The Cannibal Coast: Part 6

03 Jul, 2026

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

This time, the Spike Swamp. Enjoy.

Kolgh Keunek, the Spike Swamp

A swamp smothers the eastern reaches of the Cannibal Coast. It's a patchwork blanket of reed-beds and peat bogs, dry ridges where one is feasted on by gnats and low gulleys where one is sucked dry by leeches. Worse yet, the whole place is chokingly humid, so much so that steam rises from each stinking body of muck-water and sugary tears drip from each sweltering willow tree.

Whenever characters venture off-road, one can determine whether the ground is dry or wet (normal or difficult terrain) with the following algorithm: multiply together the units of the hex's x and y coordinates, and if the units of the result is a prime number, it's dry ground. This makes a nice and slightly irregular pattern. Alternatively, there's a 3-in-10 chance that the ground is dry.

This place has been named Kolgh Keunek by its inhabitants, most of whom cluster in the sinking city of Tot'Capol. They are dog-breeders and foresters with a predilection for heavy drinking and unaccompanied male voice choirs. Keunek hounds, like large woolly sheep, and Keunekian liquors, fermented from swamp-orchard fruit, are alike renowned for their sharpness and strength.

There is one more thing: an unusual creature that the Keuneks have taken to calling Lady Kentra. It (or "she") spans the entire swamp as a mycorrhizal network, emerging here and there not just to sustain itself on wildlife but also take out invasive pests. Her limbs take the form of sickly green tentacles encrusted with spines like a rose's stem.
With each hex travelled through, there is a 1-in-10 chance the Hungry Lady rises. Each tendril's thickness varies substantially, anywhere from a child's arm to a pine's trunk. d6 emerge from the swamp at any give time, coiling and grabbing like an octopus. Unless you're actively polluting the swamp, Kentra just wants feeding: if you don't have an animal to spare her, she'll go for one of you instead. The Spike-Hydra doesn't hold grudges if you defend yourself (and more-so, she's blind and senses her way by smell).

Per tentacle: (AC 8, HD 2, hp 5, #AT 1, D 1-3 & grapple, ML 10)

yyy-xxx Giant Willow

This is the northernmost fringe of the Spike-Swamp, the final ridge of respite before one plunges down into the quagmire. The hillock is rocky and bumpy. Upon it grows a droopy willow, strangely stranded from any river or pond, as if beached all alone on high ground.

This reach used to be encompassed by the vile and stagnant waters yet is now free and dry land, all for the dying-wish of a giant. In mythic years-gone-by, the leech-beleaguered titan Djula pleaded with the stars to rest upon dry land. She neared the edge of the cursed swamp, yet her strength failed her at the final moment. As she fell, the ground rose up from the waters to meet her. This is the story told, uttered as a reminder that faith and fate often conspire to deliver manna only once it is no longer needed.

None suspect that this is the spot from where that tale takes its truth, where the she-giant's bones now mingle with the rocks, and where her heart sprouted a willow from the sheer shock of fortune's betrayal. The birds know it but haven't the tongues to tell.

yyy-xxx Cloak of Leeches

A writing mass droops from a coat-peg willow's branch: an undulating sheet of glistening black blotches. It is a Cloak of Leeches, a natural phenomenon formed when an albatross or other large bird slings itself over a bough in death. This particular Cloak has fully matured, reaching 6' by 3' in span, and can now be draped over the shoulders of psychopaths who hunger for quasi-magical boons.

Cloak of Leeches
One: as Leather Armour.
Two: reduces the wearer's maximum hit points by 1 for each HD they possess.
Three: imposes Disadvantage on those attempting to grapple with or wrestle the wearer.
Four: marks the wearer as either a madman or an evil magician.
Five: withers and dies if not worn for more than a day.

yyy-xxx Mold Demon

"Wander not where Fox-Fires gold-glow or the Mold-Man of Keunek will pull you below". Any native of Kolgh Keunek will tell you this.

This is a reach of the swamp like any other. Mats of moss bob on the water. Rot-blighted willows sway. Bugs buzz. Yet, if one looks carefully, the reeds are covered with clusters of tiny white pom-pom puffs: Fox-Fire.

The Fox-Fire mushroom is a fairly standard fungus, indistinguishable unless one is clued in. Naturally, it only begins to glow once one has already set up camp for the night: the puffs blink on in clusters, casting a golden haze that looks as if one is suspended in a sea of stars. This usually occurs during the time normally covered by the first watch-shift.

At midnight the Mold Demon strikes. A ten-foot-tall bulk of colour wades through the water, shifting the reeds and causing the Fox-Fires to shudder. It looks like a gorilla with bear claws and a shark's head that has been completely carpeted in a fuzzy fur of mold and bright lichen, penetrated only by wild white eyes. It's terrifying. (AC 9, HD 8, hp 35, #AT 2, D 1-6/1-6, ML 10)

The whole horrid mass is a puppet of the Demon-Heart that bobs in the water behind it. The watermelon-sized mess of throbbing ichorous ventricles is connected to the larger mass by d6 inky pulsating tendrils that are difficult to make out in the murk and dark (treat each as AC 8). Cut the strings and the marionette falls.

The flesh of the Mold Demon bears alchemo-magical properties of regrowth and savagery and puppetry.

yyy-xxx Stepping Stones

Sturdy stepping stones stand out from the swamp. The platforms are a dull red. They are distinctly flat-topped and free of algae. There must be at least d6*20 of them. Wait for an hour and one can watch as a stubby chitinous limb emerges from the murk and scrapes one of the stones with a chitinous flat-bladed claw before slipping back beneath.

These are Giant Swamp Crustaceans, each six-feet-wide and thirty-stone-heavy. They resemble Spider Crabs if killed and hauled out of the water. Each can be ridden for 3d3*6 miles if one dangles a delicious treat in the water in front of them. They're chill unless you start whipping them or over-burdening them (each can carry three individuals or pack-loads).
(AC 5, HD 5, hp 14, #AT 2, D 1-6, ML 6)

yyy-xxx Bog Pervert

Coconut-like domes bob under the surface of the marsh. They resemble tough but poorly-rendered clay mixed with straw. Those who pass through here have a 2-in-6 chance of realising their nature before it is too late.

A shaman dwells in these depths. He follows the same tradition as the Aslikah of Qondirave (283-321 Aslik Zombies), yet has found a new way in which nature's path can be perverted. He calls himself the Muslikah. He wears a fish-net shawl and huge baggy leather waders that cover him up to the neck. He jumps around and rants and raves as his Musliks mutilate his victims.

Underneath his waders he is festooned with loose-hanging bracelets and necklaces. Each is alike: strange knobbly nuts, brittle and black, drilled with holes and threaded carefully onto twine. There are 2d67 in all. These are the pits of *Dog Fruit. Eating one restores 1 hit point.

Grind up a body into mince and mix it with the soil of Kolgh Keunek, the Spike Swamp. Shape it as you please. And thus an Muslik (Muck 'Zombie') is born. A dozen hide in these waters. They are muscular and heavy built. They have white glowing eyes and doughy rictus grins. They pop up and begin wading at you, wildly swinging their arms as they approach. They pair off and gang up on their victims.
(AC 8, HD 2, hp 6, #AT 1, D 1-6, ML 12)

yyy-xxx Bug Hermit

A grand and ashen mangrove-tree smoulders in the swamp. Wrinkled boughs come out from all over the trunk, all at the same angle, before all suddenly jutting straight up to the sky. Each leafless limb is stricken by streaks of sputtering blue flame.

A slit in the tree's trunk yields access to an inner hollow, just a few feet across, like a soot-blackened phone-booth. Within shudders a pale and naked figure, curled fetal, who more resembles a grub than a man. This is Thanut, the Bug Hermit. Through intense mental practice they have relinquished humanity and taken on the form of a giant Tardigrade, all chubby and white and mottled and many-legged. The only feature that betrays their personhood is a drooping bejowled face. They speak in pants and coughs.

Thanut is a ascetic recluse who years past found themselves spoken to by the bugs. They left their home in the Clergy of the Holy Limbus and travelled the swamp for some time before - in a miracle of metabolic control - turned their body into a grub's. Through many eyes one can see the world for what it truly is: across dozens of shimmering spectra one can witness the tendrils of life weaving a 'matrix' between all things.

The recluse has been hibernating here in this tree hoping to pass time so they can see what life is like in a hundred years. Occasionally travellers would find them, and the Grub-Person would extol their world-perspective to those who would listen. Unfortunately, a fortnight ago one black-gowned sort took less nicely to this and with a blue flame set their tree-home alight. It's horribly unpleasant at night as the flames attract all sorts of nasty critters. Thanut is unable to put the flames out, given their body's capabilities. Any who acquiesce will be offered knowledge of "The TUN State". Blue-flame runs cold and never ceases but can be extinguished as normal.

"The TUN State"
One: curl fetal,
Two: with the voice of one's head chant the mantra of TUN,
Three: hence one's flesh becomes stone, impervious and un-ageing.
Four: when one wishes to depart from TUN,
Five: enumerate in your mind thrice-fold the permutations of "TUN",
Six: and unfold into fallible flesh once more.

yyy-xxx Giant Silkworms

Unpleasant sensations on the air: the stench of rotting fruit, and a stickiness that clings to the face and neck, as if one had walked through a spider's web. Up ahead, through the miasma, huge masses of white goo cling to the upper branches of the willow trees. Each is the size of a hay bale and resembles a marshmallow. They are evidently heavy enough to cause their tree-seats to creak and bend. Flies buzz around them.

These are Giant Silkworms. They have been bred as silk-stock by the Looming-Lords of Tot'Capol. Each worm's cocoon, once extracted and soaked, can be spun into a sheet sixty-feet square. There are 4d6 here and each is worth 1000gp alive.

This meadow is watched over by a work-gang of farmers-cum-guardsmen who operate from a sagging but homely barge, serving as barrack and workshop to the 2d6 men (1HD Fighters; half hatchets, half shortbows). They are lead by a Silk-Shepherd named Tyki Godhan, the only man in the crew trained to properly extract each silk-moth from its cocoon (they have been bred so fat that they struggle to escape themselves). He hangs his traditional jade-handled billhook-sickle from a piece of violet silk tied around his midriff. His pale muscles are frankly scary but he can be quite gregarious: he fiddles with the fat cord of his braided moustache while he enthusiastically explains his trade to travellers (3HD Fighter).

yyy-xxx Ratel

The ground here is a bit drier, a bit nicer. Swamp-grasses way and fat flies buzz along. One might notice that there are no birds in the sky, no snakes lounging in the trees, no nutrias paddling along. Indeed, no animals of any type at all! Not even any rats furrowing around in the grass!
2-in-6 chance of finding a savaged carcass of a swamp-muntjac buzzing with flies: it looks like a feral wolf took it apart without really even eating much of it.

This is the demesne of the Ratel. Beware. 5-in-6 chance it's actively hunting right now. If it's hunting it WILL find you.
It's about the size of a dog and kind of like a badger, if a badger was a vague streak of black and white fur that spent every moment attempting to close the distance between itself and your throat. It smells like shit and rot and snarls constantly.

The pelt of this creature possesses alchemo-magical properties of stinking while the teeth bear properties of biting.

This is but one of the paths a man may walk to leave being fucking alive behind.
(AC 7, HD 5, hp 11, #AT 3, D 1-6, ML 12; ignores shields and armour)

yyy-xxx Honoured Serpent of the Hunt

A glint of light from the willows, and then the whistle-thwack of an arrow. Something is firing from betwixt the boughs, constantly repositioning to evade capture. The branches here all droop down: one shouldn't be able to clamber or stand on them, even less so without making any noise.

This is the hunting ground of an Honoured Serpent of the Pryv Malan, a rare product of the cult's birthing-rite set free to hunt and maim as it pleases.
It is a seven foot long serpent with copper-brown scales. Crimson red tendrils run down each of the snake's flanks, enveloping the beast's head like a hood before widening out into rippling setae like a ray's fins. Four muscular arms of scaleless raw flesh erupt the serpent's body from just behind their head, clutching two short-bows of copper-plated mahogany (each +1 magical armaments).

The Honoured Serpent clings to the canopy and slinks between the trees. If found, it drops into the swamp and darts around with but a flutter of its "wings". Only when threatened does it start shooting arrows as fast as it can.

(AC 7, HD 3, hp 10, #AT 2, D 2-7, ML 9)

yyy-xxx Dog Fruit

A huge mangrove-tree rises from the rest of the swamp on great stilt-like roots, 50' tall and twice as wide. Strange burgeoning fruits, fleshy and pink, dangle on thick curling cord-like stems (20 altogether). Each veiny prune-like produce is the size of a sheep.

This is the Dog-Tree. It grows Dog-Fruit. If one dawdles or interferes the whole tree shudders: 2d6 bough-children are shaken free and fall to the ground with a meaty slap. They then suddenly morph, sprouting spry legs and gummy maws. The fruit resemble skinless hounds with teeth like sunflower seeds. They have no internal organs or indeed any structure at all: just indistinct blobs of fruity peach-like flesh. They are freaky and ferocious.

Buried deep within each fruit is a strange knobbly pit, brittle and black like an aged chestnut. It restores 1 hit point when eaten. Dog-fruit flesh possesses alchemo-magical properties of fecundity and transmorphing and deliciousness.
(AC 9, HD 1+1, hp 7, #AT 1, D 1-3, ML 12)

yyy-xxx Rite of the Serpent

Long and slithering glow-worms creep over the willows. They look more like adders than any insect, complete with flitting forked-tongues. They all peel their heads from the bark to gaze the same way. Something is direly wrong here.

Amidst the draping foliage of the willows, a red boulder juts up out of the swamp. This is no strange sort of stone: it has simply been stained iron-red by decades of spilled blood. This secluded altar is used by the Cult of Pryv Malan to perform their Rite of the Serpent.

2d6 Snake Cultists are gathered here. They could be mistaken for hunters were it not for their red-cloth ceremonial dress: drooping hoods cradle their heads and dangling tassels are affixed to their cuffs with corded-copper bangles. They are all alike.
A ringleader leers over a scrawny ginger man who has been stripped and is being pinned down by the others over the red-rock. The sacrifice's skin has been drawn taught by poverty. The leader brandishes a silver dagger with an undulating blade while babbling and whirling and speaking in tongues.

Only if the captive's throat is slit and the dagger is planted into his heart - all in one fluid motion - is the Rite conducted properly: the man's head snaps back and 2d3 snakes sprout from the spurting neck-wound, puppeteering the corpse with long and infesting tails. The snake-man then springs up and begins to gambol and prance about with the convulsing joy of a newborn horse.

Usually, following the Rite, the captive's relict skull is hollowed out and adorned with gypsum plaster, creating a helmet-like mask that the snake-man can use to hide within society. Despite the Prvy Malan's stunning craftsmanship. the result is always unmoving and eerie (and regardless, the neck-serpents are mute).

The captive is Jowry the Apothecary, of yyy-xxx Rahwig, Stilted Hamlet. He managed to dispose of his Rath-pendant before being abducted.
The Rite-Dagger is a +1 Silvered Weapon and can be used to perform the rite on any live captive, summoning forth possessing-snakes from the ether (1-in-6 chance when used of instead creating a yyy-xxx Honoured Serpent of the Hunt).

(Cultists as 1HD Fighters wielding clubs; the Snake-Man as a 2HD Fighter wielding the Rite-Dagger, plucked from their chest)

yyy-xxx Erwidhiks

A herd of 6d6 short and stocky deer. They have creepy dangling rat-tails.
The males all have the same strange defect: just above each right eye erupts an inch-wide knobbly growth of bone. Long wispy tresses of stress-bleached hair droop from the taught skin surrounding each rivet of bone.

This unusual feature of the Erwidhik deer is called a 'cockade' by Keunekian hunters, who treat the ungulates as unexceptional bags of meat otherwise. This strange creature - and the hunter-slang attached to it - is in actuality the origin of that most unusual tradition of wearing hat-badges (and not the other way around, as one might expect).

yyy-xxx Rahwig, Stilted Hamlet

A swathe of the swamp has been logged, the trunks of the trees now serving as the triangle-trussed foundation-stilts of a small forest community. The seven stilt-huts are circular and cone-roofed, each made from thatch that has been sealed with clay-plaster, each sitting on three legs.
The place looks like a new settlement: the domiciles show little of the weathering of long and humid years in the Spike Swamp. The same cannot be said for their inhabitants.

Karenza the Matron, a slim and tanned woman of great age, notices travellers first as she sits compulsively spinning poached silk on her small porch.
She calls for Daveth the Logger, a muscular blonde man who has lost his youth's looks to years of tough labouring. He is in his hut caring for his three children.
Daveth sends one of his kids to fetch Mabyn the Archer, an androgynous looking sort with gnat-scarred skin. They are home washing spools of fraying bandages.
All three have clearly been worn down by poverty and hard-living.

Daveth and Mabyn rush to meet any strangers before they get too close to the village. They explain: this is merely the hamlet of Rahwig, built a few years ago by folks who merely wished for solitude.
The folks here wish for peace and prefer not to act as hosts but are desperate enough to renege on this point in return for goods and gifts, though they get panicked if the visitors seem shifty or overly prying.

These folks are the Cannibal Coast's remaining Cultists of Rath. The esteemed Rahbel of Tot'Capol, Steren the wise-woman, watched over one too many judgements that were disadvantageous to members of the Pryv Malan. Thus, two years ago was the Rat Cult rooted out by the Snake Cult and chased from of all cities in the region. Steren herself disappeared in the purge.

Everyone in Rahwig bears an ivory-carved pendant of a Rat that they hide beneath their rags. They maintain their faith despite their persecution, despite their dire conditions, and despite all they've lost to the Swamp: just two days past did Jowry the Apothecary, a scrawny ginger lad, fail to return home from his herb-gathering rounds. He was, Mabyn confesses, probably eaten by pigs (he was not; yyy-xxx Rite of the Serpent).
Those who stay the night hear Daveth chiding his son in an impersonal and methodical tone, almost like a chant: "we are Rahbel, child. You stole the biggest bean from your sister's plate, thus she will take the two biggest from yours, because they are smaller than hers was. This is a perfect example of Kochom Wos, Rath's rule, the restoration of the prior order. And you, daughter, you are happy with this, are you not?"

Rath's guiding principle is of justice.
Rath Cultists ("Rahbels") believe that the response to wrongdoing should not be concerned with punitive measures but with the restoration of the social order ("through a community-led redistribution of social and material power between the concerned parties such that it matches the balance prior to the offence taking place"). This notion is called Kochom Wos.
This rather complex-sounding idea is quite simple according to followers of Rath: an eye for an eye, but weighted by a council to account for the relative standing of the offender and the offended. Established Rahbel commonly act as facilitators for this process of arbitration: weregilds, public condemnations, branding, and exile are commonly suggested as appropriate methods of recompense.

(22 Inhabitats; 5 1HD Fighters led by Mabyn, a 3HD Bow-wielding Fighter)

yyy-xxx Steam-Plume Shallow-Lake

No trees grow here or in any surrounding hexes: only tufts of reeds growing wildly tall. Huge reservoirs of peat stew beneath this open expanse of the swamp. The ground is noticeably more sticky but still walkable, though each step releases whiffs of putrescence from the soil.

The ground here is exceptional fertiliser: even a few pounds is a great boon for any smallholder or herb-grower. It takes an hour to identify and collect 2d6 pounds of high-quality peat (can be sold at 10G/lb to those who appreciate the muck's worth).

As one dawdles in this reach of the swamp they increasingly disturb buried pockets of decay-heated gas. There is a 1-in-6 cumulative chance of a foul-smelling geyser erupting underfoot for each hour spent here: d3 damage and d6 unsecured items blown away into the swamp.

yyy-xxx Amber Monoliths

The smell of burnt glue drifts on the air. The swamp causeway wends between dozens of strange orange-brown pillars. Each is 20' tall and as wide as a tree trunk. They emerge from the murk away from the path. They have a distinctive sheen, like a snail's shell or a rain-slick rock, as they shimmer under the sun's gaze.

Two women stroll back and forth along the road gazing at the trees. Both are wearing travelling garments underneath silk veil-gowns designed to ward away gnats. They are each also adorned with a shemagh of sky-blue silk.
One is taking sketches in a field-book. She is young and stout, the look of a farmhand about her. She has cropped black hair and tan skin. Little silver studs sit on her earlobes. She wears her shemagh loosely around her shoulders and neck.
The other is lecturing to her companion. She is old and ethereal, with greying brown hair and smooth pale skin. She looks like a librarian. Her square-scarf is tightly wound around her slender neck.

This pair has travelled from the Skiansyrtal Academy in Top'Capol. The older woman, Eseld Bianesow, is preparing Merghal Reydhel, her chosen protégée, for induction into her scholar's group of natural sciences. The academic plucked Merghal from "dreary civilian life" a year ago: the esteemed ecologist was doing fieldwork on some crop-blighting beetles at the Reydhel family's smallholding when she glimpsed her amidst the vine-trellises.

Merghal is quite worried that her tutor took her in for some unusual sort of reason. Eseld seems to be obsessed with her: they eat all their meals together and spend long and spiralling hours in tête-à-tête supervision-discussions. Whenever the young woman gets some time to herself she returns to find her professor has bought her a gift of jewellery or books or expensive liquors.
The student is concerned that she's becoming some sort of surrogate daughter for the spinster, or worse yet, a wife. Then again, Eseld does treat her very, very well. And plus, the old lady seems to be someone that has been pulled taut by life and is trying so hard to hide it, and it's so nice to watch that stress melt away when they're together. In that way, Merghal supposes, they both take care of each other.

"The pillars are the Amber Monoliths, the only remaining specimens of an ancient tree called the Glusdhen. It produced sticky crystalline resin in huge quantities. The substance was highly toxic and hardened almost immediately. The Glusdhen tree had a strange relationship with a particular animal, the Janhav, a long-eared breed of bear who would rub itself against the tree, supposedly to give itself a hardened carapace before it went hunting. However, the bear itself was hunted to extinction around the period when Tot'Capol was established, and with its disappearance thus the tree too was condemned. Without help from their natural partner, the glusdhens smothered themselves with their resin, and auto-lithified into the monoliths you see before you."

Glusdhen amber contains alchemo-magical properties of suspension and stilling. Some also know that it is an aphrodisiac.

yyy-xxx Grim Haruspex

An old brass-plated palanquin sinks into the swamp. Sculpted serpents run along the corners and curves of the metal frame. The muck-stained curtains are a deep turquoise. Within shelters the Grand Haruspex of the Pryv Malan.

The Snake Cultist wears tightly wound body-wrappings of black bandages. Her skin is dark yet her eyes are a piercing blue. Her hair is thin and her eyebrows are narrow. She bears a compulsive scowl, her brow raised and the corners of her mouth downturned. She currently has her hands in the slit belly of some swampland boar. She fiddles and fidgets with the beast's intestines while speaking.

The Pryv Malan are the dominant cult of Tot-Capol. She, Amser Dheu, is an exceptional woman and is not only favoured within her Family as an advisor but also highly renowned as a truth-teller and seer by the rich and powerful. During her return to the Sunken City from a consultation with The Scrivener of Meerschaum she did not have time to consult the Threads of Life and as a result made a wrong turn: her escort was torn apart by Lady Kentra. Thus, she requires assistance.

Amser is very practical. She was, of course, perfectly aware of your imminent arrival (2-in-3 chance to be true). She can pay with gems and gold (4d6*100G) for a safe trip back. She is even willing to offer her knowledge and abilities. If bargained with she reminds strangers that she is a powerful woman who not only has the favour of her Family but also the ears of many powerful sorts across the Cannibal Coast. Conversely, if threatened she confesses that her violent death will, of course, reverberate through the Threads of Life and be picked up by her Sisters.
Those who assist her in a polite or pragmatic manner are likely to earn her respect and be recommended for future work with the Pryv Malan: "the beginning of a beautiful friendship".

Amser has 1000G in loose jewels and currency on her and a further 1500G in jewellery. She possesses a thumb-ring of onyx with a hidden poisoned needle (Save vs Death; failure causes vomiting of 1d10 pints of blood; losing more than three is direly life threatening).
(AC 9, HD 2, hp 6, #AT 1, D needle-ring, ML 8; can scry and perform divination through haruspicy with a 2-in-3 success rate)

yyy-xxx Spiked Sounder

A Keunekian Boar and a sounder of 3d6 piglets.
These are fuzzy brown tusked things with vivid stripes of white zig-zagging down their backs. Across their hide, pushing through their fur, are stubby but nonetheless sharp spines of bone that resemble spiked rivets.

Half of the piglets can fight. The other half instinctively burrow into the earth when spooked.
The hides of these boars possess alchemo-magical traits of Thorn-Skin and Omnivorousness and Earth-Moving.
(AC 7, HD 3/1, hp 12/3, #AT 1/1, D 1-6, ML 8)

yyy-xxx Lady's Knot

The thundering sound of creaking and thrashing, as if two trees were wrestling like entwined snakes. It's a horrible noise: thick trunks groaning and snapping.

Amidst a copse of willows is a churning knot of thick spiked tentacles, each sickly green and thick as a young pine. Three of these monstrous limbs appear to have gotten tangled together around a particularly sturdy willow.

This briar-knot of Lady Kentra's limbs is defenceless. All three of the limbs can be safely stabbed to death with spears.
However, hacking one limb apart and pulling it out of the frees the other two, which slink back into the muck. Lady Kentra smiles upon those who recognise her regality in this way: on some future occasion when she is required the Spiked Lady of Kolgh Keunek will suddenly emerge to assist her Most Favoured subjects. She will even burst through a brick floor to honour such a good turn.

yyy-xxx Birdcage Hierophant

Manic ranting and wild splashing and noisy gouts of blue flame. The voice is high and hoarse and almost sing-song: "you' ll never get me! you'll never find me! you dogs! you rats! you think it's right to forsake me!?"

A woman trudges about in the swamp. Her stained black robes are tightly wound enough to have collected little water. She has a bulky bindle of black-cloth over her shoulder. Her tanned head is bald and her wild swivelling eyes are a piercing blue but this is difficult to make out: she has a strange adornment on her head resembling a birdcage.

This is Muser Kowella, the previous hierophant of the Pryv Malan. She did a good job keeping the Snake Cult's secrets. However, she did habitually smuggle out texts from the library to read in her own chambers. One night, an agent of some unknown conspiracy (actually just a petty burglar) stole several texts from her bedside table. No one noticed, yet over a long and sleepless month she became increasingly paranoid. Eventually, she decided to make an escape using a stolen tome of Self-to-Snake (a 3rd-level Black or Green spell), which she used to slyly slither out of Tot'Capol in the middle of the night. Now she hides in the woods, a stressed-out wreck that trusts no one. She thinks everyone is an assassin sent to kill her: "i see your serpent's eyes! lies fall easily from your forked tongue! don't make me melt the scales from your flesh!". She defends herself by spraying fans of blue flame from her mouth before hiding (the cold-fire doesn't spread but will burn forever until put out).

(AC 8, HD 3, hp 9, #AT 3, D 1-3 + 1 damage each round until smothered, ML 5)

Her bindle contains d6*400gp of brass and silver jewellery, d3 days of travel-rations, and the spell-tome she took. Her helm, a brass cage that fits over the head, is a Pryv Malan relic that prevents scrying of the wearer's whereabouts or intentions.

Not a soul in the Pryv Malan knows where she's gone or why. She's the cult's hierophant after all: the keeper of their occult library! The role is passed on at the death of the incumbent!! There's not even a catalogue-system!!! How is anyone supposed to know that there's stuff missing!?!?

yyy-xxx Dart-Worms

The hunters of Kolgh Keunek are famed for their bow-shooting skills. The reality behind that reputation is the humble dartworm. One who assists a Keunekian archer in dire need is likely to be let in on their little squirming secret and pointed in the direction of the north-eastern reach of the Spike Swamp, where little white worms burrow holes in the trunks of the trees (i.e. this and all surrounding hexes)

Four hours with a hunting knife fetches you a single specimen of a random breed of the dartworm. They are basically all alike: little thumb-sized eggshell-white slugs, each with a pair of beady black eyes and a slim slit-smile.

They are happy to be taken along as pets, living in a jar on your belt or in your pocket or behind your ear. However, they can be quite finicky. They need feeding at least once every day with a calorific treat (variety is important to the worms). If starved for more than a few days - or fed unpleasant vittles for a fortnight straight - then they simply give up and die.
It's a point of pride for Keunekian hunters to take good care of their dartworms. Happy worms squeak pleasantly and can even perform cute little backflips or rolls. They grow about half-an-inch each year they're kept.

Dartworms can influence the trajectories of missiles that their keepers shoot. Exactly how depends on the breed. Happy worms know precisely when their keepers wants a worm trick. Worms that are just getting by need to be woken up or alerted in some way with a little prod.