceful and boring section of the big central swamp.
Keeping the tiny settlement of Point Dulla, located in the mountains a few miles west by Lair F, afloat is their unhinged worship of undead monsters, who accept their tribute of new bodies in exchange for found treasures and the spoils of attacked merchant caravans.
The northern rival to Blackpowder, the Two-Tongue family runs a coal mine that competes for trade contracts. Two-Tongue Mine regularly hires mercenaries to protect the operation…and maybe sabotage Blackpowder’s business while they’re at it.
The last homestead is located way out in the east, in the middle of the flat scrublands. The Chong Place is the private property of foreign-born survivalists and just so happens to include an entrance to an underground dungeon. The Chongs charge a fee for daring adventurers to try their luck and go down into the old tomb-caves.
Monster Lairs
Marked on the regional map (triangles with letters inside) are ten different monster lairs, each a source of certain categories of hostile creatures. The lairs themselves may count as dungeons – or simply huge numbers of combat encounters.
Lair A is an abode of cosmic terrors from beyond time and place. The sinister temple to the awful squid-like monsters is built around a corrupted astral gate hidden in the depths of the far western scrubland plains. From the outside, it looks like a labyrinth of unknown age and origin.
Lair B is infested with devils from Hell who pay tribute to the court of a major infernal entity. The lair is mostly structured like a tomb complex hidden in the swamp, with cursed altars and widow-making traps maintained by a cult inside of it.
In the western scrub hills, Lair C is the secret home of a powerful demon attended to by a cult. The demon’s home is the center of an abandoned prison where condemned criminals once died in the dark.
Lair D can be found around the middle of the swamp, and is cursed with hordes of the undead – those who died in the murky Dreadwaters and then zombified. It is not a typical dungeon type, instead it is a mile of miscellaneous wreckage and foul fog where villages of days past used to be and unlucky travelling caravans tried to pass through.
Lair E, on the other hand, IS a proper dungeon type – an old abandoned tomb complex in the scrub hills. The honored dead within do not stay dead but they do stay inside the lair, attacking intruders who might steal their beloved grave goods.
To reach Lair F, you must trek through an overgrown mountain trail that only the people of Point Dulla know about. It is a furnished cave complex home to various undead monsters, led by a “bloodline” of vampires who demand their worshippers in the eastern homestead give them blood and the occasional sacrifice to convert to undead thralldom. At night, those travelling in the mountains might get attacked by the bloodsuckers and their walking dead minions.
Lair G is a ruined magical experiment site east of Ruin Five, where dwarven occupants of the ruined fortress used to conduct their arcane procedures. The lair is effectively a prison-type dungeon for the constructs and elementals kept within, forged or summoned long ago by dwarven military wizard-scientists.
You can find Lair H in the far west of the forested hills. It is effectively a “wilderness dungeon”, a beautiful two square miles of uneven forest where dire animals and killer plants lurk. There may be semi-civilized humanoids like brigands, trolls, goblin-kin and faeries in the woods, too.
Lair I is also in the western forested hills, but it is closer to civilization. This place is more of a grove, tended to by hermit druids and their army of beasts and animated flora. The grove has been magically sculpted into a “wilderness temple” with naturally-occurring traps and treasure.
For Lair J, we turn our attention back to the swamp. North of Ruin Three (which may be connected to the lair somehow), the lair is an unnatural place, a bizarre ghost town surrounded by enigmatic polished black rocks jutting out of the Dreadwaters and making strange whistling noises. In addition to the hostile mutant creatures (giant frogs, giant insects, giant snakes…) menacing the delvers, the gravity may weirdly fluctuate and the fog may suddenly part to reveal ominous out-of-place buildings.
Plot Hooks and Adventures
So what do Dungeon Fantasy campaigns set in The Dreadwaters March involve? How do we work the above details into adventures? Read on…
Where to Begin?
First, we must consider where the adventurers will start in The Dreadwaters March, as the nearby points of interest and the safe places they rest in differ noticeably. If the adventurers are beginning their exploits in the region’s north (Earl cash’s territory), they will be enjoying the expanded marketplace of Steel Ring town right off the bat, and their adventures will probably involve either looting Ruin Two, encountering the devil cult, making the long risky trek through terrible flatland to Balto Ranch for the dungeon there, or heading south past the border into the swamp. The heavy military presence makes for a safer passage through the plains, but the difficulty with surviving off the land might doom insufficiently outdoorsy delvers to starvation and thirst. The political action the party gets entangled with would be a crusade against the hidden evils of the demon cult and the Earl’s plot to murder Captain Lavigne.
The Captain’s turf covers a good slice of the central swamp. If the PCs begin there, they’ll have to contend with disease, bigger chances of monster encounters, bad roads, a large network of devil worshippers and “lawful authorities” who are really just mobsters. On the plus side, the settlements have plenty of shopping range for materialists to enjoy. There are two ruins to explore here. With war declared, the players may be hired as mercenaries for either side. Heading north and across the border takes them into No-Man’s Land for fun in Ruin Three, four monster lairs and The Chong Place dungeon.
The realm of Gildemeister Alex Starstorm is probably the least punishing start-point terrain-wise. It is relatively packed and small, making journeys less awful and foraging in the forested hills is downright pleasant compared to the rest of The March. It has the best shopping and natural resources in the region. The obvious opportunities are the ruins and lairs to the west, or Ruin Four in the middle. Because of the war, the local military is on the lookout for suspicious activity who might be spies or special operatives of the northern mafia. Cultists are less of a problem here.
A Tour of the Lairs
The adventurers may travel through the region’s rough terrain to explore the monster lairs for whatever treasure they are hiding.
Raiding the Ruins
Similarly, the ancient ruins described earlier could be rich fodder for delving. Of course, the fallout from what they find there could change the region in dramatic ways…
Dogs of War
Player-Characters might be interested in fighting for or against one of the rulers. Obviously, good-aligned adventurers would sympathize with the Gildemeister over the Captain, and battle at the border between the swamp and the plains. Less obviously, the Earl in the north may hire them to go after the bandit queen or help them take more territory for himself.
Hidden Agendas
Two of the rulers have deadly secrets, demon worshippers hide all over, and anyone could be plotting to seize power in the region.
Three Hundred and Thirty-Three 