Are these poorly-masked adventure hooks? Yes, yes they are. For the last century a peculiar fever has gripped the learned societies of Marlinko, Kezmarok, Revoca, and even distant Nur. Book fever. Across the Cantons, wealthy patrons sponsor expeditions into abandoned undercities, collapsed fortress-libraries, frozen tombs, and cyclopean vaults in search of lost Hyperborean manuscripts: Classical,…
For centuries the Wee Peoples of Zěm have occupied a peculiar place within the Overking's domains. Too useful to exterminate, too numerous to ignore, and too strange to comfortably integrate, they have largely been confined to the margins of civilized life (and outside the Corelands). In the borderlands they are permitted residence, though usually only in designated quarters where they serve as…
10 Wizards of the Hill Cantons # Name Description 1 Magister Dobromil the Cauterizer Specializes in magical “cleaning” of reality leaks. Wears four layers of waxed robes and insists all visitors wash their souls before entry. The air around him crackles with sterilized regret. 2 Varja of the Missing Spine Lithe, flexible, and disturbingly serpentine. Her spinal column was traded for divinatory…
# Name Description 1 Mother Feketa Mummified, animate matriarch who rules her tenement block from a tub of heated mud. Gives quests in exchange for gossip and scented soaps. 2 Pan Jaroslav the Blue A melancholic duelist who fights only on Tuesdays. Claims to be 132 years old. Lives in a roofless manse. 3 Radu of the Clock-Spine Hunchbacked watchmaker with a literal mechanical spine. Can rewind…
Hirelings & Henchfolk d10 Name Role Notes 1 Oldrik the Rope-Whisperer Porter Speaks to rope as if it were alive. Demands polite treatment of all gear. 2 Sveta of the Stiff Back Torchbearer Painfully upright. Immune to fear effects unless slouched. 3 Jaromil the Pink Linkboy Wears only a specific shade of pink; insists it's a ward against “mind-grubs.” Is probably right. 4 Tóno of the Bended Knee…
[This being the players handout for an adventure I have been cooking for my weekly Hill Cantons home game.] Oiorpata, Isle of the Western Amazons Dedicated to Michael Shea “Beyond the steamy wetland glades, where moss-stained helots harvest blood-pearls from the polyps of the Mire-Dells, there rises the amber spire of the Palace of Many Lashes. There reigns Her Supreme Rubenesqueness, Hisfytla,…
I have been busy, busy in both real world and Hill Cantons-y writing. An update on where things are: Slumbering Ursine Dunes Omnibus This has been in my serenity prayer zone. Do you remember when you used to download things from Windows and the blue bar would get stuck at 98 percent for hours? Yeah it’s like that and basically that last bit is the last revisions on layout and getting it print…
Can't stop, won't stop. More NPC free-association. Undoubtedly to be recycled soon in a product near you. # Name Description 1 Vyshemir the Bark-Cloaked A grim-faced exile draped in stitched birch bark and vole pelts. Survives off fermented lichens and bone tea. Claims to remember the forest before it grew. Might be centuries old. 2 Klara Vrzalová, Witch of the Third Tree Laughs like falling…
Three immense bathhouses--the tidy Punctilious Polevik, the seedy-chic Black Pomegranate and the dimly-lit Mongotarium--serve as popular centers for business and hanky panky in Marlinko. The three bathhouses are built over several hot springs in the northwestern quarter. Half-ogre masseuses and cave dwarf towelboys wait on your every need. And by every need, we of course mean rough, joyless uhh…
Hello remember me, people? Insert the usual round of excuses about life, work, the difficulties of this period, etc. But hey I am writing again and finished writing up Revoca's Great Aviary --you know six years later--and in typical neuro-diverse way three other adventure sites that I have been running the family unit through (oh yes weekly Hill Cantons game has been a joy again). But hey just for…
Grandma Gaya, the Rav-Witch of High Kezmarok , seeks the stout of limb and humble of mind in the obtaining of fallen stars from an upcoming prophesied shower in the Field of Levic in Revoca Canton . Retrieval of said objects will fetch no less than 1500 gold suns a piece . Men of science, sages and savants know the objects called “shooting stars” by old wives to be in fact screeching, blazing…
I still love the old ways, you can pry the increasingly deviant BX/OSE/LL subvariant of HC house system from my cold dead hands. But dammit has playing Baldurs Gate (purple-skinned Roy Kent being my own PC) got me at least wanting to experiment with a slimmed down, house ruled to death 5e as my next mini-campaign reboot of things Hill Cantons-y. So on that note, here is part 1 of Hill Cantons 5e…
And now the news from the Hill Cantons… The great half-ruined southern metropolis of Kezmarok is back in the shouted news of Cantonal town criers with recent developments. Not only is the lost lower half of the city back from its sojourn in a fell pocket dimension , but the eternal host of Turko-Fey is back at the gates and resuming the long half-millennium siege of the city –though from more…
A quick update on my personal Ahabic project, the Slumbering Ursine Dunes Omnibus , TLDR version: the alpha version is going to be released today exclusively for my long-suffering Patreon backers, Hill Cantons players, and the usual frauds/ne'er do wells/vagabonds I associate with. (Never fear the print version and final PDF in its full Bilibin-ish, Lukaesque, Kalinite glory will be coming in a…
Friends, it's been a long while as I have been taking a long turn playing political player in the so-called real world instead of the shiner ludic one out here. The good news is that I am writing and planning on running the Hill Cantons again and just finished up some new material on further adventures in that most feverish of cities, Marlinko. It's been enjoyable bringing up the banners of the…
Every year the Black Friday comes. The crowds throng true places of worship, the lands called strips and malls that run without limit through zones our cities. The long stares start in the morning and extend through the day to a 1000 yards. In the backs of lines children howl and squirm. Black Friday will come again.
And now the News... In a statement beamed from the Oracular Society today Morafans the Rickmaster , the Psychosocial Health Minister of the Overking, has issued guidelines for the “mauve plague” of crowned micro-psychonauts sweeping the borderlands this season. Hill Cantoners are advised to stay underground for extended periods of time preferably in small armed groups of 4-12 to avoid mauve plague…
We return to our regularly scheduled program of fortnightly updates from the Hill Cantons campaign. And Now the News... Agents of Koza the Regimental Goat have been spreading the political gospel of the horned exile through the Cantons this month. The Weal-and-Chaos platform of Koza has great if subversive appeal to the enlisted Black Army ranks and rural lesser classes especially the newly rolled…
I've been fielding a lot of questions by email and DM on the various books of the Hill Cantons (Slumbering Ursine Dunes, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, Misty Isles of the Eld) and the setting in general. Its been fun digging out old dog-eared notebooks, coffee-stained maps and the like to remember what exactly went down in Lady Szara's Bathe in the Blood of Servants charity ball, what lies across the…
[A new Revoca Hill Cantons book chapter, featuring the Tarn Tomb of Morvna (a dungeon), is about done. If you would like to help support that project and/or find this blog helpful, please consider backing my Patreon right here .] One of the things as a budding GM that I dug about my fave classic Traveller supplement, 76 Patrons , was that each patron encounter/mission/hook came with a d6 chart…
It's self-styled Throwback Thursday and having just released the 34-page draft booklet of Hill Cantons news to my Patreon backers I am going to indulge my summer whims and re-post an old post (with small updates) I put together on the use of campaign news to cohere and maintain a longstanding campaign (part of my old series on building dynamic sandboxes that you can find here ). News as Campaign…
[ The following is an "origin story" of sorts for the Revoca Hill Cantons Book and a fatherly love letter to my son, Sammy, who is the original Blue Bear creator. If you find this blog helpful and most of all want to help me get a new Hill Cantons book out please consider backing my Patreon. ] The Revoca Chant of Morvna and Blue Bear (Modrý Medvěd) So it came to pass in the lands of Morvna the…
[ Pandering note: if you find this blog helpful and most of all want to help me get a new Hill Cantons book out please consider backing my Patreon. ] Hear ye, hear ye! For this month-only the Hill Cantons only semi-nomadic weaponsmithery, Zikmund and Sons, will be making its cutting-edge devices of things martial available in its silk-canopied booth in Revoca Town's Trhove. Come for the free…
[Before we get into today's matter at hand, if you find this blog helpful and most of all want to help me get a new Hill Cantons book out please consider backing my Patreon. I am about to drop the first chapter of the new Revoca Hill Cantons book next week so it's really the optimum time.] Going on two years now 1-2 times a month I seem to field a variant of the question “are there plans for a…
I wanted to give readers of this here blog a better sense of the Revoca book ahead, the fifth Hill Cantons book and the first non-SUD installment. If you want to support the creation of this book please consider supporting my broke writers ass at the Hill Cantons Patreon here . The Revoca Book Elevator Pitch The Revoca Canton book will lean in much harder to the Mythic Wilderness theme readers saw…