Hexplore24 — Day 3
Belus and Satis awake well-rested.
The day is mild, the warmest so far, and the sky they can see through the forest canopy is fiery red with rays of light piercing a gentle mist.
After packing up their camp, they decide to head east, through the woods.
It is slower going, but both feel that the place holds important secrets it hasn’t yet revealed.
They have 1 point from yesterday, so after traveling to hex J07 they have 4 points remaining.
Now using Dungeon ESP1 to populate this hex...
Encounter — Animal.
I’ll use Dolmenwood and the HSI2 table to create the encounter:
Adder Snakes, 1 is wounded (I assume they were fighting)
Belus and Satis come to a part of the woods filled with sturdy ferns, each nearly as large as the trees.
Satis and Belus both see movement, and 90’ away, are two massive 4’ snakes. One is dragging itself off, seemingly wounded. The other is watching the humans, its tongue tasting the air.
“I fear they may pack a poison bite,” Belus whispers. Satis agrees. They carefully walk away, both them and the snake watching each other.
They come to a river flowing between the woods and, across it, steep mountains.
“Let’s follow it upstream,” Satis suggests, and Belus agrees.
They spend 2 points to enter hex J08, which is grasslands.
Dungeon ESP: Treasure3
Using the treasure table in Perilous Wilds I get a Necklace and a Statue
They leave the woods, entering grasslands, the mid-day sky bright and marbled with high clouds.
They take a brief rest by the riverbank, listening to the rushing water. Satis discovers a hollow stump and inside an old box.
Rolled and sadly it’s worthless treasure.
Pulling the box out, she finds inside a small figurine and a necklace. At first, she is delighted, but Belus shows her both are made of tin, the sapphire just glass. A child’s treasure perhaps - little more than a curiosity for adults.
How do I have them cross rivers? I’ll say it’s 4 travel points to find and use a ford. Later the same route costs whatever the typical cost for that terrain. But they can’t afford that now, so they’ll have to camp by the river and cross tomorrow.
No Travel encounters.
They cross the plains, following the riverbank, until it is clear they must cross it the next day.
So, they set up camp. The last meat is cooked by Belus, and again, despite Satis' best go at it, she cannot find a story to hook her companion.4
Both pass sleep checks, no encounters.
They sleep especially well with the sounds of the river nearby.
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I’ve been unhappy with the way Hexes were being populated, so I’m using a custom tool called Dungeon ESP here that I’ve developed for solo dungeon delving. I’ll be preparing a post to share more about this. For now, you just need to know it can tell me if I have an encounter, find obstacles, find treasure, things like that.↩
HSI refers to The Dark of Hot Springs Island. I’m specifically using a 3d6 table from this book that lists various activities encountered people or animals might be engaging in. Some of them prompt for a second roll to create scenes of fighting, chasing, etc. Here it tells me the two snakes are dealing with an injury, which I decide to interpret as the aftermath of a fight between the two of them.↩
A treasure result in my tool Dungeon ESP isn’t necessarily real — a later roll determines if it was trick treasure. See my other footnote about how I plan to share this tool soon(ish).↩
I love this mini-plot of the two of them constantly failing the Cha roll to tell a decent story each night. I envision these two as co-travelers by necessity, and expect they have rather stiff interactions, so them awkwardly failing every night to hit it off around the campfire is delightful.↩