The Cannibal Coast: Part 5

08 Jun, 2026

First post is here, the second here, the third here, and the fourth here. Enjoy

yyy-xxx Qaf, Holy Mountain

In death the men and women of 17-353 Meerschaum are surrendered to the care of the Jenn, who reign on the slopes of their most Holy Mountain of Qaf.

The granite titan erupts from the landscape, the black-grey-white strata striking out at a harsh angle. He resembles a wide dog's tooth, with a harsh stoss slope and a first gentle but increasingly steep lee slope. Snaking mazes of soapstone roads and staircases have been laid over the lee-side of the mountain. Fragile soapstone is used because the Jenn step much lighter than men, and so wear not the paths they tread.

Halfway up the mountain, a journey which takes but half-a-day, is a grand plaza of huge tiles, each ten feet square and coloured in a maze-like pattern. All around the edge of the place are burial pits marked by tens-of-thousands of crowded white-rock tombstones, each unadorned but for a fist-sized hole. This square is the Foundations of the City of the Dead, the blueprint of an wondrous ethereal city where the deceased live and work and love and cry anew. It graces not the eyes of the living. Those desperately grief-stricken pace the slabs hoping to catch a glimpse of their beloveds once more (2d10-2 present at any given time).

Beyond the plaza is the domain of the Jenn. The roads and staircases become ever more labyrinthine, snaking in and out of the mountain himself, through echoing black tunnels and under dusty column-propped overhangs. Those observant may catch glimpses of Qaf's masters in such places, perhaps even catching upon a chance to beseech the capricious ones for sorcerous aid:

• Contact is established on a 1-in-6, up to 5-in-6 based on the direness of the plea and the offerings presented (nothing is desired more than beautiful things).
• Following this, a wiry and indistinct form gathers up and declares their manna in booming voice, offering a suitable spell of up to d6-th level before dispersing.

All paths converge at a small dias in the shadow of Qaf's ultimate peak, which takes a further day to reach from the Foundations.
The platform is occupied but by a meek mourning-altar and an ablution-pool. This pair - the block of pale-stone and the spring-fed fountain - rest in the shade, seemingly sheltered from the harsh summit-gales. This is a place for the delivery of the Blessed Dead, those magicians and enchantresses who chose to walk amongst the Jenn in life. Simple funeral rites are performed, and the body is left. Any corpse is taken by the spirits the moment the ritual is concluded and all turn to depart, the soul condemned to their judgement.

yyy-xxx Little Pigs

A plum tree stands out against the tundra grasses, drooping branches rimmed with ringlets of waxy leaves, full of delicious purple treats.
Underneath, a big mother pig and a sounder of eight piglets. These are very pleasant animals. Pink and chubby and polite. The kids are just playing around and snuffling while the sow has a rest. They seem quite sharp.
During their adolescence these piglets will be able to walk around on their hind-legs and do basic tasks. That's still a few months away. After that, they'll sink quietly into the mundanity of adulthood.

yyy-xxx The Covetous Eye

Along the road an oldish yet rather wild woman rests against the body of an old upturned cart. She wears a patch over her left eye. This is Capricca, an infamous bandit: tales are told of her looming from the woods with glowing red eyes and spiriting away maidens from their mothers.

She wears a simple unlaced tunic and a red-white bandana, from under which spills a silky brown mane. With nimble tanned fingers she picks stones from the treads of her embroidered high-boots using a dagger.

Capricca hasn't been a highway-woman for some time now. She settled down a half-decade ago in rural Zurth, in the isolated hamlet of Ushal'skos. There's a very pretty girl named Maritika waiting at home for her. She's out here because her fellow villagers are thinking about moving to Lon Galo and she wishes to pay them to reconsider. Twice-score years ago she left a cache of jewels beneath an old cairn halfway between the Holy Mountain and the Sun Spire. That is her mark.

Whenever Capricca sees something she likes her left eye glows bright gold. She tries to hide this but it's pretty obvious.
This bane is the curse of the Covetous Eye. As recompense (or further injury), the Curse-Bearer can cast Locate Object Within 60' once a day. The Curse can be passed on to a willing subject through a blood-sharing ritual. Capricca is about through with the curse at this point and thinks that being rid of it will help her blend into domesticity better.

She bawks at any accusation of being a defiler of young women. They always agreed to come with her, and they always left her with more than they joined her.

(6th Level Thief that bears earrings, a pencil behind the ear, eight rings, matching bangles, a tongue piercing, and a nose piercing; as Folks of the Guild)

yyy-xxx Puppulellow

There once was a eel they called Puppulellow,
With white and gold scales in the sea.
It joked to the king who then ruled the below,
And said "what a good horse I could be".

The king, not amused, did react with dismay,
and said "an eel needs not a hoofed leg".
A curse on Puppulellow did he then lay,
No matter how the fish did beg.

And since then the eel has wandered over-land,
From dawn until each evening's eve.
Regretting most dearly its flippant demand,
For what's asked for one shall then receive.

(To the Tune of 'The Triumph of General Ludd')

Verdant green, golden yellow, and a regal purple, all below a serene blue sky.

A strange steed from nursery rhymes grazes here amidst a field of wilting sunflowers: Puppulellow. She is a noble beast, nearly eight feet tall. The horse bears a smooth and shiny coat of eggshell white, almost like sun-stained porcelain. The Sung-About-One bears a flowing mane of gold that flows all around her as if weightless. She has eyes of deep Byzantium purple, filled as much with colour as sorrow.

Under the night sky the steed begins to grow pale and sickly as veins of dark ebony and violet snake up from her hind-hooves, smothering her in a coat of putrescent sludge. Such is Puppulellow's curse: a fine steed at day, but crippled at night. She is most sullen during these times, the ichor causing her whole body to chill and ache. The only thing that soothes her is being bathed: it doesn't wash away the stains, but it helps with the pain and makes her feel loved.

As a Riding Horse with double HD that can be fought from upon.
Inspired by Nightcrow (@afterfield.bsky.social).

yyy-xxx Clergy of the Holy Limbus

A steep spire of a mountain buries its head in the clouds. The Petitioner's Trail leads up Mt Gelon. The way is marked with cairns and prayer flags in a rainbow sequence. Gravel crunches underfoot. Along the way it gets foggy: the clouds hang low here. Lichen and succulents thrive, supping from the airborne moisture. It clings to your skin.

It takes a day to scale the winding switch-back path to the Monastery of the Holy Limbus, an austere set of single-storied stuccoed buildings, much in the style of an old Iberian hamlet. They surround a circular cloister which itself rings a rockery, ferns and mountain-herbs pushing from between rounded pebbles and boulders carpeted with moss. Arrivals are greeted by an anonymous figure cloaked by a single thin sheet of linen secured around the waist with a simple rope (like a "sheet ghost" without eye holes). All members of the Clergy dress like this.

Day and night is almost meaningless here. The complex is lit by coal-fed braziers at all hours and patrolled by censer-bearing monks, their heady smoke mingling with the fog. The Brothers and Sisters of the Monastery are a gentle sort who have relinquished names in favour of quiet contemplation. This is a place for those who wish to recover from afflictions of the soul and mind: "one finds that those maladies and memories are lost to Gelon's haze". They sustain their bellies on barley and mountain tubers and chard. They sustain their fires with coal from a nearby pit. They sustain their souls with each other: the more stable lead the less stable. It's a very caring community. Those who feel capable to care at a given point bear orbs of blue glass in their hands to signal their capacity.

Wolves occasionally stray close to the Monastery: they are fended away from the communal bunk-houses by the stronger of the Clergy, who swing their censers around like flails. No other weapon is allowed here.

Those who come to the Monastery are greeted and provided with a Day of Stilling to decide whether they'd like a longer stay: either a week, a month, or permanently. Part of this test-day is embarking on a Still-Walk further up the mountain, guided by a member of the Clergy.
Towards the peak there's about four-fifths as much oxygen in the air as one would like. In the still white soup of the mist one tends to either relax or get quite panicked. Your guide stays just out of eyesight, ten-or-twenty paces further ahead. Brocken Spectres are common here: it is where the icon of the Holy Limbus originates, a halo resembling the eye of a great and watchful and caring giant (the Clergy suppose this is Gelon them-self).

Spending a week in the calm embrace of the Clergy reconciles one with any mental afflictions or attribute drains. Spending a month here grants advantage on saves against Fear and other such tortures on the mind.

yyy-xxx Forgotten Altar

A relict island sits in the centre of an old salt-pan, protruding like a mole from the snow-white flats. Reaching it is a long and unpleasant walk across the crumbling saline scales. The salt-dust throws up and gets in your eyes as you crack each hexagon-tile.

Atop the crest of the hillock, a crusted-over limestone-altar. Pot-sherds and other debris are scattered around the ritual-surface, which is emblazoned with a carving of a sun overlapped by the moon. By spending an hour or so doing some amateur archaeology, one can jigsaw together part of a squat and wide-mouthed pot. The following image is relief-sculpted on the side of this blood-collecting-bowl:

The altar is a summoning-place for the Buraq, a white-coated mule that bears the hind-quarters of a peafowl. It can be beckoned forth with the sacrifice of an equine male below an eclipse (such events occur five times a year), the heavenly steed bursting forth from the fatal wound.
It is a most brilliant creature, the rider sitting at the centre of an extravagant sunburst of prismatic plumage. The Buraq can carry a single rider to a destination eight-hundred miles away - and back - in a single night. It does require some exertion on the sacred beast's part, but it is far too noble and proud to be seen struggling, straining itself to meet the task. It never deigns to fight itself, but will seat one who stays in the back-lines of battle.

If the steed's service is ever overly presumed or - worse - the wonder-mule is subjected to injury through an attitude of negligence, it will scornfully depart. The Buraq never returns to one who has took it to be a lowly beast-of-burden.
As an immortal Riding Horse.

yyy-xxx dumb idiot birds

a flock of 2d6 dumb idiot birds. they kind of look like emu but fatter and plumper. they have big pillowy downs in primary and secondary colours, and big yellow toucan beaks and huge googly eyes that point in opposite directions, and like three strands of hair that point up from the top of their heads. they're stupid. they're just standing around pecking at the ground and making honking noises.

oh man who am i kidding they're quite nice really.

The feathers of these flightless creatures possess alchemo-magical properties of Colour and Stupification. If fed they can serve as personal mounts, able to carry either a person or baggage. They are easily frightened.
(AC 9, HD 2, hp 8, #AT 1, D 1-6, ML 6)

apparently they are from the "garten of banban".

The Wodnywek Beachhead

This reach of the Cannibal Coast is the point of embarkation for the Wodnywek's Salting of the Earth.

Each day, 1-in-6 chance of an encounter with the undersea invaders: each detachment of 2d6 wodnywek javelineer-regulars (AC 8, HD 1, hp 3, #AT 1, D 1-6, ML 9) is accompanied by a forward-scouting reconnaissance-commando, as detailed in yyy-xxx Fish-Wielding Dervish (AC 7, HD 4, hp 14, #AT 2, D 1-6, ML 11).
There is a 1-in-2 chance the commando goes AWOL and strikes sighted targets instead of reporting back.

yyy-xxx Wodnywek Rocketeers

A flat expanse of meagre and muddy sand-dunes topped with thick salt-grasses. From a mile inland a rivulet snakes down to the sea, fed from a spring atop a similarly grassy hillock.
A detachment of 2d4 wodnyweks occupy it as a surveillance position. The fish-men scan the horizon with the disposition of a fox-hunting farmer.

They almost certainly see you first. But you hear them first: a distant pop, then a descending Shepard Tone whistle, and then a tight clipped BANG.

This Wodnywek mortar emplacement wields four hand-mortars between them. These are wide and short barrels of bronze engraved with fish-scales and fitted with curved pistol-stocks of driftwood. They more resemble flare guns than rifles. The mortars are fed with small shells packed with sulphur from the deepest vents of the seabed rifts. Muzzle-flash is minimum and the shells are hard to spot in flight.
The weapons have a maximum range of 450' feet and a 1-in-6 chance of landing on-mark at that distance. This chance increases by 1 for each 100' closer the target is before dropping back to 1-in-6 if within 100'. A shell deals 2d6 damage to the primary target and d6 damage to anything within 5'.

The rocketeers begin firing when targets get within 350'. They fire in a drilled fashion, one by one, once a round. They have 60 shells on them. They cry out with joy on direct hits: "you cannot stop the Salting!". They begin freaking the fuck out if their position is located or assaulted and will poorly attempt to relocate and conceal themselves once more before resuming the barrage. They possess sword-fish (desiccated plaice with razor-sharp fins) for hand-to-hand combat but they haven't trained enough with them.

(AC 9, HD 1, hp 4, #AT 1, D 1-6, ML 7; -4 penalty while fighting hand-to-hand)

yyy-xxx Dervish Wraiths

A low drone echoes out under distant yelps and rattling-gurgles. A low mist rolls in. 3d3 on the horizon: cloaks whip against a sudden squall. The figures are clad in shabby ruffled shirts under tattered woollen long-coats. They begin to fade into nothingness past their belts. Looking closer: Holy Shit, do they have hooks for hands!? Thankfully, no. It's still not good though: they are shotel-wielding Dervish Wraiths. They peer around with empty eye-sockets and loose-hanging jaws as they drift forth.

These are the ghosts of drowned sailors pressed into service by a Sea-Witch of the Wodnyweks, the ultimate humiliation forged by the clawed hands of the Brine Hag Agatka. This particular patrol once manned from the most unfortunately wrecked three-masted trading vessel Lilac Runner (27-280). They are soul-bound to kill but wish to parlay: "we must attempt to cut ye down, but we can do so in an honourable way, as to better your chances of living and ours of being freed". They propose one-on-one duels.

(AC 7, HD 2, hp 8, #AT 2, D 1-3, ML 12; receive double-damage from silvered weapons and such)

yyy-xxx Flattener

Groans in the distance, and then a rumbling. The sound of trees being snapped like matchsticks. Uh oh.
A mass of water in the crudest approximation of a fifteen foot-tall man balances upon two massive cylinders of stone, laid on their sides, one in front of the other. The "man" crawls forward, rolling them forwards with "hands" and "feet". It somewhat resembles a steamroller.

This nameless weapon of war is a tool of the Wodnyweks. It has been tasked with the matter of flattening the forests to make the erosion of the coast easier. From when it is first spotted, it proceeds to bulldoze a hex of woodland every two days.

Woe betide those who stray close: the Prime Directive of all Wodnywek war-machines is to kill land-treaders. It will chase targets at a rate of 40' until they put a good distance or an insuperable barrier between themselves and it.

At the centre of the machine's human form, in the "stomach", is a chugging watermelon-sized engine of brass pipes and blackened pistons that maintains the surface tension of the fluid. This is the only way to damage the thing: the following combat statistics assume one is aiming for this (requires a long-handled weapon or such; all but the strongest missile-blows are cushioned by the water).
(AC 6, HD 8, hp 15, #AT 1, D 50% Instant Death or 50% Lost Limb, ML 12)

Inspired by that most dreaded of all foes: the Waterwraith.

yyy-xxx Fish-Wielding Dervish

Slash-marks on the trees. Machete-cut shrubs. A strange and lethal sort wanders the woodland here: a fish-wielding dervish

Choking exhales and gurgling sounds out from the bushes. The reconnaissance-commando of the Wodnywek hides in waiting. It is eight feet tall and covered in sickly sea-green scales, fading to pale flesh down the stomach. Huge unblinking round eyes rest too far apart, peering from behind stinking white barbels and long sodden black hair. It wears just a loincloth of braided seaweed.
The wodnywek holds a desiccated plaice loosely in each hand. These are sword-fish, carcasses that have been dried out to achieve a razor-sharp fin-edge.

The dervish has a simple strategy: leap from the undergrowth and wreak terror on the poor foolish land-treaders. It is so filled with hate and glee, however, that it can't help but quiver with anticipation.

(AC 7, HD 4, hp 14, #AT 2, D 1-6, ML 11)

yyy-xxx Noodle Fish

A shoal of d6*d6 eel-like fish (or fish-like eels) snake through the air as if below the waves, blue and orange scales scintillating in the light. They are long and thin and tapered at both ends. Their tails split into d6 feelers that rhythmically flex. They have no mouths, only a long snout-like proboscis. They gaze around panickedly (for that is the only way fish gaze) while looking for things to eat or latch onto like leeches. Luckily for their hosts, they possess no means of devouring or sucking sustenance through their proboscises: they are mostly for sucking up minnows below the sea, and ants or flies above.

These are transplants from the shallows, enchanted and brought here by the Wodnyweks to prepare the Beachhead for ecological conversion. They possess alchemo-magical properties of levitation and suction.

yyy-xxx Coral Oubliette

A spire of sea-forms clings to a cliff. Founded on the crumbling escarpment, threatening to give way at any moment, the tower is formed of coral and shells and molluscs cemented together with limestone. In all it is twenty feet wide and eighty feet tall, crowned by a giant conch-shell the size of a cottage.

The construction is encrusted enough to be easy to climb. Within the conch is a thin and tall room tiled with mosaics of sapphire and aquamarine. From the ceiling droops an incense-burning chandelier, from which flows a thin and calming teal smoke. The room is furnished with cushions and side-tables and a day-bed, all made from deep blue material too.

A fair woman, shrouded in an orange sari and slate-grey robe, sits upon the day-bed. She is ethereal: eight feet all, her extremities clad in turquoise scales, her eyes unblinking and far apart, her hair sodden and shiny. She has been shackled to a brass ring at the centre of her prison-boudoir. This is Her Grace, the Wodnywek Szlachess, the one named Gorzata, daughter of the Sea-King. She is in exile for opposing her father's Salting of the Earth, the hateful invasion into the realm of the land-treaders: "if thou are enchanted such with the vile pests of the land, then we both reject you from our sea and seal you from their soil, suspending you up high in a prison that you willed upon yourself".

Gorzata sighs. She stares at a small vial on the side-table in-front of her. It is filled with a purple liquid: a small offer of a grace-killing, smuggled by sympathetic agents within the Wodnywek. She strains her soul to cling to hope: the tower creaks and threatens to topple during the evening winds, filling each night with terror like no other.
If discovered by land-treaders, she entrusts herself to their care and asks to be taken as emissary to all the rulers upon the earth, so that she may warn them of the Salting. She speaks with confidence and grace that stems from an inner redoubt of strength. She will settle for poverty but blatantly prefers finer things.

Gorzata has been trained in water-witchery and can cast either Rock to Mud or Wall of Ice once a day (drawing water from the stone to weaken it). She can also grant allies Water Breathing at-will. She has a pet water-wraith she calls Ophie, a spirit that inhabits up to a pint of water and acts as a familiar to her. It likes to pretend to be a snake.
The Szlachess acts a 4th Level Magic-User.

yyy-xxx Hippocampus

A stretch of pungent tide-pools rimes the coast here. Greasy sponges and anemones and sea-stars carpet the lower reaches while algae and barnacles encrust the peaks of the rocks. In one pool there appears to be the milky mass of a beached dolphin desperately rocking back and forth. This estimation does not hold up to closer inspection.

A sea-horse hides here from her cruel wodnywek masters. The pallid white skin of her horse-half is criss-crossed with marks of the lash while her fish-half, plated with thick sea-green scales, is untouched. Five narwhal-horns erupt from her forrid, and a tattered caudal fin from her rear. She is muscular but gaunt, much in the manner of a slave.

This creature can talk to those who hold their ear under the water's surface. She gestures for them to do so. The horse speaks in honking pants and snorts. She has been named Turkaboise. She was spawned from the ether one-hundred-and-eight moons ago, an escapee from the dreams of the Deeps. For as long as she has been, she has lived in captivity and trained as a terror-steed by the Wodnywek. She fled from her riders following the sacking of Gornjot half a moon ago. She wishes to join the land-treaders for she believes them to be better masters than the maniacal ones below, even if one day the earth will be swallowed by the sea as the Wodnywek plan. She has a suggestion: she saw this thing in the village, a box upon four wheels, filled with grass (a hay-cart) and it made her think that perhaps one could hitch her fish-half to a similar contraption.

A day after the sea-horse is encountered, a duo of wodnywek reconnaissance-commandos (as yyy-xxx Fish-Wielding Dervish) happen upon her hiding spot. They attempt to pick up the trail and stalk her if she has been guided away.

If taken care of and granted a method of perambulation, the sea-horse is capable of a long and happy life upon land.
As a War Horse with double HD.

yyy-xxx Wodnywek Mobile Weapons Platform

"Clomp clomp clomp", and a rattling like a bag of giant plates and forks. Betwixt the trees strides a twenty-foot tall colossus clad from head-to-toe in armour of cockle-shell mail and conch pauldrons, cowry helm and razor-clam vambraces. On the giant's back, clattering against a scallop shield, is a multitude of weapons slung with seaweed-braided rope: a halberd, an arming-sword, and a longbow. From a belt hangs a hunter's net, a bag of sea-urchin caltrops, and a quiver of a dozen driftwood arrows each the size of a sapling. The warrior lumbers between the trees, occasionally lifting a lanky arm up to peer through the visor of their helmet.

Upon inspection it appears the figure within is covered in thick bristles of greasy hair which occasionally poke from joints and gaps in the armour. Upon even closer inspection these can be made out to be the feelers and limbs of a huge inky-black sea-creature, like an unarmoured spider crab covered in fleshy feelers and spines. It puppets this custom-made armour gracelessly.

This abomination is a Wodnywek Mobile Weapons Platform, sent to patrol and strike terror into land-treaders. It clumsily pursues those it spies (2-in-6 unless ). Despite the shell-suit's noisiness, the pilot remains eerily silent, letting pass not even a sigh of exhaustion as it lugs around such an armoury.

(AC 4, HD 10, hp 45, #AT 1, D 2-12, ML 10; swaps weapons every two turns; can be killed swiftly if toppled and stuck with spears or such in the abdomen)

yyy-xxx Djehnt and his Slight Skin

Flies buzz. Flowing through the trees, the sharp iron smell of a scuffle's remains. Next to a gurgling stream, blood trickling into the water and swept away, lies a dead man with the back of his head caved in. He has a most perplexing appearance. He is naked and pale-skinned, yet his limbs and back are covered with blue-green fish-scales. Despite being strewn face down, his eyes are far apart enough - almost touching his ears - to shoot a dead stare at one approaching from the side. He has no exterior genitals: just a cloaca. Next to him lies the snapped wooden shaft of his presumed weapon: a sickle-spear of brass. It looks like he has been hastily stripped.

Thirty feet away, in a bush, an injured man shudders with pain. He has a thin face and a narrow-bridged nose, under which hangs a long drooping moustache. His lack of hair is compensated for by huge golden loop-earrings. He has lost a lot of blood from a tear across his right flank and is clearly quite beat up (but then again, you've already seen the other guy). He shimmers in and out of sight like a flickering flame.

This is Djehnt, a sellsword from the deepest reaches of the inner tundra. He owes his slight and sickly appearance, and his characteristic nasal voice, to his childhood in the Illcity of Kafanesh (198-464). Scouting out potential earnings in these reaches, he was caught off-guard by a "spectral wraith" that came at him seemingly from within a tree. If he wasn't an exceptional armsman he would have died right then and there. He bested the foe with his war-pick, yet found that his foe was not a ghoul or ghost, but a "fish-man" wearing some sort of "special-leotard". He has spent the last hour or two shrouded by the raiment's boon while he "catches his breath". Djehnt is a very sardonic sort.

This item, the Slight Skin, is a white-and-black-patterned bodysuit bestowed upon wodnywek scout-assassins. It cloaks a wearer in a shimmering sheen of un-sightedness (spend a charge to become Invisible for an hour at a time; Djhent has spent all of the six charges; bathing the bodysuit in saltwater recovers one charge every twelve hours). It also acts as an incredibly lightweight piece of protection. Djehnt knows not the suit's third property. He will pay a fine sum of a 2d6*100gp (half now; half later) to anyone who can get him back to the safety of a city, where he plans to indulge in the services of first a back-alley surgeon and then many beautiful escorts. He'd prefer not to lose the suit but accepts that he doesn't have many options.

**Wodnywek Slight Skin***.
*One: as Leather Armour.
Two: the wearer can spend a charge to become Invisible for an hour at a time. Bathing the bodysuit in salt-water recovers one charge every twelve hours. Holds six charges at full capacity. Three: the wearer can momentarily relax their muscles before tensing and stretching upwards to instantly Mimic the appearance of a tree or fallen trunk or log, whichever is relevant to their surroundings. Their face remains visible but is camouflaged. The stance can be held indefinitely, but incurs a 1-in-6 chance of permanent transformation for each day of continuous use past a week.

yyy-xxx Gornjot, Fishing Hamlet

A collection of a dozen pleasant stilted huts rises from the mud-flats. Boardwalks of driftwood-pine bridge the gaps between each dwelling. There is even a meek plaza-esque pier, yet this has collapsed into the muck below. This place is - or was - Gornjot: a meagre but idyllic fishing hamlet.

The silt has been stained red with blood. Butchered corpses, strewn hither and thither, sink into it. Dried-fish and fruit and seaweed and house-hold pleasantries (crockery, ornaments, clothing) have been dumped into tide-sodden piles. This looks less like a raid and more like a hateful eradication.

Beneath several of the fifty-odd corpses (2-in-6 chance) are sea-urchin shrapnel-mines (Save vs Breath or 2d3 damage & three hours picking out the spines).

Gornjot has been sacked by the Wodnywek. The invasion has begun.

yyy-xxx Brine Hag

A horrible sort lounges upon the ship-spearing rocks, misted by the sea spray. This is Agatka, a wodnywek witch. She appears as a beautiful and noble maiden on the cusp of middle-age, adorned with brass bangles and ornaments. She bears an uncanny allure, for her forearms and back and legs studded with scintillating fish-scales. This is but a glamorous charm.

Agatka is a supremacist of the most vile kind. In her ocean-lair she works terrible war-curses, yet she ventures out here simply to refresh her senseless hatred. She beckons wanderers towards her before puzzling them with a cavalcade of questions, stating that they are merely borne of pure curiosity: "wouldst thou rather possess your legs or the fins of a sea-dweller"; "wouldst though rather partake of the boons of the fruit-tree or those of the fisherman's net"; "does thou desireth more the water of the tides or that of the mountain springs"; "is thou capable of naming more fish or more fruit"; and so on. She goes wild-eyed with astonishment at every response, twisting the answers whichever way she can within her head in order to make herself all the more incandescent with rage, until she can barely speak for sputtering and spitting with incredulous scorn. Eventually she begins shrieking incoherently.

The glamour fails as she gets more and more angry. Her flesh turns pallid. Her scales peel away. An oil-slick mop of hair spills from her head in patches, falling down to her waist. Her jewellery dulls and droops from her gaunt frame.

This happens pretty much every time the sea-witch meets land-treaders. She has a strange fixation in particular with comparing seafood to fruit. The whole experience is bizarre yet quite frightening. If her marks are caught trying to outwit or bait her, she repeats her first question, this time as ultimatum. Regardless of answer, she considers the thought of granting fins to such lowly pests as land-treaders to be complete anathema, an insult to the very dignity of the world not to mention the wodnywek. She then throws up a fog of sea-foam and runs away while slinging cockle-shot and slurs in equal measure. If captured or killed she places a hex on the one most culpable: all metal they bear upon themselves or in hand shall rust or corrode in moments.

(AC 8, HD 3, hp 12, #AT 1, D 1-6, ML 9; can spew a sea-foam spray at-will, blinding all nearby and placing disadvantage on all attacks)