Codex - Hearthfire Miscellany

[jasoncordova]

We are crowdsourcing the miscellany for Codex - Hearthfire! This one is called “Three Dozen Precarious Places to Make Camp” (with thanks to @Alexi_Sarge for the idea). We expect most entries to be for the fantasy genre, but any genre is welcome.

Submissions should be no more than 2-3 short sentences. By submitting here in the replies, you’re agreeing to let us use it (you’ll get a credit on the issue). We’re looking for evocative things; the purpose of the miscellany is to inspire the reader. Please do not submit any entries with sexist imagery (we won’t publish it).

Note: if you’d like your name to be listed differently on the Codex credit, send me a DM here (but please keep your submissions in the thread).

Here are some examples:

“A small shelf of rock overlooking a dragon’s hoard—the beast slumbering soundly, but occasionally stirred by dreams of the royal treasuries it has yet to empty.”

“We spent the better part of two hours carefully scaling the tower of the great wizard Themmnos, only to discover that the window we intended to sneak in through had suddenly vanished. Now, the sun is set, the way down is perilous, and our bellies cry for sustenance. Setting up camp on Themmnos’s roof isn’t ideal, but will have to do for now…”

[BlakeRyan]

A dark pond about 100 feet across in a steep basalt rock canyon. Though the water is still and cool, any sound will echo down the canyon, but the echo will speak things you regret not saying at important moments in your past.

This patch of scrub behind the hill has ample tinder for a fire and is sheltered from the night wind. Any fire here will ensure you are well rested and have dreams that fill your heart with simple joy and contentment. In fact your rest is so nice here your troubles seem so distant (the longer you stay here) why would you leave…

[Ben_Bisogno]

Royal portraits train their gazes at us, unblinking. The slanting walls and porcelain ceiling quiver as we shift our weight about. However, when you are slinking through giant’s antechamber, there are worse places to hide in than a house of playing cards.

[RedMagus77]

The Thunderous Canyons are filled with constant storms, sudden wind gusts, and falling rocks, but it makes the fastest route between the port tons and the mining colonies, thus many merchants and couriers take this passage. Along the way are dotted small alcoves where you can find respite from the storms, but many remain uneasy, as the entrances are dotted with jagged stalagmites and stalactites, making it seem like the maw of some sleeping beast.

[Ben_Bisogno]

The Appalachian trail was supposed to strengthen our family ties. We bought a hammock for the kids and a tent just for us. But with them tethered high above and the wife and I still awake, beating back frothy mouthed raccoons in the lower branches, our patience is wearing thin.

[Anodos]

When the downpour forced us into the hovel we realized it wasn’t entirely empty. Our small, smoky fire revealed the walls and ceiling were covered with crude marionettes, strange wooden toys, and rotting corn husk dolls. Though obviously harmless, its been difficult sleeping in their presence: in my exhaustion I keep feeling like they’ve shifted when I’m not looking directly at them…

[Puckett]

1. The vast, seemingly unending Plains Of The Disappeared take at least two weeks to cross on foot, and danger is ever-present, the ground collapsing at a moment’s notice, resulting in seemingly bottomless holes that many unwary travelers have disappeared into, never to be seen again. The only resting places that offer even a modicum of safety are the Bone Shelves which are about a day’s hard march apart, but that is the risk travelers take when they try to save time by traversing ancient, decaying megafauna.

2. The strange structure is several days’ journey from the village; impossibly vast, made solely of metal, with thin, jagged shards jutting high into the sky like swords only a giant could wield. Smiths swear by the metal retrieved from it and pay handsomely for quantities large enough to make weapons. However, as people venture deeper in and stay longer to try to find better pieces, some of them have been returning with strange illnesses - they lose their hair, their teeth fall out, unusual lesions appear on their skin and odd growths inside them make their skin bulge outward. To a one, they have all died screaming in agony with intractable pain making their final days a horrifying nightmare. None of the healers or scholars can identify the illness, much less treat it … perhaps the structure is cursed?

3. The Carlson’s tree fort was the dedicated clubhouse of the Maxwell Court Rovers, a gaggle of pre-teens who gathered there to share seventh-hand urban legends, brag about outlandish things none of them had ever done, and occasionally doze off during sleepovers. Everything was fine that summer until Tommy Hinshaw, a bully and recent middle school graduate, learned there were snacks, candy, and soda in the tree fort …

4. Travelers journeying to Kharshand typically follow the base of the Azek-Han volcanic mountain range due to the ionizing radiation that bombards the Silent Wastes at night. The Azek-Han mountains feature an uncountable number of caves which provide shelter … but they stretch deep underground and who knows what lies deeper within?

5. The First Murine Expeditionary Special Operations Group has carefully mapped the grasslands, noting where dwellers of root and hole may find themselves in the most danger, as well as where they may find shelter and safety, charting unused or abandoned burrows. But while FME-SOG fears no fox or other carnivore of the field due to their training, they do caution visitors and residents to keep their eyes and ears open. Vacant burrows can become occupied literally overnight.

6. Why are the most comfortable places to nap always the most precarious? Sunbeams turn into spotlights on the back of overstuffed easy chairs, offering both warmth and height, but it’s so easy for a cat to shift its weight ever so slightly while sleeping and promptly fall to the floor because gravity is rude and inconsiderate.

[PercyPropa]

Alley cats are not typically known for their hospitality, unless you happen to know that Old Man al-Kaziz sells the most aromatic catnip in Kasbah. The deep slumber invoked by the warmth of a thousand furry bodies and lullaby of mewling kittens is the city’s best and most comfortably kept secret.

[Vlad_Temper]

You can see the stars shining on its black surface even under daylight. It’s said, by old people you use to unhear, that it is a piece of night itself. It is written, by young scholars you use to forget, that it is a particular effect of the strange creatures living in it. But what is a fact, known by the unfortunate souls who has seen it, is that no flesh can touch the Noche lacoon water without melting. And what is described by every visitor is the savage randomness of the sunking islands on it.

[Judd]

The standing stones at the top of the nameless hill are worn down and jagged, like teeth that had been chewing on bone since the beginning of time. While setting up camp, birds, rodents, and the most curious of several herd beasts come to see who is camped here, wondering if perhaps the humans have begun their ancient blood rites again.

[Judd]

All that is left of the Old Kalduhri waystation is overgrown foundations, a well whose water smells of iron and statues of sisters so old the faces and identities are worn away by rain and wind. Once this was a place where an empire asserted itself over the wilderness. As you set up camp it is clear that in the end, the wilderness wins.

[Judd]

The caves are cold and damp but still dryer and warmer than the cold rain outside. The walls are adorned with ancient drawings of people climbing their gods like some folk scale cliffs or mountains. Perhaps it is an odd metaphor about understanding beings of great power or perhaps the ancient days were stranger than we can imagine.

[smythos]

The rust-encrusted corpse of the thing protruded from the polluted wastes, providing excellent wind cover. The stink of the stagnant iridescent ooze pooling around the bones was off-putting, but presumably our enemies felt the same. Our skin itched, but it was safer in here than out in the nightmare expanse beyond. Shards of shattered heart crystal throbbed balefully but visibility was ideal. Then the dreams of the ruinous apocalypse that created this place slowly intruded, and we began to feel overly optimistic.

[Gus.L]

Surrounding the crossroads and beneath the ruins of a watchtower – massive ribs antediluvian masonry wind worn but sound – is the Hangman’s Garden. Wrist thick briars and copious red flowers the size of a pie plate offer fuel and protection from the wind or sun, while the narrow paths and overhanging bowers provide concealment from eyes on the road. The ghosts are as numerous as the flowers though, crouching just beyond the firelight and begging for a drop of mortal blood to ease their eternal suffering. Most are entirely harmless.

[kir]

We never understood why anybody assumed that soapmaking in these savage lands was a viable business. There was enough wood left in the derelict shop to heat the large copper basin and take a jojoba bubble bath. An unexpected and relaxing moment we all needed so much. Later, when the fire had almost burned down and we had eaten the last bits of the rye bread, it was my youngest companion who realized that the remainder in the tallow store was not whale fat (as I had assumed from the fecal smell). After arguing for a whole fifteen minutes, Grillo finally convinced me that the few bone bits in the tallow were actually of human origin. We all bathed again, this time without any soap.

[Judd]

Cliff walls, still scarred from the mage war’s blackfire, overgrown with wizard’s vine rise up on the east and north. To the south is the Stumbling Demon waterfalls, loud and beautiful and cold. To the north the stream winds through the rest of the Axe gorge. Goats watch you from a distance and as the sun sets, bats begin fluttering overhead, feasting on bugs.

[Ben_Bisogno]

Soggy ropes secure the escape dinghy tightly. However, the rigging was not made with stowaways in mind. When the hot, rising winds jerk us about, it is easy to roll off - plunging into the mists below.

[Gus.L]

Past the crossroads East into the Grass Sea all is alike, waist high veld sways in unison with the lonely wind, any one camping spot is like any other, a circle of pressed grass without fuel or shelter except that which travelers can take from their horses. The people of the Grass Sea though know another landscape above the homogeneity of the grass ocean, a country of spirits of place, ghosts and petty gods, but you, strangers and heathens have unwittingly camped at the center of one of the spirits’ bacchanals – your dreams will be troubled, and it’s an open question if all of you will wake in camp tomorrow morning.

[signalstation]

As temperatures fall and darkness fills the dripping rainforest, should an adventurer find oneself too damp to light a fire (or too acutely aware of what might notice a fire’s light), one may always follow one’s nose. A dung scented like almonds and ant spit will lead one to the base of trees where you can find what are jocularly referred to as Danger Hammocks (actually a variety of giant sloth that spends most of their lives immobile, dangling from tree branches.) Nestle right into some fur for a warm night, so long as one isn’t prone to fitful sleep or night terrors.

[Alexi_Sarge]

Asteroid Eurydice-429 has proved a surprisingly hospitable waystation for the starlost or down-and-out. The dense asteroid field around it means Pangalactic Consortium vessels rarely approach, but there are wide craters for smaller spaceskimmers to safely land. The naturally-occurring gouts of green flame that surround Eurydice-429’s borax deposits provide free heat and light. And the crashed remains of an early exploratory vessel might even hold valuable plunder, if people weren’t so darn superstitious about alleged “astronaut ghosts” haunting the thing…