#forest dungeon

[dailyadventureprompts]

Monster Hunt: Nanny Knockthrice

A series of chilling disappearances has brought your party to the edge of the mist-haunted Greyspear Forest, as well as face to face with an enemy as ancient and enduring as the stones beneath your feet

Spoken of only in hushed voices, those who live on the edge of the wood tell of a terrible figure, cruel as the harshest winter, bent with age and the weight of the bulging sack she carries. They know no name for her besides the one handed down from elders, and that she appears at the door to each homestead once a year on the same moonless night to knock three times. Terrible fates are said to befall those who answer, so the locals keep to a tradition known as Opfernoct: laying out gifts for their unwelcome guest, keeping their homes dark and quiet until dawn.

Adventure Hooks:

The party venture into the village only to see one of the nearby houses with its roof partially torn off. Asking questions results in flimsy excuses and reproachful looks from strangers, until the truth comes out: A bookish boy named Verner was apparently snatched out of his home on the recent Opfernoct having snuck a candle to read in bed. His parents, who got the boy the book for his birthday have been shamed for not keeping a better leash on their child and kept from talking to the meddlesome party for fear their actions would bring even further reprocussions.

After impressing the local nobles with their adventurous antics, the party are invited to the marquess’s hunting lodge, an event sure to be filled with revelry and rife with opportunities to court both patronage and attractive strangers. Flouting local customs, the marquis has decided to keep her estate lit through ….  Ensuring the party will go on without interruption.  What a surprise then when a thunderous knock sounds at the door, only for a giant arm to shove through the entryway and snatch up a gaggle of guests (some the party despise, some they were quite getting on with) and drag them off into the night.

Recommended Reading: Check out my write up connecting giants & the feywild, which this draws heavily from.

Background: The legend of Nanny Knockthrice begins when the first woodsman sought to make a home within the boundaries of the primeval forest. The moment his axe had sunk into the trunk of a tree, an old woman stepped from the woods and demanded that a price be paid, for these were her lands and her trees, and the woodsman . The woodsman replied that he had nothing to pay the old woman with save the tools of his trade and the clothes on his back, and he would surely die without either. If she could defer payment for a year, until his labour had built his house and filled his larder, he'd gladly let her take her pick of rewards then. The old woman assented, vanishing into the forest just as soon as she'd appeared. Like any deal with the fey the weight of the bargain could not be understood until the woman returned a year later to take her pick of what the woodsman had filled his home with over the past year... snapping his new wife off the threshhold when she came to answer the door.

Challenges & Complications:

More than just her size, impossible strength, or her ability to fade in and out of the mist, the greatest threat Nanny Knockthrice presents is that she takes hostages and is not above using them as bargaining chips against meddling heroes. She will break the limbs of her victims in full view of the party to warn them against interfering, or lob them into freezing water to slow down her pursuers. When threats fail, it's time to open her bag of tricks, which can contain anything from a raging storm, captured feywild beasts, or even the animated bones of her previous tributes. She's liable to use these surprises in between uprooting entire pine trees to use as clubs, or throwing heroes like walnuts into the next valley over.

Stalking Knockthrice may prove the better option of rescuing her victims, but will require the party to venture into the feywild, passing through a veil of mist to a wilderness even more wild and foreboding than they left behind. Getting back might likewise prove an issue, and may require them to strike their own deal with a powerful fey to get home

Nanny's lair is a tumbledown stone cottage the size of a fortress known as the keening keep. Built into the top and side of a clearcut hillstead, it surveys the surrounding woodland like an owl looking for prey. The keep originally belonged to a tribe of batlike fey known as the gloamwing courterie, who now reluctantly act as the giant's servants after their forebearer swore an inverse deal to the woodsman: letting her store her tribute in their keep for a year save for the one night she must heap it on her back and wander the mortal world. While some gloamwings are loyal to Nanny, others resent being banished to the rafters of their ancesteral home, or having to share the darkened corners with all the morose mortals Knockthrice keeps like maltreated pets. The party may be able to strike a deal, keeping in mind the bats are all as sinister as any unseelie fae and might betray them at any point just to keep things interesting.

If the party pays attention when stories are shared around the fire, they might notice a loophole in the deal struck by the woodsman: namely that Knockthrice was not allowed to take either his tools, or his clothes. In the way of fairytales, tricking the giant into accepting either of these will break the cure, though the party might need to be clever about it. The woodsman's clothes are buried with him out back of the ruins of the cabin the party will keep stumbling across in their feywild wanderings. His axe was handed down to his extended family after he died of heartbreak, and could be anywhere by now... such as hanging over the mantle of a noble's hunting lodge, buried in an innocuous tree, or in the back of a creepy peddler's cart.

Art

#monster hunt #giant #fey #feywild #halloween #rescue mission #forest #feywild dungeon #forest dungeon #forest monster

[millidew]

his change in career has captivated me

bonus:

#dungeon meshi #mithrun #senshi #kabru #mickbell tomas #kuro #i saw a pic saying that mickbell and kuro also worked in a noodle shop post canon... #they could be working for mithrun but i think this is the funnier option #i love that for all three of them #the atmosphere would be so bad but the food is good if you like spicy food (mithrun doesn't notice how spicy it is) #laios would like it. '5 stars! i spent 2 hours in the bathroom after but made a new forest so it's ecologically friendly :D!' #one day kabru is going to sit mithrun down because he can't stand it anymore he HAS to at least change the interior decor #my post #art #millie's art #dungeon meshi spoilers #delicious in dungeon spoilers #dunmeshi spoilers

[smugcomputer]

tressym - uncommon varieties observed while in the dungeon

#illustration #artists on tumblr #character design #illustrators on tumblr #tressym #dnd #dungeons and dragons #hairless cat #sphynx #ragdoll cat #norwegian forest cat #pallas cat #manul #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #cat illustration #cat #cute #cute art #cat art

[tannimrose]

#gameplay #horror games #indie games #gaming #indie #gamer #shorts #ghosts #indiegames #horrorgaming #forest dungeon

[eldstunga]

Some Temerities from my sketchbook

#Temerity #dungeons and dragons #Tiefling #Character portrait #sketchbook #sorry for the tidy #Fuck AI #Boat #Man #Forest

[oldschoolfrp]

Yaztromo's Tower, in Darkwood Forest (Russ Nicholson, Titan: The Fighting Fantasy World, by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, Puffin Books, 1986)

#Fighting Fantasy #Russ Nicholson #Titan: The Fighting Fantasy World #dungeon cross section #fantasy art #wizard's tower #fantasy forest #fantasy tower #tower #cross section #Steve Jackson #Steve Jackson UK #Ian Livingstone

[panelperday]

Those who accompanied the knight into this forest left him to die... But the woods did not, it forgave him and rose him back onto his feet, where he has remained unbroken, for as long as anyone can remember

#illustration #sketch #dnd #dungeons and dragons #dungeon buddies #panelperday #forest folk

[hotfudgecherryrosy]

Senshi vs his shapeshifter reminds me of my cat vs my friend's very similar cat

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #senshi #dungeon meshi senshi #cat #cats #catblr #siberian cat #siberian forest cat #maine coon #🍒🌹 rambles

[pitchblackespresso]

Anyone ordered more pmd

#pokemon #pmd #pokemon mystery dungeon #skitty #pikachu #sky peak #charmander #cubone #absol #winter #frosty forest #my art

[drmapzo]

Hello, everyone!

Nature is beautiful, and there's nothing quite like taking your caravan of goods from city to city all the while taking in some splendid sights: rivers, mountains and all kinds of forests.

It's too bad then that highway robberies are all the rage among lollygagging aficionados. It's true, no one can enjoy these vistas without someone trying to steal everything you have and more.

Good thing this caravan is full of seasoned warriors!

The creature tokens for this map are a Blood Feasting Beast, a Crow Demon and a Thieving Fairy. Emerald tier gets Crow Demon while Diamond tier gets all three. In addition, Sapphire tier gets extra creature token variants.

You can see a preview of all of this week’s Patreon content here.

Thank you very much for taking a look and be sure to check out my Patreon where you can pledge for gridless version, alternate map versions as well as the tokens pertaining to this map.

#dungeons and dragons #dnd #pathfinder #dnd map #battle map #roll20 #forest #rpg map #river

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: Cracking the Snowglobe

As the dark closes in and the cold weighs heavy on us on all, it’s important to remember that there is light and warmth to be had, if only we seek it out, and share it with others. Stories round the fire, good food shared with those we love, songs of hope sung in defiance of the bleak, all these things give the soul the tender it needs to burn on through the winter until the days begin to grow long again. 

Setup:  Decades after retiring from a busy life of adventuring, the local wizard Hypatia has fallen into a depressed bout of isolation, raising a barrier of magical force around her manor in the hopes of keeping out distractions while she works on yet another project she hasn’t the energy to complete.   Her old friend Moroz the outrider is having none of it, tired of being brushed off every when he visits and concerned about Hypatia’s wellbeing, he’s journeyed around gathering presents from all their old friends and allies as a reminder of the good times they spent together, and a symbol that people still care about her. His grand display of affection has been somewhat delayed when a gang of hobgoblins ambushed him on the road, stealing the majority of the gifts and leaving him for dead. 

When the party stumble across the scene of the ambush and follow the scatteres of red snow (and Toboggan, the distressed reindeer), they find Moroz crawling his way out of a ditch, alive, pissed off, and in need of some holiday helpers.

 Background: It has been some score of years since the wizard Hypatia walked the roads of the realm with her friends, using her magic and more often her wits to mend what’d gone astray.  She settled, as she had always wanted, into the life of a country wizard, persuing her own studies in a manor just far enough from town that neither she or the locals would bother one another unless the cause was worthwhile. While every shy accademic is due their alone time, decades and distance have not been good for Hypatia. More and more she has sunk into the lony existance she has made for herself, losing the strength to keep up correspondance with old allies, to visit the market for supplies, to even leave the little island she calls home.  She says she is working, but her work suffers too, the grand tretisies and formulations she hoped to write stagnate along with her mind, and frustration at being unable to focus on one thing she was good at has inspired her to cut herself off further, raising a globe of magic around her home and denying all visitors.

Moroz knows what it means to be alone.  The dwarven outrider has spent most of his life carrying messages between settlements and outposts for weeks at a time. He also knows how dangerous that loneliness can be, and that a life without other people in it is a life without hope, and the winter is not kind to those without hope.  The last time he saw Hypatia, when she came to turn him away from her door and raise her barrier, Moroz saw a look in her eyes that reminded him of travellers he’d found stranded in the snow, the look of slowly forgetting your reasons to live. He knows he must remind her, or he won’t see her again come the thaw. 

Adventure Hooks: 

The party could encounter Moroz on any wintry road (A mournfully bellowing Reindeer is one hell of a hook), but If you wanted to run this adventure as a oneshot, consider having the heroes be part of a search party specifically sent out to look for him after a snowstorm delays the local mail delivery.  

The hobs have taken their loot and fallen back to a deserted fortress half buried in snow. While most of what they’ve stolen are keepsakes destined to be sold off or tossed into the fire if the party doesn’t intervene, a few of the more interesting presents have some wizz-bang magical powers. Hopefully Hypatia doesn’t mind some of her gifts being used as powerups to help the heroes survive the dungeon.  

After they’ve recovered the majority of the gifts, Moroz and the party still have to break into the wizard’s warded fortress. The globe of force is highly impressive, but careful perception could reveal a few careful weaknesses.   There’s a boathouse left abandoned on the isle that happens to contain a forgotten tunnel leading into the manor proper (which just so happens to have a local river monster hibernating inside of it).    An eagle eyed scout might likewise notice that the dusting of snow on top of the globe isn’t uniform, and that there’s a thin spot riiiight above the manor’s chimney in order to let out the smoke. 

Once inside the party have other hurdles to face: the phantom servants that manage the grounds are also programmed to repel intruders… but they don’t seem to notice the sinister, shadowy entities that now lurk in the Manor’s unlit halls.  They’ll find Hypatia in a sorry state, having spent several days staring into the yawning mouth of a dark portal she doesn’t quite remember calling up.  After spending so long cut off, so long failing to achieve anything with the work that gave her purpose, despair overtook the wizard’s heart and the shadowfell called to her… she was not that long from answering it when the party intervened. They chose to care, and they ended up saving her life, and the life of her friend besides.  

After their tearful reunion Moroz decides to stay to help take care of his old friend, but extends an invitation to the party: The winter holidays are coming up and it is better to spend it with friends, perhaps they could help him decorate the manor, cook a couple meals, maybe head into town for supplies and get caught up in a snowball fight.  When the Festivities are done, Hypatia will extend the invitation even further: being alone is evidently bad for her, and she has so much space in her home it’d be a shame not to give the party a place to stay every time they stop in.  The party will have a new home base and a new reason to go out adventuring: what with Moroz retiring for the time being and needing someone capable to take over his role as outrider.  

Art 1

Art 2

#low level #winter #wintertide #ranger #wizard #goblins #Press Start #player home #winter dungeon #forest dungeon #ally wizard #ally ranger #encounter forest

[abscondminded]

Silly little comic, close-ups of panels below the cut

#fun little speculative evolution/biology stuff #I imagine half-foots being highly social and more active at dusk and night compared to other humans #many half-foot communities live low to the ground in tropical-temperate forested areas #some communities closer to dwarven towns choosing to burrow instead of remaining only above ground #burrowing half-foots tending to have shorter heights and tails compared to their above ground counterparts #they’d also more align to dwarven beauty standards compared to elven and tallmen (to an even higher degree) #chilchuck #marcille donato #chilchuck tims #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #fanart #myart #comic #I don’t think chilchuck would be strictly a burrowing half-foot but he’d have a lot of the traits of them that helps him explore dungeons

[tabletopresources]

[pinterest]

Check out Tabletop Gaming Resources for more art, tips, and tools for your game!

#npc #male warrior #forest #ranger #male archer #pinterest #tabletop rpg #rpg #tabletop gaming #pen & paper #roleplayer #roleplaying games #games #dnd #d&d #pathfinder #dungeons & dragons #dungeons and dragons #fantasy rpg

[tannimrose]

#forest dungeon #gameplay #horror games #indie games #gaming #indie #gamer #indiegames #horrorgaming #dungeon #scary games #Youtube

[dicegrimorium]

Greetings!

Long ago a hard-fought battle took place here. A group of heroes from all over the the world teamed up to take down a massive colossus animated with ancient magic.

The heroes were victorious and the colossus fell. Over the centuries the landscape changed, but the remains of the giant construct still serve as a remainder of how those heroes of old saved the kingdom.

Still, anyone evil enough and knowledgeable enough can reanimate the stone giant once more to wreak havoc across the land.

Will these rookie adventurers be able to put a stop to those plans? Or will the colossus eventually destroy everything across its path?

You can see a preview of this map’s Patreon content by clicking here.

If you liked the map I’d be extremely thankful if you considered supporting me on my Patreon, rewards include higher resolution files, gridless versions, alternate versions, line versions, PSDs and more. Thank you!

#dnd #dungeons and dragons #pathfinder #dnd map #battle map #roll20 #forgotten realms #forest #rpg map #colossus

[oldschoolfrp]

Hang on to the wizard, he's chickening out again (Keith Parkinson cover art for BECMI D&D supplement AC09: Creature Catalog, TSR, 1986)

#D&D #Dungeons & Dragons #Keith Parkinson #dnd #wizard #Creature Catalogue #gnome #dwarf #barbarian #dungeon entrance #fantasy forest #dungeon #adventuring party #Dungeons and Dragons #TSR