My GLoGmas recipient for this year was discord user Liches over at Liches Get Stitches, I decided to make a setting location for their Tengoku Isles setting.
Oishihara Island
A medium sized island with a city so large it reaches the coastline on three of the four sides. A large tower rises up from its center. Iron and wood banded stone make up the first three tiers, getting narrower each time they step up, topped off with a pagoda.
An isthmus to the east connects to a smaller connected landmass, made up mostly of a massive crater that's remains wild, and a series of sea-caves on the far shore.
The City
The people in the city aren't allowed to carry weapons, so they'll be immediately distrustful of anyone who openly does so. There are also Enlistees regularly patrolling the city, being jerks, and stealing food; as per encounters. Players will be able to find people to sell most things at poor to middling quality with two exceptions: nobody makes or sells any weapons, and all food found will be of the worst quality, while also being sold for a premium.
Every week, any newborns in the city are rounded up by the various thugs in the tower. They then show up months later stumbling around the streets as a fully grown adult. This is treated as completely normal here. Shinrippā is the elusive Demon Lieutenant of this Isle, though he's known now only by reputation, having not left the tower in over a hundred years.
Denizens of the City:
You find them wearing a kimono embroidered with patterns of:
- Mandarin oranges and paper butterflies.
- A rooster betwixt a tangle of weeds.
- Cherry blossoms and kusudama.
- A red crane set before the moon.
- Plum blossoms and fans.
- Maple leaves and paper lotuses.
And they are:
- Running from 1d6 Enlistees.
- Discreetly feeding a stray animal.
- Following someone else while loudly defaming them.
- Ushering a small crowd into their cellar.
- Laboriously carving wooden figurines with a blunted knife.
- Carrying an armful of fresh but wild and sad fruits.
The Dungeon
The main iron-reinforced wooden doors to the tower are barred from the inside, If you can scale to the second tier, there's a locked iron bar door on the wall left of the main entrance that leads into the Bellows.
The level of watchfulness in the dungeon will vary based on any of the following conditions:
unconscious bodies found - low threat.
dead bodies found - +3 encountered enemies.
intruders reported - increase encounter frequency (however appropriate).
Tier 1
- Genkan: doff your shoes and replace them with the complimentary slippers, it's customary.
- Storage Room: 1d4 drunk Enlistees, racks of barrels filled with cheap booze and fish. Hidden entrance to a narrow vertical shaft terminating at 3. Dry Storage.
- Armory: Full of equipment for the Enlistees. If worn, it'll fool Finks and other higher-ups, but not other Enlistees. If searching thoroughly, there is a Masterwork weapon belonging to the top-ranked Enlistee, they're the only one allowed to carry their weapon outside the tower.
- Mess Hall: 2d10 Enlistees and 2d10 Finks, If you move past this room and aren't careful, 2-in-6 chance someone inside spots you walking past. If this room is left along for at least an an hour after entering the dungeon, the rowdy argument taking place here devolves into an all out brawl that distracts from any loud activity on these levels.
- Quarters: tiny box rooms with cots hanging from the walls. 2-in-6 chance for a sleeping Enlistee, 1-in-6 chance for conscious Enlistee. If you take time to search, find 10 gold worth of items.
Encounters (D6):
1-4: 1d4 Enlistees (Can just use the die result).
5: 1d8 Enlistees
6: 1d6 Enlistees accompanied by 3 Finks. 3-in-6 chance they're already bickering.
Tier 2
- Hub: 1 Fink. The main access to this level terminates into a hub with doors on 3/4 sides. Its the same staircase that runs from floor one to floor two, but the staircase going from floor 2 to floor 3 is demolished, the walls greased, and has a rope ladder bundled up at the top. If the players are too loud while using the staircase the Fink here will hear it and investigate. The fourth wall in this room has the heads of multiple former Enlistees mounted on it.
- Walk-in: Large steel door requires a strength check or combined strength score of 30 to open. 2 Finks inside. A muffled bassy thrum can be heard from this room in any room adjacent to it including between levels. In the center of the room, a massive frozen heart hooked by a girthy chain beats coolant through tubes keeping food on all the wall racks cold. The food stored in this room is very high quality.
- Dry Storage: Storage for all the high quality dry goods.
- Storage Closet: disorganized cleaning supplies as well as 3 partially shredded, twitching, harmless papermen from Tier 4. If mended properly, can be made fully functional by and loyal to a magic-user.
- Bellows: d6+5 Finks. Twin engines blast heat through pipes into the room above, kept alive by the Finks here. If these aren't running for any reason, the Chef in 6. Kitchen becomes unable to use any of its special meal-based attacks.
- Kitchen: 4 Finks and the Chef. A metal cage on a pulley leads into The Cells above. The chef's chasyaku is used to extract the adolescence from a person and age them artificially. Used as a sweetener that surpasses all others but is horribly addicting.
- Staging Room: A series of dishes are being plated to be presented to Shinrippā by 6 Finks. If eaten grant benefits according to your favorite potions table.
Encounters (D6)
1-4: 1d6 Finks
5: 2 Finks bringing either a fresh prisoner to the cells, or carrying a use-up one to dump outside in an alley.
6: A lone Enlistee trying to be as sneaky as possible.
The Cells
A narrow walkway mazes around this whole tier, good chance to use this procedure for labyrinths. The cages have captives in various stages of adolescence, all in a stupor as if drugged.
The Jailor, which wanders these corridors, is simpleminded and has orders to attack anyone not delivering food or prisoners. Carrying food will draw attention from the imprisoned youths, but this is not out of the ordinary. In certain circumstances however it would make it difficult to pass through the maze both sneakily and safely.
Encounters (D6):
1-4: 2 Finks escorting a prisoner toward the cage, or a dish toward the staircase leading up.
5-6: The Jailor.
TIER 4
A table at the top of this staircase (3-in6) has a dish waiting on it. Of the two rooms in this section, Shinrippā will either be in the Youshitsu during the day, or the Washitsu if it's night. Each paper-walled room is on its own floor surrounded by a hallway that wraps fully around, with windows allowing natural light inside.
The Papermen servants patrol this area in both their hostile and harmless variants. The hostile ones fold flat onto the paper walls and will peel off to attack if they sense intruders. Shinrippā will notice the silhouette leaving the wall or, failing that, the subsequent sounds of combat. The harmless papermen look like upside-down octopodes but with tiny waddling feet. Their upper limbs used to carry dishes into the Youshitsu room. wearing one of them like a hat will ward off the hostile papermen.
- Youshitsu: A low table rests in the center of the room, and a pile of empty serving dishes lie astrewn near the door. A perfectly preserved and flayed Fink stands at attention in the back corner serving as a lamp after death.
- Washitsu: A simple tatami room, with a tokonoma containing art pieces worth 500 gold to the right investor, an bone Orb with a domain over Midnight, and a cursed sword with a bound sheathe. If you peel off the mats and test the floorboards, one of them can be removed to reveal an additional cache of 500 gold.
Monk Order - Drifting Feather style
A) Spend a chi to make yourself weightless for one round, must move by pushing off of surfaces.
B) Touch someone on their chest and you can feel by the weight of their heart whether or not they are lying or harboring guilt.
C) Signature Move: Swap the apparent weight of two objects you can touch. [1 chi - hand size, 2 chi - Armful, 3 chi - Dragged, 4 chi - immovable]
D) Carried on the Winds: Spend 1 chi while weightless to fully avoid a blow, the slight breeze pushing you away just outside the blow's reach.
Live underground in the caves to the east of the island. They cover their faces with shrouds and drink goo from a cave under the meteor. This dissolves and replaces their tongues with goo rendering them unable to speak. The incorporeal Master of the order knows the name, but will not be able to say it.
Bestiary -
- Enlistee - Stats as bandit. armed with truncheons and man-catchers instead if they're patrolling the city.
- Fink - Stats as bandit. Armed with oversized kitchen implements. Man-sized demonic creatures, they are prone to having random mutated features; the most consistent being wings for every 2-in-6.
- The Jailor - 4 HD, Stats as bear. Wide as two men and a head taller, head is covered by an iron dome with just enough holes to see out of. fights with caged and spiked fists and headbutts, can attack up to 2 times per round. He attacks anyone not carrying food or escorting prisoners.
- Hostile Paperman - in the shaped of various origami animals, move as the appropriate animal, with slicing papercut attacks. 2HD appearing in medium to large sized groups. If they get well saturated they are effectively incapacitated.
- Chef - Stats as bear, stands behind a horseshoe griddle preventing melee combat without having some kind of reach. Holds a 2-foot-long cleaver in one hand and a chasyaku in the other. preps a variety of dishes during the fight which can cause a variety of effects. (e.g. Tempura Calamari: Save vs Blindness until you can clean out your eyes). Posesses a Headband with the following special move: When knocked prone or successfully grappled, the swordsman can make 7 free attacks against the target. If you have witnessed this technique, you can save to instead be dealt one free attack.
- Shinrippā - 6 HD, stats as ogre. eight-and-a-half feet tall. Big war club deals double damage to its system equivalent, as his arms swell up with muscle. If he picks you up and you don't break free by the start of his next turn, he swallows you whole before taking his normal allotted actions.
