Ravenloft Reincarnated: The Verdurous Lands

[hidajiremi]

With the Shadowlands finished up, it's time to go into the Verdurous Lands!

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The Verdurous Lands

A cluster of sweltering, tropical domains where the lush vegetation grows dense and wild, the Verdurous Lands are a place of unrelenting heat and humidity. Travelers rapidly find themselves drenched in sweat, and they will quickly succumb to heatstroke if they are not careful. In these muggy lands, the years are defined by torrential seasons of rain, deluging the verdant landscape with an annual wet season that causes flooding, mudslides, and the migration of deadly river animals.

The wilds are shadowy and menacing in the Verdurous Lands, stalked by vicious predators and choked by plant life that is frequently toxic or mobile and carnivorous. In the few places where humanity has slashed back the strangling vegetation and toiled to survive, nature scrabbles and claws at mankind’s handiwork as though jealous to reclaim the lost land. The savagery of the wilderness is unrelenting throughout the cluster.

The most populous domain of the Verdurous Lands is Kalakeri, a land of betrayal and revenge caught up in a perpetual civil war between the forces of the scions of the Vasavadan Dynasty. The people suffer in the endless cycles of conquest and retribution as the two sisters battle over their claims to the Sapphire Throne.

Neighboring Sri Raji is a land of cities built amidst the tropical jungles where the people live according to traditions as old as time but cower in daily fear from the demands of their dread maharaja, a fugitive from the Vasavadan Dynasty who betrayed both of his sisters in his quest for power and now rules over a hinterland province lacking the wealth and prestige he desires.

North of these two lands lies the sea of Saragoss, an expanse of warm ocean choked by sargasso seaweed, where the wrecks of countless ships drift amid the perpetual fog. A small population of marooned sailors eke out a meager and desperate living in the region, unable to escape but unwilling to simply give up and die.

Any who can navigate the mariner’s nightmare might find their way to Niranjan, an island chain once claimed by the Empire of Kalakeri but which has long since been de facto independent. Despite the difficulty in making it to the islands, travelers still seek it out, hoping to find the Ashram of Niranjan, a holy temple that can teach adherents spiritual discipline and ways to escape the cycle of death and rebirth.

South of the war-torn empire is a land vaster than the rest of the cluster put together—one where no human dares tread. The Wildlands are a realm of beasts, an untouched wilderness free from humanity’s taming hand. The rumored ivory riches of elephants’ graveyards and cliffs covered in gemstones sometime draw outsiders, but the speaking beasts of the region despise man and all his works, and few who travel there survive to tell the tale.


Languages

The people of the Verdurous Lands speak many dozens of languages local only to the cluster. The large and ethnically diverse population of Kalakeri speak languages based on a complex combination of their gotra (clan lineage), their varna (social caste), and their jāti (community association or occupational heritage). Almost all Kalakeri can also speak Rajian, the ancient tongue in which their most holy texts were written and which has had very little change or linguistic drift in thousands of years.

Within the borders of the Wildlands, all living animals—including humanoids—can speak a common language, the primal tongue that all things spoke at the dawn of existence.


Connections

The Sea of Saragoss has direct connection to the Nocturnal Sea, as do all such oceanic bodies of water within the Land of Mists. Ships from beyond the cluster that go astray often find themselves caught up in the sargasso, trapped forever in the clutching grasp of kelp and seaweed. Supposedly, a fracture in the seafloor somewhere in Saragoss leads to Loch Lenore in the Shadow Rift, open for the thirteen years in which the Seelie Court rules.

A more reliable passage is the Emerald Stream, a well charted Mistway that leads from the Sea of Sorrows to the harbors of Sri Raji. Additionally, a fairly reliable Mistway called the Road of Burning Amber leads from Kalakeri to the domain of Al-Kathos in the Amber Wastes. The beastfolk of that domain sometimes travel to Kalakeri as merchants, as the locals have less fear of them than the humans of their own cluster.


The Eternal Dharma

The majority of people in Kalakeri, Sri Raji, and Niranjan follow a single religion with many different paths and interpretations. Called “the Eternal Dharma,” the faith is not just a collection of gods and religious practices but a way of life that describes the role each person must play in society so that they can live righteously and improve their soul over the course of successive reincarnations.

The key belief of the faith is that each person lives and dies many times, with each life being a test of a person’s ability to adhere to the correct behavior laid out for them by their family, clan, heritage, and occupation. In the view of the religion, if a person’s destiny (or karma) is for them to be a farmer, they will gain greater spiritual enlightenment by being the best farmer they can be rather than abandoning that destiny to pursue happiness, wealth, or power. Similarly, a leader’s karma cannot be selfishly abandoned—they must follow the destiny of leadership no matter how heavy the burden may seem.

The people of the cluster believe in many gods—hundreds of them, in fact—and these gods are tutelary in nature, with each of them offering important lessons about a person’s role in life as well as being the guardian spirit of a specific concept, like fire, ships, or motherhood. The gods are thought to be subject to their own destiny as well, unable to change unless they choose to rejoin the cycle of rebirth and risk their eternal existence for the chance at growth.

The primary disagreements among members of the faith come from the ultimate goal of the cycle of reincarnation. Some believe that the cycle is truly eternal, and that every soul goes through periods of refinement and debasement forever. Others hold that a person with sufficient spiritual enlightenment can escape the cycle, either by ascending to godhood themselves or by becoming one with the universe and its energy. Ultimately, this remains a debate for scholars and priests, while most people simply seek to lead their best lives and let dharma be their judge.

[hidajiremi]

Kalakeri

For untold generations, the Vasavadan Dynasty has ruled over the Empire of Kalakeri. Once a kingdom of stability and prosperity, Kalakeri has become a wretched land of barbarous civil war, locked in an endless cycle of violence. At the eye of the storm stand the twin sisters Ramya and Reeva, heirs to the throne transformed into unspeakable monstrosities by their mutual hatred.

Kalakeri is a deceptively beautiful land of verdant rain forests, crisscrossed by an idyllic web of rivers and lakes. The forest peninsula at the heartland of the empire is a famous source of exotic creatures and rare plants, while the floodplains below the peninsula are fecund and bountiful croplands that provide food for the empire’s countless citizens.

Two treacherous mountains just from the forest-cloaked hills of southwestern Kalakeri, guarding the passes to the rogue province of Sri Raji. The Greater Vochalam and the slightly smaller Lesser Vochalam are home to vast numbers of predatory avian reptiles known as wyverns. Legends say that temples crown both mountains, and that an ancient deity placed an incredible treasure able to grant wishes in one of them. None have ever found the treasure and returned to speak of it, leading to another legend that whoever claims the treasure in the wrong temple is turned into a wyvern forever.

At the height of its prosperity, Kalakeri was a robust center of art, commerce, and religion, with foreign merchants flooding the ports and taking tales of the wealthy empire back to their homelands. Now, Kalakeri is a shadow of its past glory, a quagmire of intrigue and despair where fortunes change on a near-daily basis. The waters of Carnatic Bay host few outsiders, for almost none are willing to risk their cargoes being seized or their crew being press-ganged into the military of whichever Vasavadan sibling currently holds the Sapphire Throne.

The people of Kalakeri live in dread, as a single misstep can spell doom not just for themselves but for their entire family and community as well. Schemers and hapless citizens alike are tossed by the tidal forces of the royal family’s squabble for the throne. Both sides of the civil war escalate their atrocities against one another, drawing the powerful and the innocent alike into their conflict. As Reeva hosts murderous galas to entice wealthy and powerful allies, Ramya searches out and executes anyone she considers disloyal.


Tropes

Kalakeri is a once-mighty empire suffering the throes of civil war and the brutality that can only be possible when familial love turns to rivalry and hate. Ramya and Reeva Vasavadan envied one another as children, were rivals as young adults, and are bitter enemies now. Their hate has transcended death itself, and now all that remains to them is to prove once and for all which of them “deserves” the throne—regardless of who suffers on their quest. Everything in Kalakeri revolves around the sibling rivalry of the two heirs, and everyone falls into orbit around one or the other of them eventually.


Themes

• Civil War Isn’t Civil: Sister against sister, brother against brother, parent against child—war is hell by its very nature, but civil war is a special kind of hell. When two people who love one another disagree enough to come to blows, love curdles and turns to the most virulent sort of hate. Communities and families are divided against themselves in a never-ending cycle of violence.

• Dynastic Struggles: Unknown numbers of people have died in Kalakeri because of a disagreement between exactly three people. Because each of them believed they had a right to rule and could not reign in their pride, their homeland has gone from a mighty and wealthy empire to an impoverished and crumbling state forsaken by its neighbors. In the end, each of the Vasavadan heirs would rather burn everything to the ground than permit someone else to possess it.

• The Weight of Destiny: In the beliefs of the local people, no person can outrun their destiny. Was the destiny of the Vasavadan siblings inevitably one of tragedy, despair, and horror? Was the destiny of Kalakeri to be tormented by the undying rage of their would-be rulers? Or is the current state of affairs because destiny has been thwarted? Perhaps the people of Kalakeri can only find salvation when the Vasavadan Dynasty finally embraces fate and ceases fighting against it.


Notable Locations

An extensive web of brackish rivers and lakes called the Backwaters crosses the whole of the empire’s central peninsula. Houseboats travel the waters here, ferrying food and wares between thriving trade towns, rural villages, and the estates of regional nobles. Refugees from the ongoing war and the capital’s rampant poverty often seek haven in the Backwaters. Those brave enough to fight the tyranny of the Vasavadan siblings organize into rebel bands that prepare desperate, dangerous attacks on the royal family, while those simply seeking to survive at any cost form gangs of bandits instead and prey on their fellow man.

The Cerulean Citadel is the palace of the Vasavadan Dynasty, the jewel in Jadurai’s crown. It derives its name from the sky-blue sandstone used to construct its outer walls, and the octagonal citadel encompasses over one hundred acres of land. Within its defensive walls and strategic bastions lie a complex of beautifully designed marble quarters and pavilions, arranged between courtyards, baths, ponds, and gardens. The central domed court houses the Sapphire Throne itself, the sign of true legitimacy to rule Kalakeri.

The capital city of Jadurai is thousands of years old. Here, ancient structures with the architecture of previous dynasties stand cheek-and-jowl with modern buildings Hardly a month passes without locals rediscovering a forgotten chamber or catacomb, built over by prior residents. The city retains much of its splendor, but the conflict between the heirs takes an enormous toll. Sections of the city lie in ruins, and the slums encroach further each day as misery and squalor consume Jadurai from the inside.

The Tower of Traitors is an ever-expanding structure on the outskirts of Kalakeri, situated on the battlefield where the three Vasavadan siblings met their first deaths. Depressions on the exterior of the stone tower hold row upon row of skulls, all taken from Ramya Vasavadan’s fallen enemies. Ramya’s corpse soldiers constantly add new levels and new skulls to the tower. Some say she seeks to build the tower high enough to make war upon the gods themselves.


The Darklords

Ramya and Reeva Vasavadan were the twin daughters of the emperor of Kalakeri. Due to the laws of the Eternal Dharma, Ramya was born to the caste of warriors while Reeva was born to the caste of scholars. As the two girls grew, their similarity in appearance was nothing compared to their difference in temperament and personality. Ramya was loud, boisterous, and gregarious, but possessed of a vengeful streak that made her many enemies. Reeva was quiet, dedicated, and studious, but lacked charisma and had trouble making friends. The two of them were united only by their adoration of their younger brother, Arijani, seeing no fault in him though he was a vain, selfish boy who grew into a jealous, scheming man.

As the emperor grew old and near death, the time drew close for him to name one of the girls his heir. Arijani whispered poison into each of their ears, preparing them to fight one another for the throne. That way, whichever one their father chose, Arijani would be able to pit the two women against one another and side with the winner. Instead, the unthinkable happened and the old emperor died without naming an heir. Sensing an opportunity, Arijani seized the throne for himself rather than simply become the power behind the throne.

Unfortunately for him, Arijani overestimated his popular support, and only a small portion of the army sided with him. The rest split evenly between his two elder sisters, both of whom marched against him. Ramya was the superior commander, but Reeva had more support from the many nobles that Ramya had angered over the years. Their armies clashed in the capital, all the while Arijani sent messages to each of them that he had only seized the throne to hold it against the other’s treachery.

With none of them able to gain the upper hand, Arijani finally called for a cease fire to discuss an end to hostilities, with all three siblings meeting on an open field outside the capital. Naturally, he planned to betray them both and leave himself the only survivor. When he gave the order for his hidden archers to attack, he found to his horror that each of the women had also planned betrayal, and the arrows fatally pierced all three.

Arijani woke first, reborn in a hideous new form that reflected his treacherous and predatory nature. When he saw his sisters stirring from their deathly slumber as well, he fled before their wrath could overtake him. Ramya and Reeva found themselves changed as well, their inner darkness made manifest in their flesh. Each blamed the other for their new, horrible shapes and swore to destroy their traitorous brother as well—just as soon as they could claim the throne as the one true heir of the Vasavadan Dynasty.

In the decades since, the civil war between the two seemingly deathless sisters has continued unabated. Each will take the capital and rule for months or years at a time while the other gathers rebels on the outskirts of the domain for a new assault. Their battles devastate the once-beautiful capital and depopulate the countryside, trampling the lives of the common folk underfoot with no care. Neither can admit fault or give up her claim on the throne, and neither has found a way to permanently slay the other.

Ramya Vasavadan has become a demonic combination of woman and snake, her lower body a serpent’s tail while her upper body sprouts six arms that can each wield a blade with deadly precision. Her human skin has changed to the blue-black coloration of a charred corpse, and her eyes are blood red. She can convert captured victims into her loyal servants by draining them of their blood, raising them again as perfectly loyal corpse soldiers.

Reeva Vasavadan has become a jackal-headed humanoid covered in matted fur, a terrible insult to her religious ideals of purity since jackals are carrion-eaters. Reeva gains her followers through the liberal use of bribery, political machinations, and the taking of hostages, forcing noble families to grant her support lest they find their heirs reduced to butchered meat on their palace doorsteps. Those that join her do so out of fear, but also out of the desperate hope that she can defeat Ramya and return their nation to prosperity and wealth.

[hidajiremi]

Niranjan

Beyond the choking sargasso sea of Saragoss lies the Ajivika island chain, an ancient holding of the Empire of Kalakeri. These islands have long been a place of both refuge and exile for people with religious or political leanings unpopular in the mainland of the empire. Because of the distance to the islands, the privation experienced by those living there, and the large number of religious groups dwelling there, the Ajivika Archipelago has reputation on the mainland for being a place of holiness, asceticism, and enlightened madness.

Unlike the warm and comfortable mainland, the Ajivikas are rocky and storm-wracked, a place where agriculture is difficult and survival is uncertain. Even those not philosophically devoted to an ascetic lifestyle often end up living one just from sheer necessity. When imperial bureaucrats still dwelled on the islands, the communities around their estates could be assured of a slightly better quality of life than those eking out their living by fishing and hunting, but those days have passed.

The Ajivikas have always been somewhat distant from the political and social structure of the mainland empire, but this state has only been exacerbated since the beginning of the civil war. The few noble families and imperial administrators who called the islands home were recalled to the mainland years ago, leaving behind only scattered communities of religious scholars, hermits, and monks.

Among the most prominent of the religious groups of the island chain is the Ashram of Niranjan, a once-vibrant monastery for ascetic scholars practicing a philosophy called Ramsana. This adaptation of the Eternal Dharma teaches pacifism and nonattachment to the material world in order to cleanse the practitioner’s soul and break the cycle of reincarnation. The ashram’s size and influence had been declining for many years due to their isolation and practices—after all, those who seek nonattachment are unlikely to recruit heavily or to build families to carry on their legacy.

All of this changed with the ascension of a new elder whose name the temple now bears, Niranjan. Bearing the title sadhu, or “holy one,” Niranjan came from the mainland to join the ashram many years ago, eventually becoming their spiritual leader. When he took the leadership of the ashram, Niranjan spearheaded a new era of recruitment and conversion, sending forth acolytes to the mainland and far-flung lands abroad bearing his philosophical writings.

All who come to the Ashram of Niranjan in search of Ramsana are admitted and given the saffron robes of an ascetic monk. They must shave their heads, divest themselves of worldly goods and outside attachments, and meditate upon the nature of existence. The ashram’s population has swelled with Niranjan’s new initiative, but the few outsiders who visit the monastery whisper that the monks do not seem blissful so much as empty, as though their very self had been scooped out to leave them hollow shells.


Tropes

Niranjan is a domain about religious brainwashing and the power imbalance that occurs when one person accepts another as their spiritual superior. The dragon Sarthak, in his guise as the humble monk Niranjan, is a con artist of the worst sort, peddling spiritual salvation to the vulnerable and leaving them with nothing—not even their souls. He is a reflection of every televangelist or new age guru who preys upon their flock, bilking them while mouthing platitudes.


Themes

• False Faith: Sarthak doesn’t believe his own preaching at all. Every part of his teachings are carefully designed to appeal to people who are at the lowest part of their lives and convince them to give up everything for a shred of hope. To build his false faith, Sarthak subverted a real one filled with true believers, then quietly murdered any of them who pushed back against his blasphemous interpretations of their beliefs. Unlike many cult leaders, who buy into their own awful ideology, Sarthak is a callous manipulator whose actions mock the very idea of faith.

• Pyramid Scheme: Those who want to rise in rank (and thus in enlightenment) within the Ashram of Niranjan must prove their worth to the sadhu by going forth into the Mists and returning with new initiates. Only those willing to risk everything to grow the cult’s influence are permitted to commune with Niranjan himself and gain the emptiness they seek. Even if only a few of them are successful, the cult still grows by virtue of the missionaries spreading Niranjan’s writings to other domains. The ones who successfully return find that the emptiness they achieve is not the enlightenment they believed it to be.

• Shadows of Self: Niranjan is a shadow of what he once was, who turns people into shadows of who they used to be. His false teachings say that all of reality is just a shadow cast by a true existence, and that only by letting go of attachment to that shadow can a person be enlightened to truth. The Ajivika Islands are a shadow of the glory of Kalakeri, and the ashram itself lives in the shadow of Niranjan. Shadows are a recurring theme in the domain and should feature heavily in any adventure set here.


Notable Locations

The most important location in the island chain is the Ashram of Niranjan itself. Set high in the rocky foothills near the center of the largest island in the archipelago, the ashram is a monastic temple built as a retreat for the ascetic order who constructed it. They intended it to be difficult to reach, the better to avoid contact with the corruption of the outside world, but Sarthak's long-term goal is to end that isolation and even expand the ashram down the hills and onto the lowlands.

Dalit’s Cove is a small town on the coast of the second-largest island in the Ajivikas. Named for the people who are outside of the traditional varna caste system of Kalakeri, the folk of “the Cove” (as they call their own town) are a mix of different ethnic and religious groups. Some are descended from exiles sent away from the mainland generations ago for reasons now forgotten, while others are escapees from the recent civil war. At least one of them has a secret that Niranjan would kill to keep others from discovering. An old woman living in a makeshift shack on the edge of town is a former yogi (or teacher) of the ashram who refused to convert to Niranjan’s teachings, escaping ahead of the dragon’s purges with knowledge of the supposed holy man’s true identity.

The Way of Ascension is an ongoing project on the ashram’s island. Since becoming sadhu of the temple, Niranjan has started using his expanded labor pool to carve a broad, gentle stair leading from the island’s shores to the gates of the temple, the better to admit new initiates who might be frightened off by the original approach: a dangerous ascent up sheer cliff walls with little more than a few decaying ropes and footholds to guide the way.


The Darklord

The bronze dragon Sarthak was once a major ally of the Empire of Kalakeri. Like most of his kind, Sarthak enjoyed keeping company with humans and despised injustice. Unlike others, however, Sarthak was intensely materialistic, spending a great deal of time building and protecting his hoard. When the Vasavadan emperor tricked him out of his wealth, Sarthak became bitter and resentful, abandoning his territory and traveling across the sea to the islands of Ajivika.

Sarthak mingled with the various monastic groups in human form, learning their ways and seeking some greater truth that would calm the conflict in his heart. No matter how much he prayed or meditated, however, he could never find the peace or joy that seemed to come so easily to the humanoids that surrounded him. Over the following centuries, he joined and rejected dozens of different faiths, finding ultimate truth in none of them, though he did learn many monastic techniques, including the ability to see and project spiritual energy.

When Sarthak heard that the last Vasavadan emperor—a distant descendant of the one who stole his hoard—had died without naming an heir and that the empire had descended into civil war, he was overjoyed. He expressed his feelings to one of the few people who knew his true identity, a lone hermit monk named Niranjan. The monk scolded him for such an unworthy reaction, noting that the man who had wronged Sarthak was long dead, and that the people of Kalakeri who would suffer in a civil war deserved his sympathy rather than his scorn.

In a fury, Sarthak struck the old monk dead and watched his soul escape his body. Sarthak panicked and lashed out with a technique he had learned to banish ghosts, only to find that it allowed him to devour Niranjan’s living soul. In that moment, Sarthak felt a perfect peace he had never before known, a oneness with all things—but all too soon, the feeling passed, leaving behind only shame over killing his friend.

Sarthak took Niranjan’s body into the forest near the old man’s hut to build a funeral pyre for him. There, in a gully, he found something that shocked him: piles of coins, jewelry, and gems. For years, people had sought out Niranjan for his wisdom and sage advice, bringing offerings of all sorts. Sarthak realized that Niranjan had kept that which was immediately useful—food, medicine, and the like—but had simply thrown all the worldly treasures he had been offered into a ditch like so much trash.

It was then that Sarthak had a flash of inspiration: he could rebuild his hoard by getting others to bring him all the wealth he could ever desire. In exchange, he would give them the same mealy-mouthed platitudes that others had offered to him for centuries. He sought out an order of monks known for their philosophy of nonattachment and carefully subverted their teachings from within over the course of several years. Finally, when he had cultivated them into a state of acceptance, he enacted the “ghost-eating” ritual that he had used on Niranjan and devoured their souls, leaving them empty husks obedient to his every whim.

Sarthak has found that using the ghost-eating ritual on a person without preparing them first simply causes pain and confusion without completely detaching their living soul from their body. His teachings are carefully calculated to not just convince his followers to give up their wealth but to ritualistically prepare themselves to have their souls eaten. By meditating on the nature of nonexistence, detachment, and emptiness, they make themselves ready for Sarthak to pull their souls free and devour them.

As Sarthak has used the ghost-eating ritual more and more, his physical body has become less tangible, replacing his very flesh with shadow and smoke. In his guise as the monk Niranjan, his eyes are solid black orbs roiling with an oily sheen; for this reason, he typically binds his eyes with a cloth in his human form, pretending to be blind. His hunger for both treasure and souls has only grown over time as well, with each new soul devoured giving him less and less enjoyment. He already has a grander hoard than he ever did before and more wealth than he could ever spend, but it is never enough.

[hidajiremi]

Saragoss

The Sea of Saragoss is an expanse of warm ocean lying between Kalakeri and the domain of Niranjan. This region is choked by sargasso seaweed, making it a perpetual hazard to oceanic traffic. The seaweed expanse is home to the wrecks of countless ships adrift amid the fog and haze of the sargasso. It is a mariner’s nightmare, a sweltering purgatory where men are forced to turn on one another like animals just to survive.

The sargasso forms a tangled mat that snarls ships in its slimy tendrils, rendering escape hopeless. The hulks of vessels from countless eras and nations list brokenly in the muck, many of them on the verge of plunging into the depths below. In places, the sargasso is so dense and spongy that one can walk across the ocean’s surface, though unseen breaches in the mat make such travel perilous. Above, screeching gulls wheel in lazy circle, swooping down to harass the domain’s luckless inhabitants.

Below the surface muck, a forest of kelp sways in the murky depths. The waters are filthy, clouded with silt, shredded seaweed, and the rot of corpses. Sharks and barracudas glide through the tangled maze, sickly beams of sunlight flickering weakly through the choked surface. Deeper still, the rotting hulls of ships sit silently on the muddy bottom, an eerie graveyard where all of the sea’s trapped vessels eventually come to rest. Schools of silvery fish and luminescent squid dart through the gaping hulls in the wrecks. Jagged underwater crags of bone-white coral rise all around, riddled with black, twisting caves. The corpses of drowned sailors rest uneasy in the depths, frequently rising in the black night to haunt and hunt the living.

Perpetual fog shrouds Saragoss, concealing the treacherous seaweed from lost sailors. The muggy days are shrouded in haze, though the mist offers no relief from the constant, wilting heat. The fog only breaks when a violent squall is approaching, an omen of the harrowing ordeal that is to come. Storms are savage in Saragoss, pounding the ragged ships with torrential rain, howling winds, and lashing waves that send more than a few of them to the bottom of the sea.

The few people dwelling in Saragoss are drawn from dozens of different cultures. Though the majority hail from nearby Kalakeri, a not-insignificant number are from foreign vessels that were either traveling to or from the empire on missions of trade or diplomacy before becoming caught in the quagmire. Regardless of their origins, those caught in the sargasso now share a common ragged appearance, wracked by scurvy and jaundice from poor nutrition, their skin cracked from the salt air and their hair matted and lice ridden. Many of them have become weak and delirious from dehydration, and tooth loss is a common hazard.

Life in Saragoss is an ordeal, a brutal exercise in survival with no room for mercy or sentiment. No matter what high ideas a sailor might have started with, few can hold out for very long. Most are prepared to raid, betray, and murder without hesitation if it will extend their lives by a few more days or weeks. Fresh water, food, and wood are the most valuable resources in Saragoss, and bloody skirmishes between ships over these commodities are commonplace. There is no room for trust among people who would kill for a mouthful of hardtack or a scrap of driftwood. Mutiny and sedition are always simmering aboard most ships.


Tropes

“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” Such is the description of deprivation and desperation given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. This vision of thirst, hunger, and madness is a quintessential touchstone for the Gothic genre with its meditations on fate, death, and disaster. The “ship’s graveyard” is a perpetual horror for ocean-going sailors, and this domain leans heavily on both that folkloric fear and Coleridge’s poem.


Themes

• Desperate Survival: Every day is a struggle for survival in Saragoss. Food and water are rare, making dehydration and starvation just as dangerous as any monster. Worse, the desperation to survive at any cost turns ordinary people into monsters, fighting over scraps they would disdain in times of plenty.

• Nautical Horror: Much like the Sea of Sorrows, Saragoss is a realm of nautical horror themes. Wrecked ships filled with monsters, zombie sailors, weresharks, aquatic monsters, and similar threats are common—but unlike on the Sea of Sorrows, simply running away isn’t usually an option. Characters must risk life and limb facing these horrors just for the opportunity to walk away with scant supplies, or to keep their ragged shelter afloat.

• Worse Than Death: There are fates worse than death, and being trapped in Saragoss is one of them. Death is a respite, a final peace—but being forever on the verge of death while still desperately wishing to survive is a living hell. Saragoss has more than one such fate waiting for those trapped in its embrace, from living death to transformation into a monster to being slowly devoured by living seaweed. Such fates are never more than a step—or misstep—away.


Notable Locations

The Chapel of the Drowned Maiden is a ramshackle church built on a shallow reef from the wreckage of nearby ships. It represents an incredible bounty of mostly intact wood that sailors could use to repair their own ships or build cookfires, but the structure is haunted by the titular Drowned Maiden. Depending on the telling, she might be a ghost, a waterlogged corpse, or a piscine hybrid humanoid, but she permits none to defile her place of worship.

The Flotilla is a cluster of almost two dozen ships that are close enough together that they have been lashed into a single near-continuous structure. Their occupants originally did so to better weather the brutal storms that regularly wrack the domain, but this brief period of cooperation has rapidly degenerated into constant raids and turf wars that use the labyrinthine interiors of the rotting, waterlogged ships as their battleground.

Each ship is a landmark within the vast sea of sargasso, but none more so than the wreckage of the Vengeance, Draga Salt-Biter’s flagship. Only the ship’s mast rises above the water, its battered crow’s-nest and ragged flag still intact despite years of weathering the local storms. The Vengeance still holds Draga’s plundered treasure—as well as the reanimated remains of his crew, now vengeful and mindless corpses set on protecting their ship from all intruders.


The Darklord

The young Draga Salt-Biter was born to sail the seas, the child of two sailors who took him along on their voyages. When he was just a child, one such voyage turned to disaster when pirates attacked his parents’ vessel. The crew tried to resist, but they were overwhelmed by the vicious pirates. Draga saw his parents butchered before his very eyes, their corpses cut to pieces and thrown overboard to feed the sharks that gathered in the bloody waters.

The pirates reserved the cruelest fate for Draga, who they found cowering among cargo boxes. They drove a hook through his calf and dangled him over the side of the ship, pulling him out of the way whenever a shark leapt from the water to take a bite. If the sharks began to lose interest, they would lower him again, laughing all the while. Draga was bitten many times—and one of the sharks that bit him was a lycanthrope, though Draga did not know it at the time.

The pirates finally tired of their game and pulled the boy back onto the deck, giving him a choice between death and joining their crew. Draga joined the pirates, but he never forgot what they had done to his parents, or to him. He learned the pirates’ ways, and eventually discovered his infection with the dread curse of lycanthropy. He struggled to gain control of the infection, relishing the feeling of power and freedom that came with his change into a wereshark.

After years of letting the pirates grow complacent, he made his move. One night on watch, he moved among the crew, slaughtering them all. For those that had been party to his parents’ murder, he prepared a special torment. Draga weakened the timbers in the bottom of the ship and dove overboard, ripping into the planks in his powerful hybrid form. As his former crewmates foundered in the water among the planks of the sinking vessel, Draga swam among them, biting them and letting them bleed. Soon, other sharks were drawn to the blood and a feeding frenzy began. An hour after he leapt overboard, not a single pirated remained alive.

Returning to human society, Draga found work aboard the pirate ship Vengeance. In time he became the ship’s captain, turning it into one of the most feared pirate vessels in all the seas. When Draga attacked another ship, it was his custom to take only two prisoners—one to be set free and tell the tale, and the other to be used as shark bait, the same way his parents had been used so many years before.

The night after Draga took three ships in a single day, the Vengeance became lost in a bank of fog, only to run aground on a shallow reef. Draga leaped into the water to inspect the damage, only to run afoul of a group of piscine humanoids who were in the process of boarding his ship to kidnap his crew. Draga killed as many of the creatures as he could—as well as the hapless crewmembers who had been dragged overboard—but found that he could not return to his human form or leave the water without beginning to suffocate.

Over the next several days, Draga would climb back aboard his ship to try and explain his plight to his increasingly desperate and terrified crew, only for them to panic and lash out, sending him into a berserk rage that ended with several of them dead. By the time the first great squall came along to finish sinking the Vengeance, none of its crew remained alive.

Draga despises the slimy, reeking patch of sea in which he finds himself trapped. He longs for the comfortable life of a pirate king and the freedom of feeling the wind in his hair. He has tried to escape Saragoss multiple times, but the kelp labyrinth always turns him back toward the sunken wreck of the Vengeance in the end.

[hidajiremi]

Sri Raji

In an empire of tradition and ritual, Sri Raji was a province well known for its conservatism and strict adherence to the lessons of the past. Some of the most ancient temples of Kalakeri were in the province of Sri Raji, many of them dating back to before the founding of the empire. Though they stood in the middle of dense jungle and were largely ruined, they still saw many pilgrimages from the faithful, and even the most run-down ashrams held at least a few monks keeping the ancient ways alive.

Enormous hardwoods tower above the cities of Sri Raji, the limbs heavy with vines, mosses, and orchids. Green dampness permeates everything, as heavy rains batter the land almost every night. The thickets beyond the cities echo with the cacophony of animal life, from the buzzing of insects to the shrieks of monkeys to the growls of prowling tigers. To the east, the Yahasha Mountains climb toward white wisps of mist, as lush as the surrounding lowlands and blocking all passage between Sri Raji and imperial Kalakeri, save for a few passes between the Greater and Lesser Vochalam peaks.

Broad, muddy rivers meander down from the mountains, their banks swarming with listless crocodiles and easily angered jalahastee, known to outlanders as the hippopotamus. Eminent among these waterways is the sacred Damuhm River, which flows from legendary Bahru, the Accursed City. To the north, a high spurs of the Yahasha Mountains block the coast of Sri Raji from the forsaken, fog-bound waters of Saragoss.

When the civil war between the Vasavadan heirs broke out, Sri Raji was scandalized but largely otherwise unaffected. For two imperial daughters to make war upon one another was clearly against the wishes of dharma, and only suffering could result from such reckless disregard for destiny. The seers of Sri Raji did not need their vaunted foresight to accurately predict the outcome, but they were correct, nonetheless.

As more and more of the local imperial forces were recalled to the heartland, Sri Raji was one of the few provinces to not suffer from widespread chaos and anarchy. The people of Sri Raji were accustomed to imperial neglect, and the core of their communities were religious and clan-based organizations with thousands of years of tradition to rely upon to guide them. Things could likely have continued on in this manner indefinitely were it not for the arrival of Arijani Vasavadan.

Arijani was the third child of the old emperor, destined for a life as a minor court functionary in his older sisters’ administration. Instead, he had seized the throne for himself, precipitating the civil war, before fleeing from the wrath of the twin heiresses, Ramya and Reeva. He arrived in Sri Raji with a small but potent military force, declaring himself “maharaja-in-exile” and naming the province as the seat of his new dynasty.

Since Arijani’s arrival, the lives of the locals have become much harder, changing from simple poverty to genuine destitution. Within the cities, throngs of beggars swarm everywhere, clamoring for a single coin. The muddy streets are strewn with corpses from the illnesses that frequently sweep through the overcrowded and dirty neighborhoods. The contrast of the populace’s grim poverty with the spectacular architecture is striking.


Tropes

If Kalakeri represents the horror of civil war, then Sri Raji represents the consequences a civil war can have for even the most distant parts of an empire. War has never come to Sri Raji, and yet the effects of the war are still felt keenly. The people labor under the cruel hand of an exiled tyrant, their scant trade disrupted by losing contact with the imperial heartlands. The people of the province have been forgotten in the struggles of the mighty—but being forgotten is just another word for being neglected.


Themes

• Slow Collapse: Sri Raji is a land far from its age of glories. Its temples are decaying, its people stagnant, and its coffers emptied by the spendthrift ways of its new ruler. The people of Sri Raji are the walking dead, all of them doomed like a tree with its roots cut. Arijani has no skill at rule, nor any interest in being a good ruler. He cares only for his own pleasure and avoiding the consequences of his past actions. Should Sri Raji collapse, he will simply flee again, leaving others to suffer in his place.

• Smoke and Mirrors: Arijani is a skilled liar and manipulator, as well as a cunning illusionist. He deceives by second nature, rarely telling anyone the whole truth—and when he does tell the truth, it is typically calculated to lead listeners to erroneous conclusions. Everything he does is an act in one way or another, from his shows of wealth to his friendly demeanor, all of it intended to prevent others from realizing how deeply out of his depth he has become.

• The Weight of Tradition: The people of Sri Raji are deeply conservative and traditional. They follow the same ways that their parents and grandparents did, back into the dimmest mists of history. This serves them poorly in a time of great change and upheaval, however, and their traditionalism has not given them the skills needed to survive a period of transition like the one in which they find themselves.


Notable Locations

Bahru was once a magnificent city, but it was turned into ruins in the distant past by a battle between the followers of two opposing gods. It is said that the only building still intact in the city is a temple to the Black Goddess, a many-armed avatar of destruction. The temple is inhabited by the Dark Sisterhood, priestesses of the goddess, and their many monstrous servants.

The palace of Mahakala sits at the center of the city of Muladi. Formerly the seat of the provincial governor, the palace is now the home of “Maharaja” Arijani. He uses his powers of illusion and misdirection to make the palace appear magnificent and opulent even though it is as poorly maintained as the rest of the city.

The overcrowded city of Muladi suffers even as Arijani takes his gourmet meals on open-air pavilions that can be seen by the impoverished masses below. As the outer towns have lost contact with the empire and been abandoned, their inhabitants have flooded into Muladi looking for better lives, only to find homelessness and desperation. The only reason the people have not starved in droves is because of fish and kelp taken from the city’s nearby lake, though its waters are so befouled by the city’s waste that those who eat of this “bounty” are persistently ill.

Pakat is the second-largest city of Sri Raji, though its small amount of surrounding arable land leaves the city in an almost constant state of near-starvation. In better times, Pakat traded its bounty of rare medicinal plants and skilled healers for the food needed to keep the populace fed, but there is no market for their services with the civil war in the imperial heartlands and the rising poverty of the province. Worse, the city has come under assault by increasingly vicious wild animals, including man-eating tigers, resulting in more casualties than even the local healers can handle.


The Darklord

Arijani Vasavadan was the younger sibling of twin sisters Ramya and Reeva, the heirs to the Sapphire Throne of Kalakeri. He was never burdened with the prospect of rulership, so he spent his youth in the pursuit of hedonistic excess, becoming a shallow, selfish man who cared only for his own pleasures and comforts. The fact that he was of the courtly caste because of the order and time of his birth meant that he might have been the third child of the emperor, but he was of far lower rank than many of his cousins and members of lesser noble families.

Arijani stayed in the good graces of his sisters so that he would retain their favor when one of them came to power after the death of their father. His only real passion was studying foreign cultures; their ignorance of the concepts of dharma and karma seemed so free to him, and he dreamed of leading a cultural revolution that bucked tradition. This was, like all of his dreams, for entirely selfish purposes—after all, with no dharma, then there was no one to tell him he couldn’t be just as good as anyone else.

Over time, Arijani became jealous of the adoration each of his sisters possessed and resentful of his comparatively low station among the nobility. Ramya was charismatic and outgoing, popular with the common folk and her soldiers. Reeva was clever and beautiful, enjoying the support of the nobility and the priesthood. Arijani was loved by none but his sisters; even his father disdained him as a vain, preening fool.

His jealousy festered into resentment, such that by the time the emperor died, Arijani desired nothing more than to take the throne his sisters desired so much away from them. He saw a future where he could abolish the old caste systems, tearing down the structures that had relegated him to a lower status than others he saw as less worthy.

Both Ramya and Reeva were away from the capital when their father died. Arijani rushed to the emperor’s bedside to hear which of the sisters he had named as his heir, but he was too late. The old man had written his wishes down before he died, and Arijani saw in that his chance for the throne. He swiftly had all the servants and ministers who had been present at the time imprisoned, seized the scroll bearing his father’s last testament for himself, and declared himself the new emperor of Kalakeri, claiming that his father had decreed it just before dying.

Neither Ramya nor Reeva accepted the claim, and they soon gathered armies to march against their brother in the capital. Arijani gathered an army of his own, mainly men and women who had been loyal to the old emperor and wanted to see his will done regardless of the matter’s propriety, but his forces were vastly outnumbered by those of his sisters. His only chance was to make the two women fight one another, and then finish off the weakened victor.

Arijani played them off against one another with messages and sporadic aid for years, but both armies finally closed in on the capital. Fearing that they might set aside their differences long enough to join together against him, Arijani proposed peace talks where all three could meet as equals—only to spring a trap against his undefended sisters. He only discovered their similar treachery when a sniper’s arrows pierced him through as well.

When Arijani woke from what he assumed was his death, he had been transformed. Now, he was a tiger-headed humanoid with a forked tongue and backwards-facing hands, signs of his treacherous and double-dealing nature. Before his sisters could rise again and turn on him, he fled with what remained of his army and treasures to the outlying province of Sri Raji, declaring himself maharaja (or great prince) of the region.

Arijani fears that one of his sisters could hold the Sapphire Throne long enough to unite the people of Kalakeri and quash the rebellion permanently before turning her eye to the “rebel province” to their west. He quietly sends assassins and bandits into his former homeland to keep the war going; whenever one sister seems to have gained the upper hand, Arijani’s forces come to the other’s aid.

Worse, during his flight from Kalakeri, Arijani lost the scroll that held his father’s last will and testament. He is terrified of the idea that the scroll still exists, for whoever it names would have the legitimacy offered by the last emperor’s dying wish. He never read the scroll himself out of fear for what his father’s last words about his wayward son might have been, so even Arijani does not know which of his sisters has the legitimate claim to the throne.

Now, Arijani rules over a backward province of people who care more for their faith and traditions than the comforts of their ruler or his grand ideas for reform. He takes out his frustrations and anger on the people of Sri Raji, who meekly submit to the “rightful” punishments offered to them by their spiritual better. Arijani has turned his domain from a land of spiritual peace and enlightenment to one of poverty and privation as he squeezes the folk to fill his treasury and sate his unnatural desires.

[hidajiremi]

The Wildlands

The southern portion of the Verdurous Lands are empty of human civilization, instead teeming with animal and plant life. Endless primeval rain forests dominate the region, lightless places echoing with the shrieks of tropical birds and monkeys. The forests blanket even the high central plateau, where majestic gorillas dwell beside crystal waterfalls.

In the south of the Wildlands, the forest opens into dry, sparse woodlands home to fearless herds of elephants. The east stretches out into vast whispering savannas populated by a dizzying array of herd animals, such as antelopes, warthogs, rhinos, zebras, and wild cattle. There are predators as well—lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, and wild dogs—slinking through the swaying grasses while stalking their prey with infinite patience.

The swamps of the north, which border the southern edges of both Kalakeri and Sri Raji, are the realm of reptiles, principally enormous, lethargic crocodiles. The landscape is dotted with countless lakes and waterholes, crisscrossed by a web of meandering rivers swarming with hippopotami and fish alike. Strangely, the domain seems completely devoid of snakes of any kind.

While the treacherous landscape and fearsome predators deter most outsiders from venturing into the Wildlands, the vast, untapped resources of the domain are seductive. Numerous explorers from the north have made forays into the region, seeking emeralds, gold, and ivory deep in the interior, or the rare magical and medicinal herbs said to grow in the heart of the jungle. Such ventures are risky undertakings at the best of times, and it is unknown how many explorers have vanished into the Wildlands only to be devoured by ravenous beasts.

Perhaps the most uncanny trait of the Wildlands is that all of its beasts are capable of human speech. This remains true only while they remain within the borders of the domain—an animal taken out of the Wildlands is but a simple beast once more. Those dwelling in the domain, however, are as intelligent as any human and able to speak—save only the domain’s ever-present flies, who seem incapable of thought or speech.


Tropes

The Wildlands are a dark and twisted version of any parable or story that includes talking animals, from The Tortoise and the Hare to The Lion King. Adventures in the Wildlands are about sheer survival, with all of the pretensions of civilization and technology stripped away, leaving man just a hairless ape in the wilderness. After spending any time in the domain, the heroes should be dirty and tired, their clothes strategically torn, and most of their gear lost or destroyed. “Nature red, in tooth and claw” is the expectation here, and only those able to improvise solutions to problems normally solved by their technological or social advantages have any chance at all.


Themes

• Animal Fables: The animals in the Wildlands seem to embody the traits assigned to them by human myth and legend. Elephants are wise, loyal, and protective, while monkeys are mischievous and clever; lions are noble and brave, while hyenas are cowardly scavengers; and so on. Though most animals in the domain are hostile to humanoids, even those that would normally be benign, playing on their mythical qualities can bring brief respite from their hostility.

• Law of the Jungle: The only law in the domain is the law of the jungle, where the strong rule and the weak are prey. Rules and social mores are stripped away in the Wildlands, leaving behind only the roles of hunter and hunted. Man is just another kind of beast here, with no special prominence or position. Savagery is the rule in the Wildlands—kill or be killed.

• Savage Land: The Wildlands is a primeval domain that strips away civilization and reduces things to their most base level. Advanced weaponry fails or breaks, supplies are lost or ruined, and armor rusts or becomes too hot to wear. Heroes must forage and hunt to survive, constantly doing battle with both the elements and the local fauna. In many ways, the Wildlands is more like a domain of pulp adventure than horror.


Sidebar: Beast Speech

In the Wildlands, all animals have human-level intelligence and the capacity to speak as though they shared a common language. This also applies to living humanoids, who can speak the same primeval tongue as any other beast. Animals brought from outside the domain gain intelligence and speech for as long as they remain within the domain’s borders. Similarly, native animals taken out of the Wildlands lose these capabilities instantly.

All animal-type creatures in the Wildlands have the (A) notation removed from their Smarts, and they gain Common Knowledge and Persuasion at d4 if they did not previously possess those skills. Swarms act as a single creature for purposes of intelligence and personality, sharing their thoughts across a localized hive mind. The only creatures utterly incapable of communication in the Wildlands are flies, which lack both intelligence and speech.

There are no snakes in the Wildlands, for reasons unknown to most outsiders.


Notable Locations

The Elephant’s Graveyard is where old elephants go to die. They make their way here during their final days, lie down, make themselves comfortable, and then peacefully pass on. The strongest and oldest of them rise again as guardians of the place, either as animated skeletons possessed of keen intelligence or as ghostly elephants. Legend says that the bones of dead elephants turn to silver while their trunks turn to fol. While the legend is probably not true, the graveyard still contains a fortune in ivory.

The Hunter’s Hut is the home of a single man, the only permanent human inhabitant of the Wildlands and a hunter of unprecedented skill. His wooden hut is decorated with countless trophies, the heads, teeth, and claws of the animals he has killed with his black powder rifle. In the innermost sanctum of the hut hang the preserved heads of several humanoids, similar victims of his hunts.

The Lost Mine is a hidden cave somewhere in the Wildlands. Though no one living claims to have seen it themselves, almost everyone in the cluster has heard at least one legend about it. Supposedly, the walls of the mine are lined in fist-sized emeralds or rubies, just waiting to be pulled free and carried back to civilization. Anyone who could find the mine and come back alive would be reach beyond the dreams of the wealthiest raja—but who can say if the mine even really exists?


The Darklord

Long ago in the Wildlands, there was balance in nature. This balance was disrupted by the appetites of King Crocodile. Far larger than any of his kin, King Crocodile also ate more than every other crocodile put together. Because of his size and his endless appetite, the other animals came together to decide what to do.

After hours of screaming and screeching, roaring and howling, it was decided that the animals of the jungle would ask the humans to come to their land and kill King Crocodile. Only the python, wisest of the animals, disagreed with this idea, but she was overruled and sent to fetch the humans. The humans came, but they did not kill King Crocodile. They brought fire and cut down the jungle. They hunted the other animals for their meat and their hides. Things were worse than ever!

Finally, in desperation the animals came before King Crocodile and asked him to kill the humans. He agreed, but he demanded a gift from each of the animals so he could use their powers against the humans. Each animal gave King Crocodile a gift: from the cheetah, he received speed; from the fox, he received cunning; from the piranha, he gained razor-sharp teeth. In the end, every animal gave King Crocodile a gift—save only the python, who was too wise, and the fly, who King Crocodile disdained as weak and asked nothing from.

King Crocodile slaughtered the humans, devouring them all in a single night. When the next day dawned, the other animals cheered and asked King Crocodile for their gifts back. He only laughed—why would he return their powers now that he had them all? As the other animals realized their terrible mistake, the python gathered up her brood and left the jungle behind. Her last words were that King Crocodile might think himself powerful, but in the end he would be undone by those he looked down upon.

To this day, King Crocodile lords over the other animals of the jungle, demanding tributes of food from them lest he devour them all. Despite how much he eats, King Crocodile is always hungry for more—and he especially relishes devouring human intruders.