post-roman pre-saxon santicorn stuff

Art by Seb McKinnon

It's been a hell of a long time since I last posted, and for good reason: things went to absolute shit in my life for a bit, much more shit than had previously been gone to. But the storm has (for now) been weathered, and I've returned with a Secret Santicorn! The general idea of Secret Santicorn is that folks over on the OSR discord request a piece of RPG content, and then those requests are randomly assigned, secret santa style. Each person then makes a blogpost about the thing they were assigned.

I personally requested some thoughts on using mechanics to reinforce themes in OSR games, and received this lovely blogpost from Tiny Dog of Goose and Pen. In turn, I received a request from Sofinho over at Alone in the Labyrinth for a few hexes for a Historical Fantasy Post Roman, Pre-Saxon Hexcrawl.

Now, I am no historian, nor do I have the mind of one, so this was going to be a bit of a challenge. Rather than humiliate myself by attempting something accurate, I instead opted to read as much writing from the time period in question as possible and get a feel for the era. The zeitgeist, the poetry of the times. That sort of thing. Then, because I've been on an oracular generation kick, I put together some tables and a generator to help me create locations and encounters that fit with the themes I'd picked up on from my reading. This is the end result. I have to say, I still know very little of the time and place in question, but I've become quite fond of the place that I've created from the idea of the time; apocalyptic, strange, and melancholy. Sofinho, I hope you are fond of it as well.

The Tables

Locale

To use the Locale table I just rolled 1d6 for each column and interpreted the results. Standard stuff.

d6	Topography	Scenery	Tone	Air	Number of Landmarks
1	Hills	Damp	Ancient	Cold	2
2	Marsh	Grey	Bleak	Thick
3	Moor	Rocky	Dismal	Wet
4	Valley	Misty	Abandoned	Bitter
5	Forest	Muddy	Lost	Earthy	3
6	Field	Windswept	Eerie	Ashen

Landmarks 

Landmarks are what makes each locale or hex unique. To do this, I rolled d20 on the terrain, purpose, usefulness and action columns, interpreting the results and synthesizing a general idea of what was going on. Then, I would roll for 2-3 details to help spice things up. 

d20	Terrain	Purpose	Usefulness	Action	Detail 1	Detail  2
1	Berry bushes	To display the glory of times gone by	Helpful	Stretching	Lost	Wounded
2	Creek			Freezing	Forgotten	Filthy
3	Abandoned garden			Sinking	Green	Sword
4	Spring			Winding	Thorn	Ancient
5	Lake			Rising	Ruined	Insane
6	Abandoned Farmhouse	To reveal the ending of a way of life		Thawing	Stone	Starving
7	Hillfort		Neutral	Clinging	Lichen	Scarred
8	Cave			Crumbling	Moss	Silent
9	Boulder			Twisting	Distant	Ragged
10	Copse			Rotting	Grey	Horns
11	Abandoned Roman Townhouse	To invoke those who walked the land before man		Growing	Overgrown	Relic
12	Henge			Waiting	Bloody	Blasphemous
13	Tree			Remembering	Weathered	Apocalyptic
14	River			Returning	Worn	Fae
15	Shrubs		Harmful	Resisting	Crumbled	Music
16	Briars	To drive home the land’s indifference to mortal dealings		Weathering	Wild	Gaunt
17	Mud			Replenishing	Strange	Questing
18	Cliff			Restoring	Mythic	Visions
19	Jagged Stones			Dreaming	Sacred	Transformed
20	Plagued Corpses			Destroying	Dispoiled	Decapitated

Inhabitants 

I gave each locale/hex 1-3 Inhabitants, which were created using the following table and the same method as the Landmarks. 

d20	Type	Disposition x2	Purpose	Action x2	Detail 1	Detail 2
1	Wolf	Panicked	To demonstrate the collapse of society	Weeping	Lost	Wounded
2	Bandit	Bitter		Dying	Forgotten	Filthy
3	Deer	Maddened		Clinging	Green	Sword
4	Bird	Jolly		Waiting	Thorn	Ancient
5	Refugee	Zealous		Leaving	Ruined	Insane
6	Priest	Bewildered	To illuminate the dangers of the land	Haunting	Stone	Starving
7	Saxon Mercenary	Suspicious		Scavenging	Lichen	Scarred
8	Roman Soldier	Naive		Calling	Moss	Silent
9	Farmer	Fearful		Struggling	Distant	Ragged
10	Ghost	Opportunistic		Resting	Grey	Horns
11	Roman Noble	Despairing	To show that there are those who need saving	Dreaming	Overgrown	Relic
12	Faerie	Furious		Praying	Bloody	Blasphemous
13	Wyrm	Desperate		Longing	Weathered	Apocalyptic
14	Giant	Conniving		Pillaging	Worn	Fae
15	Poet	Lonely		Resisting	Crumbled	Music
16	British Noble	Tranquil	To act as a reminder of what once was	Searching	Wild	Gaunt
17	Sword Maiden	Murderous		Fleeing	Strange	Questing
18	Shepard	Accepting		Hiding	Mythic	Visions
19	Hunter	Melancholy		Hunting	Sacred	Transformed
20	Scavenger	Righteous		Destroying	Dispoiled	Decapitated

The Generators

These are just automated versions of the tables above. 

The Hexes

These are 3 hexes I created using the tables and generators above

• An uneven field of dead grey grass, mist rising towards a dead grey sky. A stone cottage, roof destroyed by fire, languishes to the side of the old roman road which already has begun to fall apart.
• Inside the house, sleeping tucked in a corner and covered by a filthy sheepskin are two young Saxon men. One is bleeding out from a gut wound, the other unwilling to leave his lover
• Beside the cottage, an abandoned vegetable garden is being slowly choked by weeds. Look closer and find the putrefying corpse of the man who once lived in the cottage. His flesh is melting into the soil
• Pull up a turnip from the ground and it is swollen, plump and juicy. Bite into it and blood fills your mouth, runs down your chin. You smell smoke, feel flame bite your hands, hear barbarous laughter and the screaming of children
• Further down the road, an old Roman official, bent, robes of office torn and filthy, desperately tries to rebuild the road, straining nonexistent muscle to heave huge flat stones into place. He will embrace the ankles of any travelers coming by, entreating them to help him. He has a large bag of Roman coins, once a small fortune, now questionably valuable.

• A cold marsh on a black day, sun hidden behind ashen clouds, flecks of soot resting on the still surface of the water, thick mud sucking at boots. A little further on, the water pools into a lake, a strange grey boat floating in the center, perfectly still.
• Half sunk into the muddy shore of the lake, a plague victim rots. Half hidden in the mud and decaying fabric of their clothing you can see a crucifix of pure gold: a relic that could not save them. Coming close enough to pry it from their death-grip will expose you to their illness, still festering within their flesh.
• Make your way out to the boat and you realize it is made of weathered stone, stroked into this shape by the numberless hands of the rain. In it sleeps a woman of fierce and terrible beauty, long black hair covering her nude form. Her hands are clasped on her chest around the hilt of a sword, stone blade sharpened to a razor edge
• Touch her and you are drawn into her dream: she is chained to a huge leopard whose spots are brilliant blue eyes; an agent of Juno. Kill the leopard or convince it that its mistress has abandoned this land and the woman will awaken.
• Awake, the woman will declare that her name is Uchrat, and that she is searching for Arthur and means to claim his sword. She will put Roman and Saxon alike to the blade in this endeavor, but fight valiantly as an ally should you aid her.

• A small valley between two softly sloping hills. Well trodden footpaths connect small houses of sod or stone, all abandoned. Wind absently blows bits of straw from thatched roofs and whistles through open doors and windows. At the end of the valley lies a wheat field, burned and barren.
• Lurking in the abandoned houses is a band of brigands, 1d4 to a house. They are bitterly hungry, and will only attack if you look well fed or are carrying visible supplies. Offers of coin and treasure only earn spiteful laughter and cold steel. They will take potshots with slings and bows before closing to finish any wounded off with scavenged Roman swords and rough clubs.
• A creek winds through the valley. Follow it and you reach a point where it has been rerouted to irrigate the wheatfield, running swiftly along a bed of weathered stones placed there by hands long since gone. The old streambed is dry clay, grey and cracked. A warding stone has been placed at its mouth, roughly chiseled, dried blood splashed on clumsily carved runes.
• Follow the old streambed to its beginning and find the bones of some water spirit, picked and bleached. They rest in a small pool of pristine water. The bones will purify any water they come into contact with, and if held in the mouth will stave off thirst indefinitely.
• The western hill of the valley is a forgotten hillfort. Its ramparts of stone and wood are burned black from some long-ago raid, and a massive briar has taken root in the ditch, thorny tendrils providing much better fortifications than the man-made ones ever did.
• Occasionally, you can see a figure pacing the top of the hillfort. Easily twice the height of a man with a strangely stretched skull, it wanders, melancholy, around the ramparts, kneeling to rest now and then in the center of the small space
• If you carry a relic from before men ruled or an object sacred to the land, the figure will salute you, hefting a tremendous stone axe that seems to crystalize from the mist. Salute back, and with a joyful shout that echoes through the valley it will leap from the hillfort and take up arms with you, following you loyally so long as you serve the interests of the land (shunning or destroying civilization, respecting nature and the fae). Fail to return its greeting and it will slump sadly to its knees, fading into nothingness and leaving behind a skull that could be deer or human, but is neither.