More encounters from the City of Spires: the desert

 A year ago I posted tables of 72 encounters from the City of Spires, as a convenient means of recycling material from my ongoing campaign into something that other people might find gameable. As the game is still going on (and now approaching the two-and-a-half year mark, or five and a half if it's considered as an extension of the previous Team Tsathogga campaign set in the same world), I thought it was probably time for an update.

Since taking over their city the PCs have been spending more and more time in the outlying wildernesses, so I'm going to be doing three 1d10 encounter tables, one for each of the three biomes they've been most active in. This post covers the desert. Feel free to roll on them next time you need to stock a random hex!

Deserts

1: Desert expanse roamed by nomad pastoralists, who travel between watering holes with their herds of goats, sheep, camels, and horses. Harsh experience has taught them to live in dread of the evil spirits of the desert, to whose wicked deeds they attribute all their misfortunes. A thriving market in protective charms, spells, and talismans exist among them, and the clans compete fiercely over those rare men and women believed holy enough to protect them from the devils of the wastes.

2: A trade road winds alongside the wadi here, watched over by linen-swathed desert giants, ten feet tall, leaning on gigantic spears. They are few in number and serve a human king, acting as his shock troops and honour guards, and demanding a toll from all who pass. The king's palace stands nearby, an ancient building divided awkwardly into human-scale and giant-scale areas. The giants are long-lived and more loyal to the palace than the man who rules it, transferring their loyalties each time it changes hands with little more than a shrug of their colossal shoulders. 

3: City built by the side of a wide, shallow oasis, surrounded by stands of date palms and overgrown with sedges. The people of the city are famous for the manufacture of papyrus: in the heat of the day they sleep, and conduct much of their business by night, in streets lit by innumerable papyrus lanterns. Their ruler is a once-vigorous man, now sinking swiftly into indolence. In the dusty caravanserais the traders mutter that the desert clans no longer fear him, and that their demands grow more outrageous every year. 

4: Here the desert clans have been driven from their watering holes by an aggressive race of diminutive lizard folk, who came surging suddenly out of the desert and have since been conducting excavations of certain long-abandoned buildings of baked brick that lie nearby. Their diggings have revealed walls painted with ancient frescoes, depicting beautiful androgynous figures dancing between pillars of fire. The lizardfolk are mute, and exactly where they came from and what they are looking for remains deeply unclear. The nomads who claim these lands would very much like them to be driven back into the wastes from whence they came.

5: A ruined city deep in the desert, raised up on a rocky plateau. In its central plaza a holy fire burns eternally, huge and hot enough to burn a man to ash. Any who come here are met by a white-robed spirit who asks if they come as pilgrims: any who say no are driven from the city by swarms of mute, dwarfish lizardfolk (see 4) who come pouring from the ruins to aid her. If they affirm that they are pilgrims then she will ask which of them is the celebrant: whomever is chosen will then be invited to step into the flame and be burned to death, so that their fellow pilgrims may ritually partake of their charred remains in the name of her god, whose name is both Fire and Hunger. Anyone who actually goes through with the whole ghastly rite will win the favour of her ancient divinity. A being of pure ritual, the spirit is easily confused by anyone who goes off-script, and quick-thinking PCs may be able to capitalise on this in order to escape. 

6: Desolate dunes roamed by desert zombies, dehydrated animated corpses with flames flickering in their hollow eye sockets. They guard the lair of an undead sorceress, whose body animates only in darkness: in the light she is merely a corpse, clad in tattered crimson rags. During the day she lies buried beneath the sands, her tame bone worm coiled around her, but when night falls she and her mount rise up to resume their unholy work. In life she was a great architect, and knows many secrets of the famous palaces and temples of the world, their hidden tunnels and concealed chambers, having been responsible for designing many of them herself. Now she seeks the resting place of an ancient god once revered in these lands (see 5), confident that she would be able to tap its power for her own purposes if only she could build a temple over it in just the right way...

7: Dusty hilltop ruin encircled by bandit camps. The bandits chased a bunch of wizards in there a while back, and have been keeping watch on the ruins ever since to make sure they don't sneak out again. They haven't gone in after them because the wizards, in desperation, activated the slumbering stone golems with which the ruins are littered: now they cower in the ruins of the very manufactory in which the golems were once mass-produced, relying for protection on the ancient ward-lines that once kept them out of the manager's offices. The wizards have no way of controlling the golems, which now randomly attack anyone entering the ruins, though they're very much hoping to come up with one before they all starve to death...

8: Oasis city ruled by an aristocracy with ash-grey skin, marking them out at a glance from the general populace, who have normal dark-brown skin tones. Each year, the city's emir makes ritual offerings to the spirits of the oasis to ensure the prosperity of his city. He claims to enjoy the favour of the spirits, and those who defy him are dragged off into the night by the Misery Men: anonymous enforcers with jet-black eyes, their presence announced by a cold, damp smell like the bottom of a half-dried well. Among the people, mentioning (or even acknowledging the existence of) the Misery Men is believed to incur extreme misfortune. The remains of an immense rusted tank by the side of the oasis suggest that something was once contained here, although whatever it was must have leaked into the oasis long ago... (No further details - my PCs haven't got to the bottom of this one, yet!)

9: Wasteland haunted by clawed, burrowing humanoid scavengers the colour of charred meat, who sense tremors through the earth and dig their way up to sieze unwary travellers by night.  Though savage and feral, they are smaller than men and do not like to attack except by ambush. The smell of cooking meat will attract them from miles away, and a funeral pyre will bring them in swarms. If killed the bones within them are found to be black and charred, as though burned by some terrible fire, and are filled with cinders where their marrow should be.

10: The desert clans shun this region, roamed as it is by damaged but still-functional obsidian warriors, huge and mighty and almost-indestructible. Beyond them, in the heat-haze, can be glimpsed the bulk of an immense structure half-buried in the desert sands, its walls riven in ages past by some unimaginable violence. Sometimes the wind carries strange sounds from this building - distorted voices, hollow booming, the scrape of metal on stone - but since the fall of the cult of he whose name is both Fire and Hunger (see 5), none have successfully run the gauntlet of the obsidian warriors to discover what lies within... (No further details on this one - my PCs haven't been inside!)

Desert Monsters from the City of Spires

A few monsters who have turned up in my current campaign. I think my PCs have figured all these guys out well enough for me to safely list them here.

Image by Akihiro Tsuji

Smoke Giant: AC chain, 4 HD, 2 fists (1d8 damage), morale N/A.

Smoke giants are artificial guardians created by a long-fallen civilisation. In their dormant state, they just look like a thick covering of soot, coating everything in the room they guard. When they are disturbed, however, the soot flies up into the air and rapidly coheres into an ogre-sized humanoid monster, jet-black from head to foot. The giant furiously attacks anything that enters its protected area. If reduced to less than half HP, or if the trespassers depart, it explodes apart into a cloud of choking black smoke, which gradually settles to the ground as thick black soot. In smoke/soot form it recovers 1 HP per round until fully healed, at which point it will cohere back into humanoid form if the trespassers are still present. If reduced to 0 HP it explodes into smoke and does not recohere. 

If a dormant smoke giant can be collected into a container while in soot form without triggering it, then the resulting container can be used as a missile weapon: the moment it is opened, the giant will explode out of it to attack anyone nearby. Smoke giants are sometimes found still lying dormant inside their original storage crates.

(Once my PCs worked these guys out, they dealt with them by building an improvised suction pump attached to a hose, which they used to suck up the soot a little at a time from outside the giant's trigger radius. Then they mixed the soot with clay and baked it into bricks, effectively imprisoning the giant. The smoke giant's attempts to reform itself from inside the bricks makes them vibrate violently whenever anyone approaches, allowing them to function as an intruder alarm system.)

Locust Spirits: AC chain + shield, 4 HD, 1 claw (1d8 damage + strength drain), morale 8.

These awful famine-spirits look like shadowy humanoid locusts. They are only semi-corporeal and take half damage from non-magical attacks. Anyone struck by their claws is filled with terrible weakness, as though they hadn't eaten for days, and loses 1d6 strength - this strength returns at the rate of one point for each decent meal they eat. Anyone falling to Strength 0 is reduced to an emaciated corpse, apparently the victim of months of starvation. 

Locust spirits are only semi-intelligent, and can usually be found as servitors to more powerful spirits or dark magicians.

Jackal Knights: AC plate, 6 HD, 1 greatsword (3d6 damage) or 1 bite (1d6 damage), morale 9. 

These terrible demon-warriors of the desert can take the form either of a jackal (in which case they have a bite attack, and can run much more swiftly than a human), an armoured jackal-headed warrior (in which case they have a greatsword attack, and move at human speed), or a dust devil (in which case they have no attacks, but are immune to non-magical attacks, can move at much greater than human speed, and can blow through narrow spaces). Shifting between forms takes one round. 

In jackal or warrior form, they have long, lashing razor-sharp tongues, with which they can attempt to open the arteries of one opponent per round in melee combat. Unless their target is wearing armour on their neck, wrists, and thighs, they must save each round or else be cut, bleeding out for 1d6 damage per round. Spending a full round bandaging the wound allows for a new save to stop the damage. Any healing magic stops the bleeding instantly.

Jackal Knights register as magical to Detect Magic, and casting Dispel Magic on a Jackal Knight in dust-devil form will force it to resume one of its corporeal forms.

Desert Zombies: AC leather, 2 HD, 1 claw (1d6 damage), morale N/A.

This one was adapted from a Pathfinder monster. Created from the dehydrated corpses of unfortunates who perished in the wastes, these zombies resemble dried-out desert mummies aside from the candle-like flames that flicker inside their hollow eye-sockets. By day they slumber beneath the desert sands, quiescent unless disturbed, but by night they wander the in search of prey, their eye-flames visible from afar off in the darkness of the desert night. If they hit anyone in melee, their target must save or be grabbed and pulled in close enough for the zombie to exhale its dessicating breath all over its victim, causing an additional 1d8 damage in spontaneous dehydration. 

The flames in their eye-sockets serve as their eyes: immersion in sand cannot extinguish them, but immersion in water can. A zombie whose eye-flames are extinguished is effectively blind, and will simply wander randomly. If it is still animate by the following dawn, the flames in its eye-sockets reignite the moment the sun comes over the horizon.

Monsters from Central Asian Mythology 14: Divs of the Desert

In Zoroastrian tradition, Divs are spirits of evil, the children of the Druj, or cosmic lie. In Persian folk-tales, they often lurk around in wild and dangerous regions, looking for victims to deceive and devour - and, as a result, they're just the kind of creatures you might run into if you leave the relative safety of the Iranian plateau for the deserts of Central Asia. My take on them here is heavily informed by their appearance in the twelfth century Persian poem Haft Peykar, where - in C.E. Wilson's 1924 translation - they are described as follows:

Innumerable demons seated there, exchanging shouts through valley and through plain.

All of them, like the wind, were scattering dust; rather, they were like leeches black and long.

Till it got so, that from the left and right the mirthful clamour rose up to the sky.

A tumult rose from clapping and the dance; it made the brain ferment in (every) head.

At every instant did the noise increase, moment by moment greater it became.

When a short time had gone by, from afar a thousand torches (all) aflame appeared;

(And) suddenly some persons came to view, forms cast in tall and formidable mould.

All of them “ghūls” like blackest Ethiops; pitchlike the dress of all, like tar their caps.

All with the trunks of elephants and horned, combining ox and elephant in one.

Each of them bearing fire upon his hand, (each) ugly, evil one like drunken fiend.

Fire (also) from their throats was casting flames; reciting verse, they clashed the horn and blade.

So: tall, black, fire-breathing, desert-dwelling monsters, with trunks like elephants, horns like oxen, and fires and blades in their hands, who go around laughing, and clapping, and dancing, and reciting poetry. Like you do.

Here's a fifteenth-century illustration of the scene.

My suspicion is that these particular divs are basically anthropomorphic representations of the perils of the desert. They're associated with heat: thus the fires that they carry in their hands and breathe forth from their mouths. They create sandstorms; indeed, in some sense, they may actually be sandstorms, which would explain why they dance around in circles filling the landscape with clouds of dust. They create mirages - thus the recoil of the guy in the picture as his horse suddenly turns into a seven-headed dragon beneath him - and they themselves, with their monstrous beast-faces, resemble the kind of hallucinations someone might experience while stumbling around a desert half-dead of sunstroke and dehydration. But at the same time, they seem to possess art, language, even culture. They aren't just whooping and gibbering: they're reciting verse. It's that combination of primal destructiveness with apparent knowledge and intelligence that interests me.

So - if you go too deep into the desert, if you are lost and dying and desperate, then you may meet the divs. The base daily chance of a group encountering them is 0%, modified as follows:

• Group has only the vaguest idea where they are: +10%
• Group is completely lost: +20%
• Group has no food: +10%
• Group has no water: +20%
• Many people in the group are sick: +10%
• Many people in the group are wounded: +10%
• Many people in the group are suffering from sunstroke: +10%

When encountered, they come whirling over the horizon, leaping and dancing and singing, clashing cymbals and horns and blades. They breathe out gouts of fire. They kick up great clouds of dust. They conjure up frightful illusions of people and animals turning into monsters. What they're looking for is a terror reaction: they want to see people flee in panic, abandoning the supplies and the pack animals that they need to survive in the desert in their desperate scramble for safety. The divs think that kind of thing is hilarious. They'll be laughing about it for weeks.

If you hold your ground, then they'll come stalking up to you, waving swords and snorting flame. They'll try to intimidate you, uttering blood-curdling threats, and demanding all the food and goods and water you have in exchange for letting you live. They don't need those things: they just think it's funny to send people staggering away to die of thirst and starvation. They'll probably burn it all as soon as you're out of sight.

Faced with sturdy opposition, however, the divs will waver. They admire bravery, and for all their threats and bravado they will be reluctant to strike the first blows, although they will fight back fiercely if attacked. They hate showing weakness, and will curse and bluster to the very end, but travellers who demonstrate both courage and respect may be allowed to pass in exchange for a mere token payment of tribute. (The divs are incapable of telling direct truths, though, and will come up with all sorts of absurd lies about why they are letting you live.) If they are particularly impressed with you they might even drop some broad hints about the way to the next oasis, although if questioned about it they will of course deny doing anything of the sort. 

Despite their ruffianly ways, the divs are great lovers of music and poetry. They will immediately warm to anyone who can answer them quotation for quotation, and prefer gifts of song and verse above all others. They know many old secrets, and the locations of all kinds of ancient ruins, and sorcerers and scholars sometimes deliberately seek them out with the hope of bargaining with them - although this usually involves deliberately getting lost in the desert first. They also have considerable respect for Dahākans, who they regard almost as their kinsmen. They view the Cruel Ones with utter contempt.

• Div: AC 15 (super-tough skin), 4 HD, AB +5, two attacks, damage blade (1d8+1) and flame (1d6), FORT 10, REF 12, WILL 12, morale 9. 

Divs resemble large, brutish humanoids with elephant faces and the horns of oxen. They carry swords and flames, which they can call forth from their hands at will, and wield like lashes: they can also breathe forth gouts of fire once per round, causing 1d6 points of fire damage per round to one target within melee range unless they pass a REF save. While leaping and dancing around the desert, the dust clouds they kick up are so thick that all ranged attacks against them are at -2 to hit. They can conjure threatening illusions, which last for as long as the div creating them maintains concentration. These illusions are visual-only, and can only take the form of monsters, distortions, fires, sandstorms, and other intimidating sights. 

Oasis kingdoms of the Great Road

Most of the land through which the Great Road passes is extremely barren, and as such its route is determined by a continuous compromise between two absolutes: distance and water supply. No-one setting out on the arduous months-long journey from east to west, or vice versa, wants to make it any longer than it has to be: and for such travellers, the ideal route for the Road to take would be as close to a straight line as the intervening terrain permits. In practise, however, that hypothetical straight line would take you through some of the most arid regions in the world, so dry that horses and men alike would perish of dehydration if they attempted to follow it; and so the Road is forced to twist and turn, threading the oases together like beads on a string. Each oasis forms a natural choke point through which all merchants and travellers must pass, generating opportunities for toll-taking and extortion: and the larger and more isolated an oasis, the greater the potential wealth that can be extracted from the traders and caravans passing through. If he can take and hold such a location for just a few years at a stretch, even the pettiest of bandit chieftains can draw off so much gold that he will swiftly swell into a king.

These, then, are the Oasis Kingdoms: small states whose economies are based on serving and taxing the east-west traffic that passes through them. In theory, these tiny kingdoms have the power to hold mighty empires to ransom by choking off their trade; but in practise their rulers generally recognise that their prosperity depends upon the Great Road remaining a reliable artery of commerce, and limit their tolls to the merely extortionate rather than the outright prohibitive. Cut off from the outside world by hundreds of miles of desert, they are mostly left to their own devices by the distant empires whose caravans they tax, their direct conquest usually regarded as being more trouble than it's worth. (It's been tried. They usually regain their independence, de facto if not de jure, within a century at most.) But their small size and limited agricultural base means that their kings must depend upon hired mercenaries for protection, and even the strongest of them could not possibly stand up to a serious punitive expedition from one of the great empires of the east, south, or west - a fact which generally keeps the petty tyrants who rule them from getting too greedy, at least when high-status travellers and the scions of great merchant houses are concerned.

Given that a group of PCs could easily pass through a dozen or more oasis kingdoms in the course of a long enough journey down the Great Road, there's little point in trying to enumerate them all separately. Instead, the outline of a given kingdom can be generated using the following tables.

How big is the oasis? (roll 1d6)

1. Tiny. This 'kingdom' would be little more than a village if it wasn't for its strategic position.
2. Small. The kingdom consists of a single small city surrounded by a meagre amount of agricultural land. Much of its food is imported.  
3. Moderate. The kingdom consists of a single city surrounded by relatively fertile land. It is (just) self-sufficient in terms of food and basic goods, but for wealth and luxury goods it is entirely dependent upon the Great Road. 
4. Large. The kingdom consists of a large city and a few smaller towns, set in a substantial quantity of carefully irrigated farmland. Even without the Great Road, it could probably function as a petty kingdom in its own right.
5. Very large. The kingdom has multiple cities, and is a centre for trade and manufactures. Caravans would probably visit it to buy and sell in its markets even if they weren't forced to by the local geography.
6. Huge. The kingdom is actually a substantial polity with many towns and cities, containing a hundred miles or more of the Great Road within its borders. 

(NB: the traits of these cities, as opposed to the kingdom as a whole, can be generated using the tables here, replacing the 'government' section with the more detailed information below.)

How much of a chokepoint is it? (Roll 1d4)

1. There are other oases that trade could pass through; this one's just the most convenient. The kingdom's rulers are forced to keep their tolls moderate, knowing that traders will simply adopt an alternative route if the taxes get too high.
2. There's another oasis that trade could conceivably pass through, but it's either much further away or cut off by very rough terrain. The kingdom's rulers keep their tolls high, knowing that only the very desperate (or the very poor) would undertake the much harder journey involved in circumventing it.
3. There's another oasis not too far away, but it's currently inaccessible to trade due to some external factor (war, pestilence, monsters, bandit infestations, etc). The kingdom knows that this situation can't last forever, and has jacked up its tolls to well above normal levels to try to cash in on it while it lasts. The merchant houses are very interesting in resolving this problem by any means necessary, and the local government is just as interested in ensuring that their efforts to do so come to nothing. 
4. This is the only oasis for miles and miles and miles. The kingdom imposes eye-watering tolls on traders, its greed restrained only by the knowledge that if it pushes its luck too far, one day it'll find an army rather than a caravan waiting outside its gates...

Who enforces the law? (roll 1d8)

1. Steppe warriors hired from a distant khanate. Devastating horse archers. Fiercely proud of their traditions. They and the local population regard one another with mutual contempt.
2. An order of warrior monks based in a nearby monastery, run by the dominant local religion. Willing to serve the local ruler for as long as his laws favour and enrich their faith.
3. Desert bandits gone legit, bought off by the local ruler in exchange for a cut of his profits. Old habits die hard, and they still engage in occasional bouts of looting and extortion when they think they can get away with it.
4. Slave soldiers purchased in distant markets and marched off to fight for their new owners. Discipline is enforced through ruthless punishments and the promise of freedom and promotion for those who distinguish themselves. 
5. A rabble of sell-swords from a dozen nations, with nothing in common except their willingness to fight for anyone who pays them. Discipline is poor, and brawls between regiments of different ethnicities are commonplace. 
6. A highly professional company of foreign mercenaries, who know that their ability to command top rates from their employers depends upon their reputation for ruthless discipline. They live in their own barracks complex and keep themselves aloof from the local population.
7. A detachment of soldiers from a far-off empire, sent to 'assist' the local government in protecting the flow of trade. They have mostly 'gone native' and married local women, and would probably side with the locals against the empire if it came right down to it.
8. A detachment of soldiers from a far-off empire, sent to 'assist' the local government in protecting the flow of trade. Their true loyalty is still to the empire, and they would overthrow the local government overnight if their distant emperor ordered them to do so.

How easy is it to dodge the tolls? (roll 1d6)

1. Easy. The government is lax and their tax-gathering system is corrupt and inefficient. Any plan that isn't totally stupid will probably work.
2. Moderately easy. The tax-gatherers are diligent, but have no real loyalty to the government and will wave through just about anything for a big enough bribe.
3. Variable. The tax-gatherers are loyal and efficient, but they're almost all recruited from one specific religious or ethnic group and are willing to look the other way for the 'right' kind of people.
4. Variable. The tax-gatherers are loyal and efficient, but they've been heavily infiltrated by some other organisation (roll 1d3: 1 = criminal mafia, 2 = religious cult, 3 = political conspiracy), who will see to it that you don't need to pay tolls provided you can do a little favour for them in exchange...
5. Hard. The tax-gatherers are well-organised and highly-motivated. Unless you have friends in high places, you'll need to pay a small fortune in bribes to get them to look the other way.
6. Very hard. The ruler's secret police keep the local tax-gatherers in a state of perpetual paranoid terror, making them very difficult to persuade or bribe. Hide your most valuable goods inside your least valuable goods and hope for the best...

Who rules it? (Roll 1d12)

1. A bandit chief made good, trying his best to come across as more than the common brigand that he until recently was and failing pretty miserably. His children are getting expensive educations and view him as a total embarrassment. This kingdom would be a great place to sell something very expensive and very, very tasteless.
2. A dynastic king, who is only moderately cruel or greedy by the (admittedly low) standards of the oasis kingdoms.
3. A dynastic king, who is actually a wise and enlightened man, beloved by the people for his willingness to spend his tax revenue on great public works rather than pointless self-indulgence. 
4. A dynastic king with a well-earned reputation for insane paranoia and arbitrary acts of tyranny. Everyone hates him, but his mercenary soldiers will continue to enforce his edicts as long as they keep getting paid. Perhaps if someone could make them a better offer...?
5. An elderly dynastic king with many wives and many, many children, who constantly plot and scheme against each other as to who will take the throne when the old man finally dies. A skilled spy or assassin could make a quick fortune here. 
6. In theory, a dynastic king. In practise, a merchant consortium to whom he is so deeply in debt that he is little more than a puppet in their hands. (The fact that they pay the wages of his mercenaries doesn't help.) Their traders get very favourable treatment from the local courts and tax collectors, much to the fury of their rivals.
7. In theory, a dynastic king. In practise, the religious organisation of which he is a desperately devout adherent. These days his palace looks more like a temple, and he never makes a major decision without consulting his 'spiritual advisers' first. The kingdom's other religious communities are getting increasingly nervous about the situation, and fear that it's only a matter of time before they're forced to choose between conversion and exile. 
8. In theory, a dynastic king. In practise, his vizier, who makes all the real decisions while the king wastes his days cavorting with concubines and going on hunting expeditions. Fortunately for the kingdom, the vizier is a harsh but fair man who has the kingdom's best interests at heart.
9. In theory, a dynastic king. In practise, his vizier, who makes all the real decisions while the king wastes his days cavorting with concubines and going on hunting expeditions. Unfortunately for the kingdom, the vizier is a greedy and selfish man who cares only for his own enrichment.
10. A governor appointed by the distant empire which notionally rules this place, whose assignment here was essentially a punishment disguised as a promotion. He cannot stand being stuck out in the middle of the desert and is absolutely desperate to find a way back into the good graces of the far-off imperial court. A shocking proportion of his budget is wasted on importing luxury goods from his far-off homeland.
11. A governor appointed by the distant empire which notionally rules this place, who has woken up to the fact that he's far too distant from the centres of power for his superiors to exercise any meaningful control over his actions, and mostly acts like the petty tyrant that he effectively is. Vaguely planning to declare independence and found a new dynasty as soon as the time is right.
12. A khan from the great steppe, whose horsemen conquered the place years back. He's still very uncomfortable in his palace, and yearns for his yurt and the open steppe. The people still haven't come to terms with being conquered by people they consider barbarians, but if his rule endures for another few decades then his descendants will probably become a local dynasty much like any other. 

Random Encounter Tables: the Desert

Back to the random encounter tables! This one is for the deserts which sprawl to the south of the Great Road; some are hot and some are cold, but all are deeply inhospitable to ill-prepared travellers. Not a lot lives out there, but they're not entirely empty - so here are some of the things you might run into out there, whilst wandering from one oasis to the next...

Desert Encounter Tables (roll 1d12)

1: 2d6 Children of the Sun, living in an austere little enclave out in the desert, practising the Way of Solar Righteousness in total seclusion from the outside world. Living with them are 2d3 human acolytes, who sought them out as a refuge from the unrighteousness of the world, but have since concluded that a life of total moral clarity is a lot more attractive in theory than in practise; they'd now quite like to return to civilisation, but lack the supplies to make their way out of the desert on their own. They will eagerly attempt to persuade the PCs to let them tag along, but the company of a bunch of failed wannabe saints who alternate between eager indulgence in worldy pleasures and tearful bouts of self-reproach may prove to be rather a mixed blessing. The Children of the Sun themselves spend their time in meditation and rigorous acts of asceticism, and are extremely reluctant to be drawn into any kind of activity which might compromise their strict moral and spiritual purity, although if any of the PCs are suffering from any kind of unholy affliction the Children will offer to burn it out of them with holy fire. They mean this completely literally.

2: This part of the desert is inhabited by 1d6 Cruel Ones, who torment travellers by sabotaging gear, setting traps, leading animals astray, and similar spiteful tricks. They're very bad about cleaning up after themselves, though, so the bones of dead pack animals and other victims scattered around the area may give PCs a warning that something is amiss before their cruel games begin.

3: A band of Brigands of the Noonday Dark have their lair near here, in a ruined village by the side of a remote oasis. Their night-callers are getting old, and they are starting to get a bit desperate about replacing them; this means that they're on the look-out for anyone who looks like they might have radically mixed ancestry, on the off-chance that they might qualify as night-callers and be bribed or threatened into joining their gang. PCs who fit this description may have the slightly surreal experience of being ambushed by brigands and questioned at spear-point about the exact details of their ancestry. The band is led by a grizzled, savage old woman who makes blood-curdling threats against anyone who crosses her, but whose first concern is to ensure the survival and prosperity of her band, most of whom are nieces, nephews, and grandchildren of hers.

4: A couple of young men, natives of the distant Cold Desert, riding across the desert on Storm Worms. They are obviously and extravagantly in love, and care very little about who knows it. The younger of the two was banished from his clan after refusing to marry the woman his chief had chosen for him, and his lover insisted on accompanying him into exile; now they roam the world, looking for fame, adventure, and the opportunity to make even more grand romantic gestures. They are very easily persuaded to join in any undertaking which sounds like it will provide them with suitable opportunities for heroism.

5: Two Disciples of the Word, travelling together to a distant monastery in the middle of the desert, where they hope to study its famous collection of calligraphic masterpieces. They travel together for mutual protection, but they belong to rival sects; and while they began their journey willing to engage in friendly debate over their religious disagreements, they've long since devolved into composing bitchy religious poetry full of spiteful side-swipes at one another's beliefs. Any PC who appears to be knowledgeable  in literary, scholarly, or religious matters will be petitioned to act as judge in an impromptu recitation competition which has very little to do with actual literary merit.

6: A Bone Witch, who lives alone by a lonely oasis, rattling her fetishes of fossilised dinosaur bone. She pretends to spend her time in communion with dark spirits and contemplation of horrible mysteries, but actually she's just a lazy and selfish individual who uses her powers to intimidate the nearby tribes into leaving her offerings whenever they stop at her oasis. Anyone challenging her is in for a nasty surprise: the fossilised bones of two nearly-complete velociraptor skeletons are buried under the sand just outside her tent, and will animate and leap out of the sand to defend her upon her command.

7: A ruined fort inhabited by a degenerate clan of near-savages, led by a thuggish Dahakan whose influence is steadily changing them for the worse. The fort has its own wells, which they've used to irrigate a small area, and this - along with hunting and occasional cannibalism - allows them to remain more-or-less self-sustaining. They came here originally as refugees fleeing a war in a nearby kingdom, and used to have plans about returning home, but since the Dahakan's take-over their ambitions have dwindled to mere banditry and brutality. If freed from its control, there might be some hope for them yet...

8: 2d6 treasure hunters from a nearby city, searching for an ancient ruined temple which they're certain must be somewhere around here. They will be extremely suspicious of the PCs, convinced that they must be planning either to get to the temple first, or to ambush them on their way out and steal the treasure after they've done all the hard work. The actual temple is hundreds of miles away, and contains a very large, very hungry guardian serpent and no treasure.

9: A team of Scarab Man masons, labouring away at carving a great stone in the desert into a giant statue of the Insect Queen, Bamiyan Buddhas style. It's obviously going to take them decades to finish it, but they don't seem to mind; they're also extremely vague about what they're doing here, how they got here, and what's so special about this particular rock that makes it so appropriate as statue material, but they will not allow themselves to be dissuaded from their task. Unfortunately, their general inattentiveness also extends to the giant beetles they use as beasts of burden, which have taken to roaming the surrounding area eating anything and anyone they come across. The scarab men will be vaguely apologetic if confronted with the fact that their beetles have been eating people, but while they can be persuaded to keep them under tighter control, they will refuse to get rid of them all together, insisting that the loss of them would unacceptably delay the statue's completion.

10: Two Renunicates, a young man and an old woman, living as hermits out in the desert near a stone outcropping: centuries ago, a famous holy woman is said to have vanished into the stone and never emerged, and the place would be a centre of pilgrimage if it wasn't in the middle of a desert someplace. The Renunciates assert that if you spend three days and three nights out in the desert without food and water, and then press your ear to the stone, then if your heart is pure the saint within the rock will whisper holy secrets in your ears. Unsympathetic PCs may suspect that they're just off their heads with sunstroke.

11: A trader, travelling alone in the desert with her camels - a real oddity, given the dangers of the road. In fact this unfortunate woman is one of the Maimed, whose left ear and eye were replaced by the cruel magicians of the Wicked City in order to enhance her usefulness as a spy; she used the knowledge she gathered to work out a way to flee the city, and now lives as a desert trader because it means she gets to spend lots and lots of time alone. Her cruel ear and eye, which automatically focus on all things mean, ugly, and deceitful, mean that she finds almost all kinds of human contact enormously depressing. She keeps them covered under wraps of fabric whenever possible.

12: A pair of metal feet sticking of out the side of a sand dune turn out to belong to a badly-corroded Brass man, who became lost in this desert over a century ago and ended up wandering around in circles until his mainspring wound down. His body is seriously damaged by long exposure to the scouring sands, but his clockwork brain is still safe and intact inside its protective covering, and will reactivate if someone winds it up. He's very grateful to anyone who rescues and repairs him, but will chatter away endlessly about his belief that the original workshop of the Cogwheel Sage is hidden away somewhere beneath the desert sands; he has a rather obsessive personality, and if not given anything new to focus on he'll go stomping back into the desert as soon as his legs are sufficiently well-repaired to carry him.

Bone Witches of the Cold Desert

Frozen corpse of a Bactrian camel, Gobi desert, Mongolia. Image from BBC Natural History.

Of all the regions through which the Great Road passes, this is perhaps the harshest. The desert burns by day and freezes by night: the dunes glitter with frost in the moonlight, and in winter the sand is covered with drifts of snow. The wind flings mingled sand and ice into the faces of travellers as they trudge across the desert, their garments crusted with frost; greenery is scarce, and horses and camels must forage on needle grass as best they can. The clans who inhabit the Cold Desert must combine all the hardihood of both the steppe and desert peoples, enduring heat and cold, hunger and thirst, jealously guarding knowledge of the scant and secret pastures upon which their livestock depend. The boldest of them ride fearsome Storm Worms into battle; and when the traders come they guide these great beasts up to the edges of the caravans, demanding bribes in exchange for keeping their monstrous mounts at a safe distance. Faced with these twenty-foot horrors, their bodies crackling with electricity, most caravans are happy to pass over a tribute of strong drink and warm clothing in order to keep the beasts at bay.

So life in the Cold Desert is possible, albeit demanding; but the land is constantly offering up proofs that it truly belongs to the dead. As the sands are blown back and forth by wind and storm, they expose the bones of great beasts jutting from the rocks, the remains of long-dead monsters from some previous age of the world; fossilised rib-cages a man could sleep in, vertebrae one could use as stepping-stones, gigantic reptilian heads, and limbs ending in murderous claws. An unseen presence broods over these ancient bones of stone: the spirits of the Cold Desert seem to take a special interest in the places where they lie, and indeed some speculate that the spirits of this desolate region are none other than the ghosts of the great beasts themselves, eternally watching over the wasteland which became their tomb. The Cold Desert tribes conduct all their most sacred rites under the gaze of these fossilised monsters, and revere them as the guardian spirits of the land.

Fossil skull excavated in the Gobi desert. (Source here.)

Given their ritual significance, it is held to be an act of extreme impiety to damage or desecrate these fossilised remains. Some greedy souls do so anyway, in order to sell them to passing caravans, as they command high prices among the scholars of far-off cities; but many experienced caravan-masters refuse to have anything to do with this trade in fossils, as more often than not the spirits of the land seem to object to it, heaping all manner of misfortunes upon those who dare to carry their bones away. Rarer and more dangerous are those individuals who seek the bones not for enrichment, but for personal power, seeking to claim the spiritual energies which lurk within them for themselves. Known as Bone Witches, these men and women practise a corrupt form of shamanism, using the fossils in their possession to compel the spirits which inhabit them to do their bidding. The Cold Desert tribes hate and fear Bone Witches, hunting them down and feeding them to the Storm Worms whenever they get a chance; but in the Wicked City the practise flourishes amongst those wealthy enough to afford the ancient fossils it requires, and a few Cobweb families have even financed their own expeditions into the depths of the Cold Desert in order to bring back as rich a haul of such skeletons as possible.

The Flaming Cliffs in the Gobi Desert, famous for their fossils.

Most Bone Witches are taught their unholy craft by another Bone Witch, but if one is a shaman already then it is possible to teach oneself the basics given a decent supply of fossil bones to study over the course of (20 - your Wisdom score) months. From this point forwards, any fossilised bones of dinosaurs and megafauna you manage to retrieve from the Cold Desert (and maybe a few other places elsewhere in the world) may be tapped as sources of power. After spending 24 hours meditating on such a fossil (during which your spirit beats the spirit within it into submission), you may use it as if it was a magical item, as follows:

• Fossilised bone wielded as club or staff: Counts as a +2 weapon.
• Fossilised dinosaur tooth or claw wielded as dagger: Counts as a +3 weapon.
• Fossilised bones glued to the sides of a bow or gun: Counts as a +1 weapon.
• Fossilised bones used as thrown weapons: Grant +2 to-hit and inflict 1d8 base damage.
• Fossilised bones stitched to fur or leather armour: Counts as +2 armour.
• Fossilised bones glued to a shield like the spokes of a wheel: Counts as a +1 shield.
• Fossilised tooth worn as an amulet: Grants +1 to all saves.
• Fossilised skull worn as a helmet: Grants +3 to all saves.
• Fossilised dinosaur egg bound to body and worn over heart: Grants +2 HP per level, which are lost immediately if the egg is removed. (This may prove fatal if you're already wounded.)
• Almost-complete fossil skeleton: If a Bone Witch is lucky enough to be able to excavate a fossil skeleton with its skull, spine, and limbs all mostly intact, then after binding it to them in meditation they may animate it and force it to do their bidding. They must fuel this process with their own life-energy, however; animating a man-sized or smaller skeleton costs 1 HP per day, animating a horse-sized skeleton cost 1 HP per hour, animating an elephant-sized skeleton (e.g. a woolly mammoth) costs 1 HP per minute, and animating anything larger than this costs 1 HP per round. Skeletons thus animated may act as mounts, fighters, or beasts of burden, but cannot communicate in any way. The Bone Witch may cause them to de-animate at will. 

Only Bone Witches may benefit from these items: for anyone else, they are just so many useless chunks of fossilised bone. Wearing or wielding them around Cold Desert clansmen is a good way of getting yourself fed to the Storm Worms.

Monsters from Central Asian Mythology 7: Storm-Worms of the Cold Desert

Mongolian Death Worm. Image by Andy Paciorek.

This isn't really mythology, as such: many Mongolians sincerely believe in the existence of large, red, burrowing worms which live beneath the Gobi Desert. When they surface they are best left alone, because they have not one but two formidable natural defence mechanisms: not only can they spray a stream of highly acidic, poisonous fluid from their mouths, but their bodies also carry a powerful electrical charge, powerful enough to instantly kill anyone who touches one. None of the expeditions which have gone in search of the Mongolian Death Worm have ever found one, and I think it's safe to say that it probably doesn't really exist, at least in the spectacular form described by local folklore. It does make for good RPG monster fodder, though.

In its 'authentic' form, the Death Worm isn't really proactive enough to be useful. At best it's a kind of trap encounter: go too near the horrible worm and get your face melted off. The obvious route to take would be to imitate Dune, and make them into enormous mega-monsters; but then you're just doing a Dune pastiche, and any connection to Central Asia has rather been left behind. But maybe there's space for something viable somewhere inbetween...?

So: out in the cold deserts on the edge of the steppes, where the sand dunes glisten with frost by night, the wild Storm-Worms dwell. They are huge, solitary beasts, three feet wide and almost twenty feet long when fully grown, and they spend most of their lives burrowing far beneath the surface, deep in the guts of the earth: but in the brief rainy season, when the storms come sweeping over the desert and the rains pour down onto the sands, the Storm-Worms come surging to the surface. Churning through the soaking desert, they crash and writhe, their enormous bodies crackling with electricity as they sport in the brief rain; human and animal alike know to avoid them, as the worms can sense movement through the vibrations in the sand, and will direct withering sprays of acidic spittle at anything that gets too close. For those few hardy souls who risk travelling through the cold desert during storm season, the greatest danger is of a worm surfacing directly below you, as the creature will lash out in a panic with both its acidic spray and its electrified body at anything nearby: the native inhabitants of the region know how to spot the distinctive swelling of the sands which precedes their appearance, and know that seeing it is a warning to start riding away as fast as you possibly can. 

Very occasionally, however, some of the nomads of the cold desert will deliberately seek out the Storm-Worms when the rainclouds come. Wearing thick suits of insulating felt, they will spur their horses as close to a worm as they dare while it revels in the rain, before throwing lassos around its neck; they then wheel their horses and pull away in different directions, so that the lines pull taut and the worm is pinned down right in the middle, unable to turn its head and spit acid at its captors. They then drag it back into a pre-prepared enclosure at some distance from the encampment of their clan, where one man, the bravest and most skillful of all, must then run up behind it on foot and tie a thick felt blanket around the worm's heaving body, knowing that a single touch of his skin against its electrified flesh could easily mean instant death. A saddle is then strapped on over the blanket; and when the beast is needed, a rider leaps astride it to steer the worm by means of ropes and goads. The Storm-Worms are too unintelligent to train, and all their riders can really do is point them in the desired direction and aim their heads at people whom they would like to suffer an agonising acid-based death; but even this is enough to make them a valuable asset in times of war, and cold desert clans who fear being attacked by larger or stronger groups will sometimes try to obtain a Storm-Worm or two in the hope of evening the odds...

• Storm-Worm: AC 14 (tough, segmented skin), 4 HD, AB +3, electrified thrash (1d4 damage + 1d8 electricity damage), FORT 10, REF 12, WILL 16, morale 6.  May spray acid at a single target up to 20' distant, who must pass a REF save or take 2d6 acid damage. Anyone damaged by this attack must also pass a FORT save or incapacitated by pain for 1d6 rounds.

Anyone touching a Storm-Worm, or hitting one with a natural attack or metal weapon in melee, will take 1d8 electricity damage unless they are completely insulated. Their electrical charge is biologically generated, and dissipates shortly after death. Their digestive systems contain very large quantities of powerfully acidic toxic fluid, which can be harvested from their corpses after death, although this is very dangerous work: anyone who doesn't know exactly what they're doing is likely to get their hands melted off in the process!

Certain Devilish Enchantments

In this plain there are a number of villages and towns which have lofty walls of mud, made as a defence against the banditti, who are very numerous, and are called CARAONAS. This name is given them because they are the sons of Indian mothers by Tartar fathers. And you must know that when these Caraonas wish to make a plundering incursion, they have certain devilish enchantments whereby they do bring darkness over the face of day, insomuch that you can scarcely discern your comrade riding beside you [...] In this way they extend across the whole plain that they are going to harry, and catch every living thing that is found outside of the towns and villages; man, woman, or beast, nothing can escape them! The old men whom they take in this way they butcher; the young men and the women they sell for slaves in other countries; thus the whole land is ruined, and has become well-nigh a desert. 

- The Travels of Marco Polo, Book 1, Chapter 18

Marco Polo had good reason to take the Caraonas seriously. While he was travelling through Persia, a band of them attacked him and his companions 'in such a darkness as that I have told you of', killing or capturing most of them; he and a few others escaped by pure good fortune, fleeing for refuge into a nearby village. Probably the magical darkness that they were said to be able to conjure was nothing but a habit of using the local dust storms to conceal their movements. But this is fantasy: so why not take Master Marco at his word? 

Thus: the Brigands of the Noonday Dark. A robber-tribe, savage and merciless, living out in the wild lands, descending like thunder upon vulnerable caravans and then fleeing back to hiding places deep in the desert: they attack only under the cover of darkness, but unlike other bandits, when nature fails to provide the darkness they desire they simply conjure up their own. The Brigands know a spell which makes the light fail, until 'you can scarcely discern your comrade riding beside you': this spell, once uttered, affects the land for miles around, and lasts for hours at a time. Travellers know, of course, that this unnatural darkness is a sign that the Brigands are lurking nearby; but they are skilled in riding soundlessly, and even the most alert caravan will be lucky to know which direction they are about to strike from before the Brigands are upon them.

The 'devilish enchantments' of the Brigands of the Noonday Dark are as simple as children's rhymes - which is just as well, given the average level of educational attainment amongst them. However, they will only work for an individual who fulfils two requirements. Firstly, they must be of first-generation mixed ethnicity, with a mother from one ethnic group and a father from a very different one; and, secondly, they must have undergone a process of ritual preparation which the Brigands refer to as 'drinking the sun', in the course of which they must consume appalling quantities of scalding liquids whose exact composition is known only to the chiefs of the Brigands and their most trusted lieutenants. Those who survive this ceremonial ordeal can then call down the darkness at will, turning day into night within a 3d6 mile radius for the next 1d6 hours. Each time they do so they take 1d6 damage, which cannot be healed by any means until the darkness has dispersed. Calling down the darkness twice in the same day increases this damage to 2d6; a third calling causes 3d6 damage, and so on. These 'night-callers' are very valuable to the Brigands, so they will only push them to endanger their own lives through repeatedly calling down the dark in situations of dire necessity.

Within the area affected by the darkness, visibility drops to about 15', which makes missile weapons pretty much useless. The Brigands themselves prefer to use clubs and nets, in the hope of capturing their victims alive and subsequently selling them as slaves. Such is their bad reputation, however, that few 'respectable' slave dealers will have anything to do with them; and, as a result, most of their captives ultimately end up being sold in the slave markets of the Wicked City. They, at least, turn no-one away: and in the choking smog of the Grand Bazaar, under the shadows of the Cobweb, the sunlight-hating Brigands of the Noonday Dark tend to feel right at home. 

If a Brigand night-caller ever comes into skin-to-skin contact with a Child of the Sun, the night-caller will spontaneously combust. The Brigands do not know this to be the case.

The Legend of Aži Dahāka

The binding of Aži Dahāka (aka Zahhak), from the Shahnama of Baysunghur.

One of the inspirations for the Wicked King was the Persian legend of Aži Dahāka, the dragon-tyrant of the ancient world, which has haunted me ever since I first learned it many years ago. I know Persia isn't really part of Central Asia proper; but the legend formed part of the mythic history of Zoroastrianism, which was historically practised in Central Asia, and also fed into more definitively Central Asian religions such as Manicheanism and Yazdanism. Besides, the whole thing is much too good to miss.

The story goes like this: long ago, the world was ruled by a sorcerer-king called Jamshid. Jamshid was originally benevolent, and did all kinds of good for humanity; but as the years passed he became proud and narcissistic, demanding to be worshipped as a god. In so doing he forfeited the favour of heaven, which departed from him in the form of a bird and flew away. The spirit of evil, Ahriman, knew this meant that Jamshid's days were numbered, and began looking for the one who would overthrow him.

The man Ahriman chose for his purposes was the son of a great chieftain. First Ahriman persuaded him to murder his father, inheriting his wealth and lands; then he came to the young man's court disguised as a cook, and made him a delicious banquet, for which the only payment he requested was permission to kiss the new chief between his shoulder-blades. After Ahriman departed the spot he had kissed swelled up and burst open, and out of it rose two huge serpents, twisting and snapping and ravening for human brains. So the young man became Aži Dahāka, the serpent king; and so his reign of terror began.

Aži Dahāka made war on Jamshid, and overthrew him. He took the two sisters of Jamshid as his brides, teaching them his evil sorcery and corrupting them with his evil ways. Jamshid fled his armies and went into hiding; for a hundred years Aži Dahāka hunted him, and in the hundredth year he caught him on the coast of the sea of Chin and had Jamshid torn to pieces. For a thousand years he maintained his cruel tyranny over the world, ordering everything he desired to be carried to him in golden cages, and feeding human brains to the serpents that grew from his spine; he even prayed to the goddess Anahita for power to exterminate humanity, but his wickedness was such that she ignored him no matter how many thousands of sacrifices he offered to her. Finally a humble blacksmith named Kaveh, who had seen seventeen of his eighteen children taken one after another to feed the snake-heads of Aži Dahāka, tied his leather apron to a pole and raised it as a flag of rebellion; he was joined by the hero Faridun, and together they rescued Jamshid's sisters and overthrew the tyrant. Faridun wounded Aži Dahāka three times, but from each wound a great tide of poisonous vermin leaped out to infest the world; so finally, instead of killing him, they bound him to mountainside, and there he remains to this day. According to some versions of the story, his shoulder-snakes have been eating his brains ever since.

(That leather apron banner, by the way? It became the royal banner of the kings of Iran, and was carried by them in all their battles until it was lost during the Arab conquest in the seventh century.)

So: what can we do with all this from a gaming perspective?

1. Make a race out of them. Call 'em 'Dahakans', maybe, for maximum linguistic mangling: a breed of towering monsters, seven feet tall, with serpents snapping and darting over their shoulders. They have a natural predisposition towards cruelty, tyranny, and black magic, and can usually be found ruling over barbarian tribes out in the deserts, dominating their followers with an iron fist.
2. Or make it a recognisable condition. Fall too far into villainy and sorcery and your body starts to warp: first a hard, discoloured lump develops between your shoulder-blades, then it swells up to cover half your back, and finally it bursts open and serpents spring out, their fangs dripping with all the venom distilled in your wicked, wicked heart. With a big enough robe you might be able to conceal them for a while, but really at this stage it's time to start thinking about setting up your evil sorcerer lair out in the wilderness.
3. Or just use it as a one-off horror. PCs break into an ancient ruin on a mountaintop, and find some massive broken chains, plus one that's still connected to the rock; the monster stalks the ruins, mad and hungry, but unable to move more than a few hundred feet from the rock due to the chain still locked around its ankle. It has the whole deal: gigantic size and strength, brain-eating shoulder-snakes, AND horrible black magic, and when injured its wounds vomit forth waves of venomous stinging insects instead of blood, which means that hacking it to death is probably a great way of getting eaten alive by a zillion poisonous bugs. Of course, whatever the PCs came to the ruin for will be well within its wander range...

Dahākans (race): AC 14 (superhuman toughness), 4 HD, AB +4, damage by weapon plus two snake-bites (damage 1d4 + poison: FORT save or take 2d6 extra damage next round), FORT 10, REF 10, WILL 10, morale 9. For each week a person spends in their power (as a follower, a prisoner, etc), they must make a WILL save or start to accept their authority and begin a slide into moral corruption.

Dahākanism (magical affliction): You are so evil that poisonous snakes have started growing out of your back. You get two extra melee attacks each round, at your normal attack bonus: these do only 1 HP of damage, but they inject a poison which grows more potent the more evil you are. Regular old villainy might just do 1d6 extra damage on a failed FORT save; total lunatic evil might inflict 3d6 or more. You look like a hideous mutant freak and everybody hates you. If you cut the snakes off they just grow back.

Aži Dahāka (primordial monster): AC 16 (iron-hard skin), 12 HD, AB +10, huge claws (2d6 damage) plus two snake-bites (damage 2d6), FORT 4, REF 6, WILL 4, morale 8. If injured, everyone within 10' must make a REF roll or be covered in the biting insects which pour from its wound, suffering a -2 penalty to all rolls due to painful stinging, and losing 1 HP per minute due to the cumulative effect of their poisons filling your system; these penalties are cumulative for multiple injuries, and last until you manage to get them off via crushing, drowning, fumigation, etc. Horrible black magic powers at GM's discretion.

Spirits of the Wilderness: The Cruel Ones

The length of this Desert is so great that 'tis said it would take a year and more to ride from one end of it to the other. And here, where its breadth is least, it takes a month to cross it. 'Tis all composed of hills and valleys of sand, and not a thing to eat is to be found on it. But after riding for a day and a night you find fresh water, enough mayhap for some 50 or 100 persons with their beasts, but not for more. And all across the Desert you will find water in like manner, that is to say, in some 28 places altogether you will find good water, but in no great quantity; and in four places also you find brackish water.

Beasts there are none; for there is nought for them to eat. But there is a marvellous thing related of this Desert, which is that when travellers are on the move by night, and one of them chances to lag behind or to fall asleep or the like, when he tries to gain his company again he will hear spirits talking, and will suppose them to be his comrades. Sometimes the spirits will call him by name; and thus shall a traveller ofttimes be led astray so that he never finds his party. And in this way many have perished. - Description of the Desert of Lop, from book 1, chapter 39 of The Travels of Marco Polo

The Lop Desert is an enormous expanse of sand and clay, which covers twenty thousand square miles of what is now the Xinjiang region of north-western China. It was once famous for its 'singing sands': dunes in which the sand particles, vibrating in unison, create waves of sound that can be mistaken for voices, musical instruments, or even the roaring of distant cannon. Marco Polo and his contemporaries, of course, chalked the noise up to malicious spirits trying to lure travellers to their deaths. This being D&D, I'm going for the latter option.

The Lop Desert looks like this. Have fun navigating your way through that one.

So: certain particularly desolate stretches of desert are inhabited by a race of invisible spirits, known as the Cruel Ones. Being stuck in the desert has made the Cruel Ones so miserable that the only way they can bring any pleasure into their lives is by tormenting one another, playing vicious tricks on each other and mocking the resultant misfortune; but they are all so miserable to start with that even the cruellest prank can't make its victims much more unhappy than they already are, so the amount of entertainment to be gained from such antics is rather limited. They ruthlessly torment any animals who wander into their lands, with the result that those animals usually either die or wander right back out again; indeed, their presence is part of the reason why their deserts remain so desolate. Their favourite victims, however, are human travellers.

Unlike normal spirits, the Cruel Ones cannot be placated with worship or offerings: they don't care about any of that, although they might pretend to as part of a spiteful trick. All they want to do is hurt people, or - better still - trick people into hurting each other or themselves. They are more like schoolyard bullies than sophisticated sadists, and they have no interest in elaborate forms of physical or psychological torture: they just want to cause their victims ever-greater amounts of pain, fear, frustration, and misery, before ultimately luring them deep into the heart of the desert and leaving them to starve to death. If their victims die in a sufficiently extreme state of fear and rage, then their spirits will be too agitated to find their way out of the desert and into the afterlife; instead they will wander endlessly in circles, becoming more and more frustrated, until finally they snap and become a Cruel One, too. Thus the cycle of abuse continues, and the desert claims another victim.

The desert also has ruins like these in it, which you just know are going to be seven kinds of haunted.

The Cruel Ones are invisible, and they only make sounds when they want to: otherwise they are inaudible. They are expert mimics, and can imitate almost any noise exactly: the neighing of horses, the crying of a child, the voice of one of your fellow-travellers, and so on. They have sort-of-physical bodies - holding one feels like gripping onto a mass of pouring sand, which is constantly threatening to cascade between your fingers and slip away - but they tread so lightly that they do not leave footprints even on soft surfaces, and being soundless and invisible they are very difficult to detect before it's too late. Their strength is no greater than that of an ordinary human, but they don't really feel pain and they regenerate physical damage almost instantly.

• Cruel Ones: AC 18 (12 if you find some way to make them visible), 2 HD, +1 to-hit, teeth and claws (1d4 damage), FORT 13, REF 14, WILL 15, morale 8. Permanently invisible. Cannot be killed except by powerful magic, and regenerate 5 HP every round. 

Being part of a caravan which has attracted the attention of a Cruel One sucks. First it's just little things, like sabotaged water canteens and cut reins and time-wasting side-tracks to investigate where those voices are coming from; then it gets more serious, with lamed horses, stolen provisions, and demonic howlings that keep everyone up all night. Finally, it'll graduate to murdering people and using their mimicked voices to lure the whole group deep into the desert, before stealing their food and water and leaving them to perish. If you're being persecuted by Cruel Ones, your best bet is to get the hell out of the desert as fast as you possibly can, as they won't travel beyond its edges. If that's not an option, there are three basic ways of dealing with them: you can trap them, trick them, or win them over.

• Trap them: Cruel Ones can't be killed - you can stab them, but they'll just heal right back up - but they can be trapped: caught in nets, tripped into pits, pinned to the ground with spears, wrestled to the floor and tied up, and so on. Years of playing spiteful tricks on each other has made them very good at spotting traps and ambushes, but ultimately they're not all that bright, and a sufficiently cunning trap will probably do the trick. Once trapped, their fellow Cruel Ones will eventually come and free them - but not before spending several days or weeks spitefully mocking them, by which point you'll hopefully be long gone.
• Trick them: Cruel Ones are only clever when it comes to thinking of ways to torment people. In every other matter, they're frankly pretty stupid, and an intelligent traveller should be able to come up with all kinds of ways to trick them into going elsewhere: persuading them that there's a much more tempting band of victims over those dunes, for example. Would-be tricksters should be careful of discussing their plans before putting them into action, though - you never know when an invisible Cruel One might be lurking nearby, listening in on everything you say. Cruel Ones also hate being tricked, and will do horrible things to people who have deceived them, so make sure that whatever lie you tell them will buy you enough time to get out of the desert before they can catch up with you! 
• Win them over: At base, the Cruel Ones are cruel because they're miserable: they're stuck in a desert, there's nothing to do, they all hate each other, and they can't find their way out, so they take their frustrations out on anyone that comes in range. (Note that their lostness is spiritual rather than physical: they know where the geographical borders of the desert are, they just can't work out how to disentangle the desert they're trapped in from the deserts that their souls have become.) A sufficiently empathic and persuasive traveller might be able to persuade a Cruel One to find a more constructive way to spend their life; they might even convince them to take up religion, and potentially find their way on to a real afterlife rather than hanging around a desert for the rest of eternity. This is not an easy option: the Cruel Ones will be convinced that every overture made to them is a trick designed to trap and humiliate them, and they will ruthlessly take advantage of anyone who lets their physical or emotional guard down in their presence. With sufficient empathy, charisma, and persistence, though, it might just be possible to pull it off...

There used to be a colony of Cruel Ones in the deserts south of the Wicked City. The Wicked King sent a gang of his Renunciates to catch them all, and drag them back to the city in cages; then he started experimenting with grafting their weird, regenerating limbs onto human bodies. The resulting unfortunates are known to the inhabitants of the city as the Maimed - but they're probably worth a whole post of their own...

Foes of the Wicked City 1: The Children of the Sun

In the deserts to the south of the Wicked City, there are places where the sunlight becomes so heavy that it can almost be grasped. In such places - the Sun's Anvils, as the desert tribes call them - to speak of the sun 'beating down' starts to seem less and less metaphorical; each sunbeam feels almost like a solid physical object, pushing downwards from the sky. On really hot days, at the very heart of the sun's anvils, that sunlight doesn't just fall: it coalesces, becoming a shimmering, liquid mass, too bright to look at, too hot to touch. Put your hand into a pool of liquid sunlight and it will burn right off. All day the pool of sunlight will churn and seethe and bubble; but when night falls, most of it will drain away, evaporating into the cooling air. Left behind at the bottom of the pool will be a new-born Child of the Sun.

They look like humans, the Sun's Children, but their skin is the colour of bronze and their hair is the colour of bright molten gold. They have no childhood: they are born as either gleaming maidens or as splendid youths, apparently in late adolescence, and with an instinctive knowledge of languages and all the basic arts of life. They do not need to eat or drink, feeding solely upon the sun's glorious radiance; if they are deprived of sunlight, they weaken and die. They are strong. They are stern. They carry the Way of Solar Righteousness in their hearts. 

All through history, the Children of the Sun have come down from their desert plateaus and mingled with humanity, trying to teach them the Way of Solar Righteousness. All through history, they have retreated in shock and sorrow from the inability of humans to put the Way into practise. The Way teaches that you must never lie, never cheat, never steal, never commit any act of unrighteous violence or deception, and never, ever break your oath. Most humans agree that those are pretty good moral guidelines, but they keep going on about 'exceptions' and 'edge cases' and 'white lies' and 'extenuating circumstances', and the Children just don't understand that at all. There is righteousness, and there is unrighteousness. There is nothing in between. 

Unsurprisingly, most Children of the Sun soon end up wandering back out into the desert, where they can practise the Way of Solar Righteousness with their own kind in peace. They live in austere, roofless monastery-temples, every room open to the sun. Occasionally, idealistic humans get it into their heads that they should seek out one of these temples and try to join it. The tough ones last a week.

A few of the Children, however, refuse to give up on us. Year after year they remain in the world, trying by word and deed to impress upon the people around them the importance of the Way. Some of them gather cults of followers. Some of them build temples. Sometimes they are enlisted by communities to act as judges: they may be harsh and unsympathetic, but they are also totally incorruptible. Some of them roam from place to place, into lands far from their native deserts, enduring for our sake the long nights and the cold winters when they scarcely glimpse the sun. Wherever they go, they act as scourges of evil and teachers of righteousness. And they hate the Wicked City with every grain of their molten hearts.

You can play a Sun Child if you want to, but make sure the whole group is OK with the idea first: most PCs tend to be very morally flexible people, and constantly getting lectured about your moral failings can get really old really fast. (The rest of the players are also soon going to get bored of having to sneak around behind your back every time they want to do something devious.) Mostly, they're intended for use as NPCs: allies for whom the question, for once, is not 'can we trust them' but 'can they trust us?' (A Sun Child who discovers that she's been tricked into acting unrighteously won't get all torn up about it - she knows her heart was pure - but she will refuse to have anything more to do with the people who deceived her.) Game information is as follows:

• You must have Constitution and Wisdom 12 or higher.
• You can use any weapons and armour. You can wear the heaviest armour on the hottest day without discomfort.
• You gain a bonus to all your to-hit rolls equal to your level.
• You gain 1d6 HP per level.
• You cannot be blinded or dazzled by flashes of light or similar effects, and are immune to damage from heat or fire. (Gunpowder explosions damage you normally: it's the blast, not the heat, which messes you up.)
• You get +2 to your WILL saves. (Included in the table below.)
• You are totally incapable of moral compromise, and will never, ever, knowingly behave in a deceptive, unrighteous, or dishonourable manner. 
• You feed on sunlight. You do not need to eat or drink, but you must spend at least one hour a day standing in full sunlight, soaking up rays. (If only weak sunlight is available, you might need two or three hours instead.) You will die if deprived of sunlight for a number of consecutive days greater than your Constitution score.
• When you are cut, you bleed sunlight. This may be an issue if you're trying to sneak around in the dark!

Sun Child Summary Table

Level	Hit Points	To Hit Bonus	Fortitude save (FORT)	Reflex save (REF)	Willpower save (WILL)
1	1d6	+1	14	14	12
2	2d6	+2	13	13	11
3	3d6	+3	12	12	10
4	4d6	+4	11	11	9
5	5d6	+5	10	10	8
6	6d6	+6	9	9	7
7	7d6	+7	8	8	6
8	8d6	+8	7	7	5
9	9d6	+9	6	6	4
10	10d6	+10	5	5	3

Starting equipment: Helm and breastplate (+5 AC), heavy shield (+2 AC), sword (1d8 damage), longbow (1d8 damage), holy golden amulet (worth 50sp, though you'd never sell it), extremely irritating sense of total moral superiority, 1d6x10 sp