Bless'd Environs pt. 1

Heaven is sick but her environs still bless'd. Below are things you can expect to find in  your travels. Roll 3d6 twice on any tables.

* Indicates Monster in Bestiary. No * indicates normally non-hostile part of a faction.

Ashpits

It rains acid and ash, never just water. Vast fields of grey. Burned, crumbling ruins--stones with soot-silhouettes of heretics and forgotten lovers. Dunes hundreds of feet tall. Pieces of churches, palaces, ziggurats, cemeteries, homes, all buried under them. Vast, black ashstorms angrily race across the horizon, filled with Draconic Radiance (once dragon sickness, now renamed). Flashes of lightning and peals of thunder prelude them, follow them. This is the speech of  dragons who set storms loose upon us. Long trains of burning ghosts travel with pilgrims seeking lost holy symbols and behind them the Gatherers, following their lead.

Beware...

• Bury underground if an ashstorm approaches. Those caught are blasted by Draconic Radiance and turn into drakes or worse things still.
• The louder the thunder, the closer a dragon is. Thunder is dragon speech, and sometimes spells come hurdling from hundreds of miles away to smite travelers. 1-in-6 chance every 24 hours or save vs magic against a spontaneous fireball, lightning bolt, or curse.
• Gatherers follow trains of Pilgrims and Ifrit. They will suggest you follow them too, if looking for a city not yet looted. Get to close, however, and you risk hearing their cries. Save vs polymorph or combust into flames, taking 2d12 fire damage for 5 minutes or until put out.
• Acid rains from the sky, along with black, soot-filled rain. Every 24 hours there is a 1-in-6 chance of either raining. The first deals 1d10 damage to anyone rained on. The second stains skin black and grey, increasing Draconic Radiance by 5 points.

Random Encounters

3d6	You encounter...	It is...
3	A Dragon*	Mating
4	Murder of 4d20 + 10 Wymrlings*
5	Pack of 1d4 Direwolves*	Looking for Black Lotus
6
7	Hunt of 1d6 Burned Megalania*	Looking to eat somebody
8
9	Cackle of 3d20+5 Spotted Hyenas*	Fleeing Something Else
10
11		Trying to find the City of the Dragon Wives
12
13	1d6 Gatherers	Searching for Mythical Artefacts
14
15	5d20 + 10 Ifrit and Pilgrims **	Slaughtering another encounter (roll 2nd encounter)
16
17	1d6 Old Dragonslayers	Dying
18	1d4 Dragon Wives

Blood Bog

Ash-slush. Blood everywhere, sometimes brown, sometimes black, sometimes crimson. Deep enough to drown in at points, rarely dry land. Trees and vines and grasses are the tombstones of dragons and wives. All is red save the wood, which is slate grey. Odd sounds; things get distorted inside of the Blood Bog; howling, hisses, sounds of great animals fucking, screams as phantom people are eaten. Dragon bones tilt, ancient monoliths, broken and chipped, for when a dragon of poison dies this is what is born. Anywhere from 6-36 miles in size, only multiples of six. Travelers always watched by 1d6 kobolds.

Beware...

• Blood-Scale Hydras--massive, 7 headed wyrms--are born exclusively in Blood Bogs. They carve out large territories and kobolds serve them as knights do lords. 
• Black Lotus is a sentient lotus. Once drawn close to, save vs poison or get sprayed by spores. Every 24 hours, make another save. On a failure lose d6 con and a black lotus sprouts from your body. At 0 con die and become Black Lotus bush.
• Blood Bogs contain more radiance herbs then other environs. 4-in-6 chance to find an herb.
• The blood can be drank as if water. For every gallon consumed, increase Draconic Radiance points by 1. 

Random Encounters

3d6	You encounter...	It is...
3	Blood-Scale Hydra*	Mating
4	Young Dragon*
5	Hunt of 1d4 Ghul Drakes*	Looking for Black Lotus
6
7	Hunt of 1d6 Bless’d Komodos*	Eating somebody
8
9	3d6 + 4 Kobolds*	Looking to eat somebody
10
11		Drinking dragon blood
12
13	1d6 Irradiated Souls*	Gathering rare herbs
14
15	1d20+5 Bless’d Blood Worms*	Setting trap OR lying in ambush.
16
17	Gatherer	Sleeping OR hiding from nearby predator.
18	Old Dragonslayer

Pyre Cities

Graves of the Old Opal Kings. Hundreds of cities, burned down. Half-buried in ash pits. Sobbing echoes off the stone and lures one in further. Grain stored, weapons hidden, artefacts locked up and the keys melted to slag. Tall towers knocked down. Palaces with rooftops caved in. Stairs that lead nowhere. Throne rooms filled with opal and bones. Dark places underground, half-filled with blood, half-filled with bleeding things. Signs of life--footprints, hymns, laughter, festival sounds, but no one to make them. Soot-silhouettes on virtually every wall, and some have so many that the wall is jet black and eats light.

Beware...

• Lighting a bonfire will cause the dead to manifest inside of it. 4-in-6 chance they will answer any question you ask. 2-in-6 chance that an Old Opal Wraith is summoned, who will summon forth a guard of Ifrit to fuck your day up.
• Dragons often lair in Pyre Cities.
• Traveling by yourself attracts Ifrit and the dead. 5-in-6 chance of getting lost and falling into some ancient dungeon with no way out, or just disappearing. Decreases by 2 for every additional person with you.
• Touching a piece of stone completely black causes the soot to reach out and grab you. Save vs grapple or else be restrained against the stone by dozens of obsidian hands as an Old Opal Wraith approaches to sacrifice you.

Random Encounters

3d6	You encounter...	It is...
3	A Laired Dragon*	Sleeping
4	1d8+1 Tzitzimitl*
5	1d6 Bēvar Asp*	Praying to Holy Symbol
6
7	The Cipactli*	Hunting another Encounter
8
9	1d10 Gatherers	Looking to pass on a message
10
11		Looking for Lost Treasure
12
13	1d6 Soot Shadows*	Searching for Mythical Artefacts
14
15	5d4 Pilgrims*	Protecting Something Sacred or Valuable
16
17	Haunt of 2d20 Ifrit*	Carving Prophecies into Stone
18	Old Opal Wraith

Shattered Crowns

Jagged mountains. Broken peaks litter slopes like shards of glass. Black grass, black snow, grey ash--all three blanket everything. Stone is all solid opal. Dirt is irradiated soil from which the black grass grows. Deep, yawning caves. Rivers of stark white water. Thunder of dragons booms throughout the valleys. Thousands of miles of opal mountain, which soon becomes normal mountain, where the Draconic Radiance is weak and trees, grass, and snow leopards live normal lives. Sudden avalanches of bone and angry drake. Temples, forgotten, built into cliffsides. Some hidden away, filled with monk-bones, where long scrolls of copper hold the secrets of reincarnation. 

Beware...

• Loud magic, lots of screaming, or vicious battles can trigger avalanches. After every encounter or spell cast, 1-in-6 chance of avalanche. If all creatures in the avalanches path have 5 rounds to find shelter or die in the avalanche.
• Temperatures fluctuate into extremes. Dips into -40 at night, and raises to over 100 C* during noon. 4-in-6 chance every 12 hours for normal temperatures.
• Dragon lairs are buried underneath opal, stone, grass, and broken temples. Every 24 hours, 1-in-10 chance of stumbling into a dragon's lair if not looking for one.
• The mountains are alive, but dying. 1-in-6 chance whenever dreaming that spirit of the mountain appears in your dreams, communicating a prophecy of some sort.

Random Encounters

3d6	You encounter...	It is...
3	A Mated Pair of Dragons	Mating
4	Murder of 10d20 + 10 Wymrlings
5	A Dragon*	Sleeping
6
7	1d4 + 4 Wyverns*	Hunting another Encounter
8
9	4d20 Kobolds*	Looking to eat somebody
10
11		Looking to Murder Somebody
12
13	1d6 + 1 Dragon Wives	Dying from wounds from a nearby encounter
14
15	1d4 Old Dragonslayers	Protecting Something Sacred or Valuable
16
17	A Draconic Saint*	Performing a Profaned Ritual
18	A Burned Widow*

Living Gods of the Blessed Lands

Symbology is the language of the divine. It was once man's error to think that gods took on forms that we could talk to, engage, love, or even kill. Only through symbols can gods be reached, and only by gathering those symbols and wearing them can one experience what it means to be in contact with the divine--even if for just a while.

Lonely are the gods now.

There are only those that wear the symbols and thus become gods, and those that do not. For generations, seven royal families have provided the sacrifices needed. They take the Holy Instruments and they slit both their wrists and necks and lie in a tub of their own blood and the symbols are wedded to them spiritually. Then the bodies are left in the Garden of Eden, which sits atop the Palace Ziggurat, and ten days later the noble emerges a new man, a divine man, something that cannot be called mortal any longer. 

This is apotheosis.

They are 10 to 15 feet tall. Their memories remain. Their personalities are intact. They are divine only when they call forth their Holy Instruments. While their symbols are donned, they can slay dragons, create life, bring back the dead, and invoke whatever holy aspects their symbols represent.

Scribes that don't record the prophecy-rants of Handless Priests spend all day carving into stone the words and actions of the gods. These records are kept underground, a dark cave, filled with the symbol-covered idols of conquered cities. Though those cities are now all ash, this Holy Tomb contains the sealed memories and powers of a once vibrant tapestry of religion that spread across the Blessed Lands.

Other gods have been murdered, consumed, or destroyed, their symbols scattered across the Blessed Lands and their religions blasted from memory. Below are the remaining living gods of the Blessed Lands.

VEILED WEEPER ALLALOTL

Symbols: Full-Body Veils, Butterflies, Tears, Still Births, Prayers with your face in your hands, standing alone, walking with moving your feet, bare feet, bloody footprints.

Allalotl is the goddess of Sorrow, Forgiveness, Childbirth, and Rebirth. She walks the Blessed Lands without moving her feet and leaves blood-filled footprints all the same. Those who drink from this blood, kiss her feet, and spend one hundred days crying will be reborn upon death as a child with all their memories, so long as they swear themselves to hunt that which has killed them and nothing else. 

Her veil is the same as those worn by Dragon Wives and they her most devoted followers, for they mourn both their children and their husbands and wish both to be reborn one day as dragons so that the cycle may begin anew. Handless Priests in turn preach that one day Allalotl will be stolen away by her sister, Tiamat, and sacrificed in order to restore the poisoned minds of all wyrms.

She weeps for her murdered father, her consumed mother, and for all souls trapped in the burned ruins of the Old Opal Kings. She is the last princess alive.

Blessing: Praying to Allalotl and then cutting your feet will allow any who drink from your footsteps to heal 1 hit point per footstep drank. Every 10 footsteps, the blessed loses 5 hit points.

HALF-SUN SINTOTEC

Symbols: Eclipses, the Sun, the Shattered Moon, Dragon Skulls, Sexual Rituals, Dim Light, Twilight, Old Dragonslayers, Half-Covered Faces, Dawn & Dusk, Gold Swords with Red Edges.

Half-Sun Sintotec wears an ornate golden mask over the upper half of his face matching the rising sun. He is a warrior, a hunter, and a monster who once trained the Old Dragonslayers before the Dragon Wives surpassed them. He is a master of magic and a master of blade and a master of traps and with these he keeps the city alive and strong.

Though the order of the Old Dragonslayers is no more, Half-Sun Sintotec still forges weapons and armor from gold and his blood in preparation to one day arm every man, woman, and child for what he believes to be the coming final battle of the Blessed Lands. A hatred burns in him alongside a lust for this apocalypse. There he will find Tiamat, cut off her limbs, and use her body to birth a new pantheon of deities to restore the afterlife to what it once was.

Half-Sun Sintotec is the oldest of the god-princes, and is thus the Steward-King of the City of Dragon Wives. 

Blessing: If you melt gold, slice your wrist, and then cover your face in a mask made from this concoction you will be blessed by Sintotec, and when next you would take damage, instead the mask will break.

GATEKEEPER METAMM

Symbols: Gates, Doors, City Walls, the Color Blue, Toothless Skulls, Flayed Skins, Wings, Martyrdom, Opal Daggers, Inscribed Tablets, Cuneiform, Long Shadows, Figures Perched on Architecture

Gatekeeper Metamm is that which holds the gates of the Blessed Lands, preventing unclean, sinful souls from filtering in. He is the brother of the murdered God-King and the father of death, who was born when Metamm killed the first mortal and roped their soul into the Blessed Lands. He perches ontop of tall structures, most often the gates that lead into the City of the Dragon Wives. From there, he sees all, and brings in new life from beyond the endless mountains that wall heaven in. It is said that if one's shadow turns red and stretches long, they have caught the eye of Gatekeeper Metamm, and will soon walk the ash-dunes.

As death's father, he holds dominion over the mortal dragons, and has taken from them their immortality. With it, he has made the Dragon Wives more powerful. By flaying the skin of a captured warrior and wearing his toothless skull, the sacrificer will never be able to drop below 1 hit point until either the skull or the skin are removed. All writing done on stone with an opal dagger (his second child) is known by him, and one can earn his attention by carving a prayer into gates, doors, and city walls.

Gatekeeper Metamm is the most elder god left in the City of the Dragon Wives. Stone gargoyles are his angels.

Blessing: If you carve words of protection into your bones with an Opal Dagger, Metamm will kill the next creature that would have just reduced you to 0 hit points before they do so.

ERESHTETEO, WHO ANNIHILATES 

Symbols: War, Violent Death, Wounds, Destruction, Genocide, Desecration, Breaking of Objects, Eating of Flesh, Scattering of Bones, Macahuitl's, Curved Objects, Death Screams, the Color Black

Ereshteteo, Who Annhilates, is one of the two twins of Death. She represented those who died horrible or violent deaths. She killed her brother after he killed their uncle, the God-King, and has since haunted the ashen waste. She is covered in a dozen bleeding wounds and the blood from these wounds creates soldiers made of ash who hunt and murder any living thing they can find. In her hands is the broken macahuitl she used to beat her brother to death. She eats the flesh of those she kills and uses their strength to sharpen her glass-weapons.

Many times has Ereshteteo battled Tiamat, Dragon Wives, and Sintotec. Those killed by Ereshteteo are forgotten by all things, and any impact they had on the world is attributed to an unsolvable mystery. Because of this she does not know that she killed her twin, nor why she is covered in so many battle wounds. 

Ereshteteo is the youngest of the gods and can be encountered in the ash dunes. Woe to those who find her.

Blessing: If you kill your sibling, any wounds suffered during the fight will forever bleed, but the blood will create a 1st level fighter every week to serve you.

BLOOD DREAM XOASH

Symbols: Dreams, Nightmares, Oracles, Visions, Prophecies, Flowing Blood, Baths, Open Spaces, Corpses, Pastures, Flowers, Orchards, The Rantings of Philosophers, The Hate of Heretics, the Fear of Doomsayers, Sacred Texts Yet to be Written

Blood Dream Xoash has no agency in the world of the waking. His eyes, mouth, and ears are all stitched shut by dragon-tendon. His arms are kept still by bone bars that impale them into his body. His legs are severed and are kept tied to his waist like the trophies of a headhunter. In the Dreams and Nightmares of the sleeping he appears, walking, speaking, listening, in a thousand forms, all fake, all designed intricately based on the memories, desires, and sins of those who dream.

Xoash is a god of illusions, sleep, and what happens when the two are wed. His children are all nightmares and his grandchildren are all dreams. He speaks through them, for dreams and nightmares can see the future and communicate them, though encoded, to others. At the heart of the City of Dragon Wives Blood Dream Xoash lays sleeping, fueling the prophecy engines inside of each Handless Priest and patiently oraclesmithing new seers.

Blood Dream Xoash was the cousin of the God-King. It was the God-King who imprisoned Xoash, so that the future would always be known.

Blessing: After five months of practicing lucid dreaming, you can speak with Xoash's children directly. You learn the location of one thing, no matter what it is. The GM must put it in a game session within 4 sessions. This doesn't mean you automatically get it, just that you know how to get to it, making it a possibility.

Dragon Sickness

Inside of every dragon is a biological engine. When it revs to life, the dragon has the strength to tear through city walls as if they were cardboard, gains the ability to flap their wings hard enough to fly, and most importantly, can produce a breath weapon that utterly devastates any enemies or prey they have. When this breath weapon enters the air, countless becquerel's flood the atmosphere. It irradiates everything, regardless of contact. Infected by alien radiation, the laws of reality themselves huck and heave as they're envenomed and melt.

Such is the origin of Dragon Sickness--the plague that has consumed the world.

Once, the Blessed Land was the home of a dozen environs. A complex ecology thrived here that enabled the Old Opal Kings to continue their divine hunts. Dragon Sickness is what brought this curtain down. It wasn't the falling shards of the moon or the ridiculous arms race to slay wyrms or the demonic pacts made or the extremes that the gods went to. All of that paled to dragon breath.

Everyone has it. Those who venture out into the ash have it worse. It makes one greedy. It makes one lustful. It makes one slovenly. It takes the doubts and fears and problems a soul has and turns them into defining traits. Your motivations are replaced by desires to sin. You love your wife no longer but now you lust for her. You don't want children out of legacy but instead just to say you have children, and so you horde them, steal them, amputate them to make them yours. Dragon Sickness inspires violence in a thousand different ways for it brings the mind under the shadow of the dragons themselves.

This has physical effects . Dire Wolves succumbed to Dragon Sickness partly, hence their forms and powers. Same for the spotted hyenas and the remaining nature spirits and their plants. Those who succumb to it fully change irrevocably. They begin to grow scales, their eyes turn gold and their pupils long, they begin to speak the lost draconic language and a madness nests in their brain. It is through Dragon Sickness that Drake Saints are born. It is through Dragon Sickness that Tiamat and Bahamut were created.

Inside the city walls, the Gods fend off the worst of the radiation. That is why plants still grow there, and the people have yet to fall. Outside, in the ash, it leaches into your body. Gatherers often retire not from wounds or traumas but from growing too sick themselves. They know if they don't, they may wander off deep into the dunes and become something else.

Dragon Wives are particularly vulnerable to this. This is why their rites and meditations are so thorough--to purge it from their souls. Should a wife ever succumb she becomes a being that even the gods cannot handle. Fear these Burned Widows, and flee them should you ever meet one.

For every 24 hours spent in the ash, make a save vs polymorph. On a failure, gain 1 point of Dragon Sickness. Once you have enough points equal to your Constitution score, roll on the Dragon Sickness Table below. If you gain enough Dragon Sickness points to double your Constitution score, you become a Drake Saint or, if you're a Dragon Wife, a Burned Widow, and lose your character.

d6	Your Sickness is...
1	Nightmares plague your mind every night that you aren’t sleeping with something you covet around you. You cannot receive benefits from any rest until you hold that thing and sleep with it.
2	When wounded, your blood turns into liquid gold that hardens along your flesh. Take an extra 1d4 damage from all damage sources.
3	When someone steals, takes, or borrows from you, you become consumed with hatred towards them that cannot be reasoned with.
4	You become paranoid of what others want, and how it can get in the way of what you want. This is a problem that must be handled!
5	You become physically sick when not close to something you cherish. Lose all strength, dexterity, and constitution modifiers until you are close to it again.
6	One of your flaws is now exaggerated. On reroll, it becomes worse. On third reroll, it utterly defines you.