Monster Overhaul Test Drive: The Lost Vineyard

 

The Hot Lands. A field. Good soil, gentle hills overgrown with tangled and dried grapevines. In the center, the ruins of a villa and a farm. Built in the time of the Ancient Empire, briefly used as a convent after the original owners abandoned it. A thick tower, free standing and partially collapsed. On the other side of the ridge, a lake.

The wine grown in this estate was legendary. Conditions are still perfect for viticulture. People back home have an insatiable hunger for luxury goods from foreign lands. All you have to do is clean the place up and start growing.

THE HERMITAGE

An outbuilding constructed by the vintners as a slave dormitory, used by the convent as a hermitage. The roof is missing but the stone arches of the doors still provide shade. 

Dia Schempf and her brother Anderson Schempf are hiding here while they plot their next move. These big city Townsfolk came here to visit the convent where their great grandmother was confined, and to get her bones out of the wall where she was immured as punishment. Then a Grey Horse ate all their food because they couldn't sing well enough. Then a Wyvern tried to kill them as they crossed the field. Then there are the Lions watching them from a distance, the Trolls shouting insults at night, the desiccated goats who surround the fire begging for a drink... The elephants are cool at least.

Anderson has a big game "stopping" musket he bought for the trip to the Hot Lands, but only two charges remaining. Dia has a cheap wand of Magic Missile with a couple shots left. They don't want to use up all their ammo getting to the house and have none to fight their way out with. They've got no food but they don't want to leave emptyhanded.

 

The duo didn't bring any alcohol because they didn't want to get drunk in a dangerous place.

THE SATYRS

The Satyrs came here when the winery was built, to get drunk and free the slaves who worked the fields. The Wanax of the estate withered them with powerful magic. The blessing of the Liberator kept them alive in a state of dessication, ghastly dried up things who could be restored to life with alcohol. They lay dormant in the earth until the convent was built. The sisters gave them wine and cavorted with them. Then the nunnery met a horrible fate and they dried up again.

The Satyrs have risen again. Maybe the Boars dug them up, or they sense someone may bring the winery back to life. They cavort mindlessly in the fields, leathery stick figures with horns protruding from their papery skulls. They can speak but only to beg for a drink, they might get desperately violent but are too weak to do any damage. If fed alcohol they are restored to their former luster, intelligence and power. They feel bad that they couldn't save the slaves, and because they couldn't save that nun when she died in the wall. They're supposed to free people but she got killed for being happy and making them happy.

THE GREY HORSE

The Grey Horse is a spirit from the old world. Maybe one of the Liberator's creations, part of his portfolio as a patron of art. The entity's role is to forcibly stimulate human beings to creativity, demanding that they sing for it and eating all their food if they refuse. It loved the songs sung by the slaves working the vineyard, and the Holy Mountain hymns sung by the Priestesses of the Convent.

If a long term solution to the Horse isn't found (perpetually supplying it with song or banishing it) it'll eat any grapes grown in the restored vineyard.

THE FIELDS

The fields are full of dried, trampled wild grapes, thoroughly browsed by the elephants. There are furrows and ridges and old irrigation ditches and hard-packed footpaths still visible through the undergrowth. A qanat bored through the hills should supply water from the nearby lake, but is bone dry.

Moving through the field by day risks attracting the attention of the Wyvern. At night the field is patrolled by the Trolls who live in the Wanax. About once a day the Satyrs emerge from unseen holes in the earth to cavort mechanically, dancing a barely remembered jig on stick-like legs with the dry skin half falling off the bone. They seem to delight in outrunning the predators and harassing the elephants, the only emotion they show other than their ritualistic begging behavior.

 

Jan van Kessel Elder

 

WILD ANIMALS

A herd of twenty Elephants has taken up residence in the area. They ate most of the vines in the field and now they're working on the acacia trees. They eat leaves and branches until they feel full, then trundle over to the lake to drink their fill. They keep a tight formation to deter attacks by Trolls and the Wyvern, but aren't afraid of the Lions. The young ones love playing with the shades of the Satyrs. The elders find the goats obnoxious, chasing them away with swats and kicks when they get close.

Four Lionesses from a nearby pride come to the lake to drink when they're out hunting, but rarely venture west of the ridge. They move stealthily, afraid of aerial attacks by the Wyverns. The Elephants are too tough for them, the Trolls are also 

A sounder of six Boars also come to the lake to drink. They are bellicose creatures and less afraid of the Wyvern and Trolls than they should be. They come out in the field and root through the stuff the elephants haven't eaten and munching the smashed wild grapes.

 

THE GROVE OF THORNS

The Acacia Trees were planted by the nuns of the Convent and have grown out of control since they abandoned the site. The domed expanse of their branches hangs low to the ground, tearing apart anyone who moves carelessly. The Elephants eat at the edges.

A single Bear is trapped in the grove. He came down from the mountains to find food and is hiding here because he's a yearling and afraid of everything - the Elephants, the Wyvern, the Satyrs... He's very hungry and has treed the only thing he found which didn't frighten him: a Polevik he chased up into a tree. The harvest spirit shouts insults and commands at the bear, who can't understand them and can't climb to reach him. His paws are full of thorns and will become infected soon.

When the Nuns had to abandon the convent, the High Priestess buried the religious objects here. The Polevik knows where to dig. There's a lot of tarnished silver, a heavily corroded iron gauntlet, an a brass frying-pan style censer. When incense is burned in the censer it casts Protection From Chaos on anyone within the smoke.

THE MEGARON

Most of the estate has been destroyed by time, stone eroded or carried away for other structures by successor civilizations. Only the great hall, the inner courtyard wall and a couple ancillary buildings still stand. The ruined foundations of other structures are visible around the central structure - both ancient structures from the original winery and wood/adobe buildings from the later Convent.

The Megaron is occupied by a mischief of Trolls. They're lethargic during the day, woken only by strong smells or loud noise. At night they're alert, mobile and can see better than humans.

Courtyard

The walls here still stand ten feet high, cyclopean stone with baked mud cladding. The arches that once led to gatehouses and outbuildings are collapsed.

The interior walls are a palimpsest, with the alphabet and simple sentences written over and over again on the adobe. The Convent churned through a lot of unwanted daughters and part of their religious upbringing was teaching them to read and write.

The fountain and pool are empty. The muck inside has been scraped for coins a thousand times over.

Porch

The roof of this columned porch still stands. Over the curtained entrance to the building is a faded image of Saint Lampiã leading a group of frightened children out of a dark forest, lighting the way with her own burning skull held in her hand.

The trolls have scattered dried vegetation over a layer of broken bottles from the winery, whose crunching they count on to wake them up if someone enters this way.

Vestibule

The unworked stone ceiling of this narrow room is still intact. The doors to the east and west are hung with rough curtains, made from fabric crudely torn and knotted together.

The trolls sleep in a pile here during the day because it's the farthest point in the building from the sun. Amid the heaped bedding are thousands of coins and an emerald pin dug out from between the floor tiles.

 

Throne Room

This was where the Wanax, the ruler of the estate, once held court. The room had a square awning held up by pillars, with a fire pit in the center. The roof is partially collapsed but the remaining ceiling provides the trolls with much needed shade.

The Convent used the room for religious services. The empty stone altar once held religious objects symbolizing Iron Hand and Oil Lamp.

On one wall is the triangle-halo symbol of the Holy Mountain religion. On the opposite is a mural of a wasp-waisted man in a purple-blue chokha, clutching a nude woman lovingly to his body with an iron gauntlet. As part of their religious doctrine, the Priestesses were always ready for death at the hands of the Old King (now the Hanged King), who cultivated their religion to feed himself human sacrifices. Beneath the accumulated grime, the king's eyes are sapphires set into the masonry, the woman's nipples rubies.

The door to the west is curtained. The hole in the wall to the north is trapped with a precariously balanced boulder, placed by the trolls to fall on anyone who passes incautiously through the opening.

Cells

These long chambers were used for sleeping and storage of personal items by the Priestesses when they reclaimed the convent. The ceiling of clay tiles over wood rafters still partially covers them.

The sisters covered the walls with etched graffiti, in places where it would be concealed by furniture. Most prominent is a crude drawing of The Old King sucking greedily at the neck of an ecstatic Dwarf woman, poking her in the thigh with his royal erection.

The bones of the Schempf's ancestor are sealed in a thin space inside one of the walls. She was immured there for fucking Satyrs, denied deconstruction in the Tower and the ultimate transport of her bones for burial in a Holy Mountain.

Kitchen?

The ruins of a clay oven, chimney and table indicate this unwalled chamber was used as a kitchen and dining room at the Convent. There's a heap of weapons and other rubbish dumped by the trolls.

Amid the junk is a belt of protection +1, but the rusty, filthy blades piled on top infect careless handlers with a bacterial disease that prevents them from acting in the first round of combat.

Cellar

The half-sunken cellar is where the Ancients matured their wine, half-burying amphorae. The Priestesses operated their winery using more modern methods, using indoor presses rather than manually stomping the grapes in tubs, putting the resulting wine in glass bottles rather than pottery vessels.

The bottles littering the floor are empty, many smashed. A single unopened vessel sealed with wax reflects any light shined into the chamber. The grappa inside is still good, the bottle is indestructible and can only be opened by humans.

A giant inky purple Brittle Star is attached to the ceiling, lurking in a state of cryptobiosis. It scoured every trace of wine from the stones and has a taste for the stuff, but the scent of any salty or sugary liquid (sweat/blood) wakes it from hibernation. 

 

Artufactory Baka

TROLLS

Six trolls live in the Megaron. The leader and fathermother is the two-headed Troll Fio and Leon, the other five are spawned from buds cut off their body. They were driven out of their cave by adventurers and have been wandering ever since. They don't like this place because everything here is scary. The Lions stalk you for hours, the Boars charge you without hesitation, the Elephants casually crush your skull. 

The Trolls haven't left because there isn't any cover for miles and they are especially scared of being caught in the open by the Wyvern. When a Wyvern overpowers a troll it feeds on them for hours, tearing pieces off as they regenerate until it vomits from overeating. Together they could kill it, but if they all attack at once it'll fly away, wait for them to let their guard down and hurt them. It won't enter the building because they might trap it there. They come out at night when it's asleep, rooting around in the undergrowth for vermin. They wanted to eat the Schempfs but the fire scared them off.

The Trolls are caught between their hunger and their fear of more pain, and any negotiation with them will be a push/pull between the two.

THE TOWER

The Tower of Silence is a wide, stout, round structure, currently home to a Wyvern.

 

The Tower's design and function are ancient but it was erected along with the Convent as part of the Old King's revival of the Holy Mountain religion. People from around the region brought their dead to the tower to be staked out and exposed. Vultures would eat the bodies and the bones would be gathered for transport in regular pilgrim convoys to the eponymous Holy Mountains for disposal in divine ossuaries.

 

Access is by a ramp leading up to a door, or a talus pile of rubble on the opposite side where the wall collapsed. The tower interior is a set of concentric rings enclosed by an exterior wall, no ceiling. The Wyvern nests here at night, during the day it suns itself or flies around overhead.

In the center is a well full of bones, remains of the Wyvern's recent kills. This is where liquid from the bodies drained when the tower was in use. Though the bodies were supposed to be stripped of their valuables a few jeweled piercings fell down the pit over the years (which is now full of plants and sediment without regular cleaning). Add to that an enchanted leather armor, a heavy purse of coins and a scroll of hallucinatory terrain the Wyvern kicked into the hole after eating the owners.

Reginald Edward Enthoven

THE WYVERN

The Wyvern is an adult male, green with blue and yellow eyespots. He's an endurance predator who circles high in the air, waiting for prey to make itself vulnerable before attacking from above. Lone victims are killed on the ground, or carried away to be dropped if their allies move to intercept. If attacked with ranged weapons he flies higher and waits for his prey to be distracted.

 

He's a vindictive beast and will pursue people who injure him unless they seem really tough. If he expects a night attack he'll slink out of the tower and lie in ambush for adventurers creeping up on his nest. He learned not to mess with the elephants after the matriarch of the herd almost gored him when he dove for her son.

THE LAKE

The lake is a popular spot for the animals of the region. There are a couple trees on the shore, spindly things quite unlike the Acacias west of the ridge.

 

The Water King, Elemental Tyrant of the lake, lives here with his Lake Serpent. He lets the serpent take prey from the shore but rarely, to avoid scaring off the animals who come to drink so picturesquely. He is jovial but quick to take offense. He shares the water and the wonderful view, and if you want more than that you're either greedy or you better have a damn good excuse.

 

The Water King liked to swim down into the fountain inside the courtyard and watch the nuns bathe. When they abandoned the Convent in a hurry he cut off the underground qanat feeding the vineyard because he didn't believe anyone else deserved to irrigate on his dime. The vineyard can't be reactivated without water, and he has to be slain or convinced to give up the goods.

 

WHY ARE YOU HERE?

The players are...

• Going to reestablish the winery.
  
• Monster hunters chasing down the Trolls.
• Relic hunters looking for loot from the Ancient Empire or the Monarchy.
  
• Helping the Schempfs get their great grandma's bones back.
  
• Big game hunters looking for monster hides.

 

THE MAKING OF

I used the Monster Manual Overhaul to create the nucleus of this area. I rolled

• Satyrs
  
• Elemental Tyrant and Sea Serpent
• Wyvern fighting Trolls
• Elephants
• Lions and Boars
• A Polevik treed by a Bear.
  
• Grey Horse berating Townsfolk
• Sea Star 

The Old King's religion is based on the one the Great Khan founds in Dungeon: Twilight to feed himself human sacrifices.