The Curse of Abhorrent Chirography

It begins with the written word.  A pamphlet, a scroll, a book– perhaps even a bit of graffiti.  This writing explains that society, and humanity itself, are irredeemably evil.  Those who read and comprehend the tainted script come to believe this themselves.

Once in the grip of the curse of abhorrent chirography, a person knows no peace.  Their thoughts and dreams are perpetually tormented by guilt for the original sin of being human.  It takes a terrible toll on their body.  They never experience a decent night's sleep.  Their wounds do not heal.

They project this torment onto their fellow men and women in the form of anger, hatred, even sadism.  They are compelled to express this hatred in writing– and they find that when they do so, their sleep is somewhat more restful, if not pleasant.  This of course spreads the curse further.  Yet still their wounds will not heal.  Even the slightest cut refuses to scab over, the smallest bruise remains purple for weeks.

The accursed become socially withdrawn, shunning the company of others and speaking rarely.  They prefer to communicate in writing, even when not actively attempting to spread the curse.  To the extent they do socialize, they mainly interact with each other.  The interactions are rarely pleasant.    

Eventually this becomes unbearable, and they take this torment out on others in the form of sudden, unprovoked violence– and find that when they do, they feel better.  Their body is finally able to heal itself.  For a time, at least.    

As the curse spreads, sufferers notice another effect: when they harm someone who suffers from the curse themselves, the benefit to the attacker is greater, yet the injury to the victim is longer-lasting and more debilitating, even compared to the suffering already inflicted upon the cursed.  Those who are cursed and wounded by one of the cursed become completely unable to sleep, or indeed feel any comfort or pleasure at all.  Even magical healing does almost nothing for them.  Only passing on the suffering by attacking someone can ease the pain.  

Like a plague, the curse may take a long time to take hold.  Yet it grows, and the rate at which it grows also grows, as the accursed not only spread the curse themselves, but drive each other to spread it more aggressively.  

Once the curse has grown large enough, there is almost no stopping it.  Those who have not yet become cursed can only run and hide, hoping to return and rebuild society after the accursed have wiped each other out.  Even then, the tainted writing is nearly impossible to completely eliminate; there are always scrolls and graffiti somewhere.  

Game Mechanics

Anyone who reads and comprehends at least a page of the writing that carries the curse (thoroughly– a mere glance is unpleasant, but not dangerous) must save vs magic, or make a wisdom save.  This save is modified by their intelligence modifier– a bonus makes it worse, while an intelligence penalty actually makes it easier to resist the curse.  On a failed save they are cursed.

Once cursed, a person needs 50% more sleep per night, and also constantly suffers from the effects of a single night of sleep deprivation regardless of how much they sleep.  They also heal far more slowly; a night's sleep does not heal injuries.  It takes a week of bed rest to gain the benefit of even one night's sleep.  

Writing several pages about how horrible humanity is will negate the need for extra sleep, and the sleep deprivation penalty, for a day.  Maybe longer if the writing is longer or more detailed.  This writing will of course spread the curse (other writing will not), and it does nothing to help the accursed heal faster.

Only violence will do that.  Wounding an intelligent humanoid will allow the accursed to both sleep and heal normally for one day for every point of damage inflicted– non-lethal damage counts just as well as lethal damage.  Not that violence stays non-lethal for long.

If the person so damaged is themselves a sufferer of the curse, they not only take damage, but become completely unable to sleep for one day per point of damage suffered.  This can be negated if they damage someone themselves.

All attacks by an accursed individual do receive +1 to hit and damage, and count as magical, against another who has the curse.  This does not apply if retaliating against someone who has attacked them within the past day.  In fights between the cursed, the first to strike has a massive advantage.  

The curse effectively traps its victims in an exponentially growing prisoner's dilemma, in which they are compelled to both spread the curse and attack each other first, lest they be attacked themselves.  It's only saving grace is that the curse tends to burn itself out– though not before taking much of society with it.  

Three Ways to Make Better Hexmaps

I love hexcrawls.  In particular, I love the opportunity for wide-open adventure they present.  There's a whole region full of stuff to explore.  You can go anywhere, do anything.

That said, I've read a few hexcrawl modules, and I find them a bit hit or miss.  In a lot of ways actually, but here I'll talk about the individual hex descriptions.  Like, here's the third keyed location from Carcosa:

Village of 270 Black Men ruled by “the Overking of All the Lands,” a chaotic 7th-level Fighter.

Okay...the title is kinda cool, but that doesn't give a referee much to turn into an adventure.  Unfortunately, a lot of Carcosa is like that.  

I'm about to share a few tips for writing better hexmaps, but first I want to explain exactly what they're for.  

Hex locations come in two varieties: short descriptions, and fully detailed.  Most are the former; a fully detailed location would have like a full dungeon map, or village with named NPCs, and generally be a few pages long.

Short description locations vary in how short they are, mostly based on how big the hexmap is.  Big maps lie Carcosa or The Colossal Wastes of Zhaar tend to have super short ones; smaller, denser maps like Hot Springs Island or Fever Swamp usually have longer "short" descriptions, maybe a few paragraphs.  

What I'm writing about here mainly pertains to stuff like Carcosa, where you want to jazz up your hex locations– and have a system for generating good hex locations fairly quickly– but also need to keep them fairly short.  I used a similar method to create this 7-hex adventure, and this one.  

Add 1-2 Internal Characteristics of the Location

That is, things that are purely self-contained and don't pertain to its relationship with other locations.  For instance, that location from Carcosa could be expanded to:

Village of 270 Black Men, ruled by “the Overking of All the Lands,” a chaotic 7th-level Fighter.  Currently suffering a mild famine due to crop failures.  

That's not much, but it gives a referee at lest some direction for how to make the village interesting.  Food will be extremely expensive.  The villagers may be desperate enough to resort to brigandry, or at least traveling a longer than usual way to hunt and forage in dangerous areas.  They might buy food at very high prices.  

The bar doesn't have to be set very high most of the time. Some villages could be haunted, but you can and should have a lot of fairly normal stuff like crop failures going on too.  This brings the world alive, and gives a referee more to go off of, without packing the hex map full of excessive weirdness.  

Add a Relationship to Another Hex Location

Every hex map does this with some locations.  I'm saying you should do it with every location.  

Again, the bar doesn't have to be set very high though.  A lot of the relationships can be like "Village A trades wheat and wool for lumber and tools from vilage B," or "The bandits in hex C7 occasionally raid this village."  That's enough to give you potential plot hooks.  

The above description could now be expanded to:

Village of 270 Black Men, ruled by “the Overking of All the Lands,” a chaotic 7th-level Fighter.  Currently suffering a mild famine due to crop failures. Several people in this village are secretly space aliens in disguise, here to monitor and sabotage attempts to explore the ruins in hex 0101.

Again, not much, and it doesn't take up much more space, but you can already see a few ways these could lead to adventures.  

I recommend creating one such relationship for every keyed hex location.  Since relationships are two-sided, this means every hex location will have at least one relationship, but the average hex content will have two.  

Just like the hex contents themselves, these relationships don't have to be used.  They're there if you need them, but your party can just as easily interact with a hex location in ways that never bring the relationship into play.

One other advantage they have is that they give the party a way to discover each hex location.  This can be useful when generating hexmaps on the fly.

Generating the Hex Map As You Go

Creating a big hex map all at once would be a lot of work and probably not very fun.  Creating a little bit at a time is fun.

I recommend only keying up a small area when you start a campaign, like 6-10 hexes.  After that the usual advice is to build the map out in whatever direction the party moves.  I do believe in that, but the limitation to it is that you're only building out hexes after the players move into, or at least near them.  That obviously doesn't answer the question of how the party would find out about new stuff, other than just wandering aimlessly.  

This where relationships come in.  You can build out hexes in the way described above– but then for every new location, add a relationship with a random keyed location in a random direction at a random distance.  

Here's how you do it: after you create a new hex location, roll a d12 for a direction.  For distance, roll d6-1 if it's an orthogonal direction, or d4-1 if it's a diagonal (since a diagonal is about 50% longer than an orthogonal).  That's how many hexes away the other side of the relationship is. If you want to occasionally generate some long-distance relationships, make the distance dice explode.

e.g. I generate a village, then roll a d12 and get a 4, so it's southeast.  I roll a d6 and get a 5, so it's five hexes away.  I generate a troupe of traveling entertainers, so I decide the relationship is that a boy from the village ran off to join the entertainers, and his family wants him back.  The troupe needs another relationship, but I'll just make a note to generate that only if and when the party heads that way.  

If you're at a loss for what kind of relationship two things should have, you can make a reaction roll– 12 means they're allied, 7 means they're neutral, etc– and flesh it out from there.  Add a positive or negative modifier based on how friendly they most likely should be, like a positive modifier for two villages and a negative for a village and some bandits.  

By using these methods, you can quickly create a hex map packed fairly densely with interesting features that inter-relate to each other in complex ways and offer meaningful choices to the players about where to go and what adventure seeds to interact with.  

7-Hex Setting #2: Isle of the Fae

You can assume this is an island with three more hexes of ocean around hex 2, or that it’s a peninsula; it works either way.  Note that the coastline extends very slightly into hexes 3 and 6, which contain seaside villages.

Hex 1- Central, Forrest

Feature 1-  Large town, population 3800

This town is inhabited by a mix of humans and elves.  It is located several miles inland, near the mouth of a river that flows southwest to hex 6.  The river is navigable to large boats, but not full-sized oceangoing ships.  

Control of the town is split between four powerful merchant houses.  While all merchant houses have some interest in multiple industry, each has one area that it focuses on.  An uneasy peace between the four houses currently prevails, but it may not last.

Merchant house #1 is composed of humans.  It runs most of the shipping on the island. It is the biggest employers in the port village in hex 6, but has a tepid relationship with the people there, who feel underpaid.  

Merchant house #2 is composed of a mix of humans and elves.  It controls most of the trade in food and practical crafts.  The people of the port village in hex 6 rely on this house for food and basic supplies, but also resent it for keeping the price of necessities artificially high.  

Merchant house #3 is composed of elves.  It deals mainly in art and magical items, which it buys from the Court of the Faerie Queen in hex #2.

Merchant house #4 is composed of humans.  It owns the gemstone mine in hex 1.

Feature 2- Emerald Mine

Emeralds have a special place in the culture of this island, as they’re viewed as sacred to the faeries.  They’re also a very valuable export commodity.

The managers of this mine want to take over the diving operation in hex 4- peacefully if possible, but ultimately by any means necessary.  

Owned by merchant house #4 from the town in hex 1. 

Hex 2- North, Forrest

Feature 1- The Palace of the Leprechaun King

The leprechaun king’s palace is located in Faerie, and can be reached by walking to the base of a rainbow in this hex after it rains.  He wants two things: treasure and slaves. 

Hated by the boat people in hex 3.

Currently in a state of entente with the faerie queen- cordial but distant.  He envies her power.

The leprechaun king wants to take over or destroy the diving operation in hex 4.  If he can’t have the gold, no one should have it!  Ideally, he’d like to enslave the divers by entrapping them into a magical pact, giving him both treasure and slaves.

Feature 2- The Court of the Faerie Queen

The faerie queen’s realm is located in the plane of faerie.  It can be reached by walking through a hedge in a magical glade at sunrise or sunset.  A few woodsmen in the area know the secret, as do the elves of merchant house #3.  It is located 4d100 miles from the leprechaun king’s palace, should adventurers try to travel between them within faerie.

Currently in a state of entente with the leprechaun king- cordial but distant.  She envies his wealth.  

Friendly relationship with the muse whale in hex 7.  The queen tries to get ships routed through hex 7 so the muse whale can inspire the sailors- then the queen can harvest their dreams and acquire the art they create.  

Sells magical items to the elves of merchant house #3 from the town in hex 1.  In return, they give her artwork and dreams- the dreams are often harvested from unwilling prisoners.  

Hex 3- Northeast, Ocean/Coastline

Feature- Village of the Boat People, pop. 200

The people of this village are refugees from a far-off land, driven here by persecution.  Widely mistrusted by the islanders, they live entirely on boats moored in a small cove in this hex.  They make their living mainly by fishing and creating artwork, and a few of them dive for treasure in hex 4.   

The boat people know about and dislike the leprechaun king in hex 2.  He was partly responsible for the strife in their homeland, which contains another portal to his realm.  They would happily aid any adventurers who seek to kill him. 

The boat people revere the muse whale in hex 7- they make regular pilgrimages and offerings to the whale.  In turn it inspires them to make great art and keep the hope alive that they may someday return to their homeland.  They don’t yet realize that this makes them a target for the faerie queen.  

Hex 4- Southeast, Ocean

Feature- Rocks, Shipwrecks, and Divers

A small area of jagged rocks lying just under the surface of the water.  Ships occasionally wreck here.  A group of boat people divers make a living recovering cargo from the wrecked ships.  

The divers are fending off hostile takeover attempts by the emerald mine in hex 1. 

The divers are being meddled with by the leprechaun king in hex 2, who wants to either control or destroy the diving operation.

Hex 5- South, Ocean

Feature- Female Sea Dragon

Can swim, fly, and breath underwater.  Has several young that she is raising.  Wrongly believed to attack ships- actually, the ships just crash into the rocks in hex 4.  In truth, she’s mostly indifferent towards humanoids, unless they bother her.   

Is revered- from a distance- by the people of the village in hex 6. 

Is a friend and neighbor of the muse whale in hex 7.

Hex 6- Southwest, Ocean/Coastline

Feature- Small village at the mouth of the river, pop. 200

This village in a rocky cover at the mouth of the river exists mainly for the purpose of transferring cargo between river-going boats and larger, ocean-going ships.  

Many are employed by merchant house #1, but they also resent it for under-paying them.

Reliant on merchant house #2 for food and other basic necessities- but resent it for price-fixing. 

The people of this village respect and fear the sea dragon in hex 5.  They occasionally leave offerings to her, which they believe is why she leaves them alone.    

Hex 7- Northwest, Ocean

Feature 1- Muse Whale

This beautiful narwhal looks like a unicorn of the sea.  It feeds on fish and positive emotions, and the sight and sound of it inspires humanoids to dream bigger and create beautiful works of art.

Revered by the boat people in hex 3- they make regular pilgrimages and offerings to the whale. 

Friendly relationship with the faerie queen in hex 2.  The queen tries to get ships routed through this hex so the muse whale can inspire the sailors- then the queen can harvest their dreams and acquire the art they create.  

Is a friend and neighbor of the sea dragon in hex 5.

Dungeon: The Mine of the Fire-Lord

Here's something I wrote up over the weekend.  A fairly simple dungeon with a small group of fire elementals enslaving goblins to mine rubies for them.  You've got some rebellious slaves, drow raiding from below, a couple business opportunities for the players, and a couple of puzzles.  

After clearing it the party is presented with a tough choice: take what they can and run to safety, delve deeper, or roll the dice on mining more rubies, which runs the risk of getting slaughtered by drow.  

Note: Goblins will carry torches.  Fire elementals can’t see in the dark but they themselves cast light for HDx10 feet.  The dungeon is otherwise unlit.  

The values given here assume 1 GP = 1 XP.

Rooms

Note: Multiple doors on the same side of a room will be listed north to south or west to east.  

1

West Entry Locked Good Wooden Door (common lock)

East Entry Unlocked Good Wooden Door

Monsters: 4 dire rats, nesting in a pile of refuse in the NW corner.  Among the refuse can be found d100 copper and d2 silver coins.  

Room features: A crude bed and iron gong sit in the west side of the room, and someone has scrawled "Don't lose your head" in blood on the south wall.  The rats will not approach the gong; if it is rung, a random encounter automatically occurs but the rats flee the room.  

2

West Entry Unlocked Good Wooden Door (slides to one side)

South Entry Stuck Good Wooden Door.  Opens southward. A metal mess plate is propped against the south side of the door; if knocked over, the noise causes a random encounter check.  

Room features: A fountain of water sits against the north wall, overing the 6 northeast squares.  The water is potable and 3 feet deep.   The south wall is covered in scorch marks.  

3

North Entry #1 Archway

North Entry #2 Stuck Iron Door

West Entry #1 Stuck Simple Wooden Door (slides to one side)

West Entry #2 Stuck Good Wooden Door

West Entry #3 Trapped and Locked Simple Wooden Door (superior lock)

 Large Net Trap.  Net is covered in small bells, causing a random encounter check.  

West Entry #4 Stuck Simple Wooden Door

South Entry Locked Strong Wooden Door (common lock) (slides up)

Room features: A tile labyrinth mosaic covers the floor, and the scent of smoke fills the room.  Many tiles show scorch marks.  The 3x3 square area in the middle of the room is a fifteen foot deep pit with gently sloping sides.  Chains hang from the ceiling over the pit, terminating ten foot above the pit floor; one could use them to swing across the pit or climb down safely.  The chains can be raised or lowered via a winch on the south wall.  

Inhabitants: 10 fire goblins sleeping 

Random encounter checks are made every turn in this room because so many corridors intersect here.  

4

North Entry Stuck Good Wooden Door

West Entry Stuck Good Wooden Door

South Entry Locked Iron Door (Magical lock, opens with a spoken password)

Room features: The east wall is lined with flaming braziers, emitting sweetly performed incense.  

A circle of protection from magic is drawn on the floor, covering the tile with the 4 on it as well as the ones to the east, north, and northeast. Nobody can cast spells in or across it until it is physically erased.

Along the west wall are shelves lined with empty bottles, 200 GP worth of uncut rubies, and a wand of fireball with 2 charges left out of a maximum of five.  

Next to the shelves is a portal to the elemental plane of fire, a foot long, embedded in the wall.  If uncut rubies are sent through the portal, gold or platinum worth 20% more than their value will be returned.  If empty bottles are sent through along with at least 100 gp worth of rubies, the bottle will instead be returned with a random potion inside.  If a wand is sent through with rubies, it will be returned with one charge restored for every (spell level x 50) gp of rubies so spent.  

The person on the other side is Kartzo’s business partner, a fire elemental name Sargaszt.  He won’t cheat Kartzo.  He has no way of knowing the players aren’t Kartzo if they send rubies through the portal…unless a player sticks their hand through.  This won’t harm them, but will result in Sargaszt trying to cheat them.  

Inhabitant: Kartzo, a minor fire elemental lord.   8 HD, 2 melee attacks for d8 damage or one fire bolt for d12 damage.  Magic as level 5 magic-user.  If the party is polite and hasn’t already slaughtered his guards or goblins, he will likely hire them for a mission against the drow downstairs.  Also willing to trade for incense.

5

West Entry Locked Iron Door (common lock)

East Entry Stuck Simple Wooden Door

South Entry Stuck Strong Wooden Door (slides to one side)

Room Features: Several headless statues are scattered throughout the room. A  rusted and scorched gauntlet lies in the north side of the room.

Monster: Fire elemental.  6 HD, 2 flaming swipe attacks for d8 damage or one firebolt attack for d8 damage.  Knows the password to the magically-locked door between rooms 4 and 6.  

6

North Entry Locked Iron Door (Magical lock, opens with a spoken password)

West Entry #1 Trapped and Unlocked Simple Wooden Door ; Well-Camouflaged Pit Trap

West Entry #2 Trapped and Locked Simple Wooden Door (superior lock); Rolling Rock Trap

Room Features: This room is full of tables and chairs as well as shattered plates, bowls and rusted cutlery; it was a dining hall in better times. A carved stone statue of a fire elemental stands in the north-east corner of the room, and someone has scrawled "You cannot kill him with magic" in primordial script  on the plinth the statue rests on.  This is a lie written by Kartzo himself; he is in no way immune to magic.  He wrote that due to his phobia of ice and water-based spells.    

7

North Entry Trapped and Unlocked Simple Wooden Door (slides down)   Spiked Pit Trap in front of the door.  

East Entry Trapped and Locked Simple Wooden Door (superior lock)   

Rolling Rock Trap, triggered by a mechanism in the lock.  

South Entry Trapped and Unlocked Good Wooden Door  

Burning Hands Trap, triggered by touching the door at all.  Magical runes are visible on the door, but the color of the ink is so similar to the color of the door that it takes either a spot check or active investigation to notice.  The trap goes off if anything touches the door, including a thrown rock, and can go off only once an hour.  

Inhabitants:  2d6+6 fire goblin slaves mining for rubies, armed with picks (d6 damage).  As regular goblins but resistant to fire. 

Room feature: this room lies in a seam of ruby, and rubies can be seen embedded in the walls.  A goblin can mine d3 GP worth of raw rubies per hour; a dwarf or other skilled miner, d6 gp.  The seam contains a total of 60,000 GP worth of rubies.  Rubies acquired by mining do not count for XP.  

8

Secret Locked Iron Door (magic lock)

The door is concealed behind a statue of an ancient lich holding a book, and opened by pressing runes on his staff in the correct order. The runes carved onto the cover of the book show the correct order in which to press the runes.  

Inhabitants: 5 escaped fire goblin slaves, armed with mining picks (d6 damage) hide in this room.  They want revenge and freedom for their brethren, but are cowardly.  

Room feature: Several ancient statues of what appears to be warriors and nobles, of a race long vanished from the world.  Each is big enough to take cover behind, and could be tipped over onto someone.  

Corridors

a A rusted iron chandelier hangs from the ceiling here

c A group of demonic faces have been carved into the walls.  As the players pass, one moans a warning: “Go no further, unless you seek enslavement or destruction.”

e A toppled statue of a long-forgotten warrior of a vanished race lies across the corridor

i An acrid odor fills the corridor- smoke and scorched stone from passing fire elementals.  

m Several corpses are impaled upon iron spikes jutting from the walls

n Camouflaged Pit Trap

r A group of demonic faces have been carved into the walls.  Kartzo can see out of them.  

Random Encounters

1 d4 fire goblins carrying d100+20 GP worth of rubies towards room 4.

2 A minor fire elemental, patrolling.  3 HD, one swipe attack for d8 damage.  

3 d2 level 1 drow fighters, scouting from a deeper level.  If room 4 hasn’t been cleared, they instead encounter Kartzo; make a reaction roll to see how well they get along with him.  If they fight him, he wins but the fight lasts a turn, during which time it can be heard from as far as room 7.    

4 d4 rebellious fire goblins, trying to escape.  Can’t be quiet to save their lives; make random encounter checks every turn as long as they’re around.  

5 d4 dire rats, scavenging.  

6 d6 fire goblins headed between rooms 3 and 7.  

d4 days after the two drow warriors show up, a drow war party of 6 warriors, a cleric and a magic user will launch a full-blown assault on Kartzo's lair.  Regardless of whether he's already been killed or not, they want the rubies for themselves.