GLoGtober day 9: Region

On the ninth day of GLoGtober, the gretchlings gave to me…

I haven’t kept up

With this rhyme

And it wasn’t funny anyways

So I’ll just stop doing it

And some gun rules for you and me

I could be really lazy and just link to my post on the Motelands, it was terribly poorly viewed and I was rather proud of it, but that’s a cop out. I’m going to furnish a new region for you, by hook or by crook. (Plus, wouldn’t hurt if I preplanned something upcoming for my MARROW campaign.)

THE LUCID MOTE

Chained to the ocean with Shatterstar is a massive hunk of primordial earth. Thunder lizards of old continue to hunt on its jungle- and mountain-torn surface, ignorant of the darkness and power that lurks below the surface. For, in many ways, the Lucid Mote itself is a living, breathing collective, patiently guarding the secret at its heart…

Most of the mote is covered in a dense jungle, in which all manner of dinosaurs and mammoth insects hunt and live free as they did in ages past. The jungle is cut by an unnamed and uninhabited mountain ridge. In many respects, it looks virtually identical to any swathe of dense forestation cut from the Djantos. However, there is one catch. There are well too many eyes. Eyes growing from the warped and wet wood of the trees, eyes hanging from flowered vines, blind and blinking, velociraptors and pteranodons and triceratops all masses of tumor-like mutated eye growths. Everything on this mote, even the mud underfoot, is constantly watching.

Clearly visible from any high point or canopy vantage on the mote is the top of the mountains. The mountain tops seem to have swirling eye reliefs carved into the stone itself, a grand and rippling mass spiraling up to the tallest peak. Those with particularly keen vision can ascertain that the ocular mural converges on what appears to be an artificial cave opening carved into the rock, with spiraling steps leading down the far side of the mountain. With a long and arduous journey, one could even ascend these peaks and enter the bowels of the mote to locate the source of the strange curse upon this primordial land…

The cavern leads to a series of tunnels, hewn long before by the First Artificers of the Kin. Deadly traps and arcane wards all systematically try and stop any interlopers from reaching the innermost chamber, which is guarded by a blind and mad beholder who can see out of all the eyes across the Lucid Mote. Those few who have beheld this monstrosity falsely believe that it is the master of the isle, and the person who created the strange warping. They are wrong. The Lucid Mote itself is alive, and this creature is simply its mouthpiece, and the final guardian of its treasure.

If the blind beholder is defeated, any intruders gain access to the true treasure of the inner sanctum, and of the Lucid Isle itself. It is a small, shallow bowl filled with turbid water. If one drinks the water, they are infected with a plague called Sleeping Eye. This disease is highly contagious, communicated by touch. It inflicts blindness on most creatures, but especially powerful extraplanar creatures cannot handle Sleeping Eye in their system, and contact could induce a full-system shutdown. The Sleeping Eye virus in this bowl is one of the Seals keeping the prison under the Norrungardt Ocean shut, but that’s a post for another day.

ENCOUNTERS ON THE LUCID MOTE

1 2d4 eye-riddled velociraptors are being chased by a quintocular T. Rex

2 A golden flower blooms to reveal the eye of a random viewer’s true love in the middle

3 A mass of eyes in the mud below pop and explode with a grizzly, acidic spray

4 A hill giant with a mass of eyes on the small of her back and none on her face trudges through

5 A stream trickles through, the rocks in it naturally eroded to the shape of a human eye, complete with hollow interior

6 A small cluster of geodes is nestled in the earth. Cracking them open releases an oozing mass of eyes

7 A massive tree of golden leaves grows glass eyes like crab apples

8 Eyelids the size of rugs open below, knocking you off balance and exposing a massive and panicked blind eye

Happy GLoGtober, and happy gaming.