Setting: Broken Cliff

Broken Cliff was an early attempt to colonize the Purple Islands. In its original form, it was a set of long docks placed at the base have a sheer bluff. A stone watchtower was placed at the peak where its master could both watch the ships coming in from the sea, and the farmsteads on the gentle hill on its land wards side. Cranes and lifts were rigged from the Tower to lift cargo up to the Farms above. Several sea caves that now sit high above sea level were converted into Inns and warehouses to accommodate visiting crews.

II was an ambitious project created by Theocrats from the land of Garold, nd the only structure more elaborately built was the cathedral to the holy chorus built at the centre of the village. Tragically, most of the colonists were not as devout as the governor or the priests. Many went native swiftly and joined either the cult of Zygax-Xith, or The Cult of K'tulu. The priests, furious, began purges, and fiery sermons attempting to bring people back to the Gods of Light and Order.

On the Purple Isles, however, blaspheming the Great Old Ones comes with consequences and those who truly embraced the jungle were able to call it to their aid. The town was consumed by vines and monsters

The remaining colonists, divided, went their separate ways. Many willingly went to a Cult of Zygax-Xith, and many fence-sitters became slaves in the Cult's pleasure pits. Others went deep into a grotto where lay ruins from the primordial age of the snake men and important secrets about the great K'tulu, and there they stayed degenerating, and mutating into the tentacles ape-men that now stalk Kravian.

The supports of wharf remained; it was the work of Dwarven stonemasons. Seventy years later, when a group of pirates were looking for a place to establish a free port on the Purple Islands, it was easy to rebuild the docks and reclaim the caves. The Pirates are wiser in the way of the Islands than the Colonists, and have been hesitant to build inland. Instead, they have built a town of permanently docked ships, houseboats, and stilted huts on the seashore. 

Both the Unity of Western kingdoms and the great Magrocracies of the South have officially claimed Broken Cliff, while doing nothing to govern it: having a place where gokd and silver currency can be exchanged for goods and import /export is driven by the smugglers' mercantile ecunen is too convenient to disrupt. Instead it is watched with a studiously blind eye.

The town is ruled over by a Thing of Pirates. Smugglers, warriors, slavers, and a Mercenary company called the Violet Claw. It's clear leader is a woman called Kadoz the Fishwife, a Monk with deep-one blood who runs a shrine to Mother Hydra and gains knowledge of the weather and the deeps from her monstrous kin.

Kadoz has been looking for a figurehead that can serve as a decoy for trouble as civilized governments begin to take more interest. She has had the tower rebuilt as a big "kick me" sign for a brave patsy to take. The promise of the tower and some slaves to fill it has caused more than one troublemaker to take on suicide missions at her behest.

Behind the Screen: The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence does not include a home base per se. Several of the factions like the Cult of Zygax-Xith you could possibly serve that function. But, approaching them is a great risk; they are just as likely to drag the player characters off to the dungeon to humiliate and torture them as they are to give them the time of day.

I needed that place their player characters could spend some gold and get some supplies that was potentially corrupt, but not likely to be openly hostile. I chose its location on Kravian through as several random dice rolls, which seemed to dovetail very nicely with the K'tulu Cult plot that I had randomly generated.

Just by the basis of the location and the plot I've already rolled, I was able to derive the idea that there would be a representative of the deep ones in this town, and that they would be interested in hiring the PCS to steal the Necronomicon from The Grotto of the K'tulu-worshipping ape-men located in the same hex..

The reward, a fortress and slaves was rolled on the Oracle and gave me a lot more to work with.

I also rolled for an explosive acid splash trap to be hit in the Hex when the PCs arrived. That gave me the idea that there have been recent hostilities between the village and Ape-men that cause Ines to be set up, and the PCs are just caught in the crossfire.

That will be in the next play report.

Rather than use the list prices for items in the Rule Cyclopedia, I decided to use the random gear price rolling system from Low Fantasy Gaming . Most things, I'm rolling price with disadvantage, to represent the fact that the pieces are buying from Smugglers, gold isn't worth very much on the islands, and beggars can't be choosers. There aren't exactly a lot of craftsmen in broken cliff, and those that there are work at a premium, or they are slaves.

Gemstones aren't going to get their precise value, either. At best, while Neela is in the party her skill as a jeweler will let her make sure they can get a stack of gear that can round to the nearest 500gp increment in value.