Tuesday, August 6, 2024

D20x5 Keen Kingdoms

Requested by friend of the blog Max in the comments of D20x5 Peculiar Peasants. Some of these may not in the most technical & Merriam-Webster sense of the term be kingdoms. Click the button below to generate a kingdom of your very own:


Special thanks to Spwack for the generator generator here: http://meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html

D20This kingdom is
1mostly swamp, with any solid ground painstakingly dammed out of the muck.
2nestled among mountains, sustained by tariffs and the output of extensive terraces.
3within a jungle that's been transformed into a garden over many generations, the land enriched with terra preta and reshaped to reduce nutrient leaching.
4rocky and lushly forested, full of big lakes.
5mostly desolate taiga and tundra, the population clinging to its warmer coast.
6built upon an archipelago that formed around a volcanic arc.
7rolling steppe, taken from the nomads who once called it home with massive engineering projects - great walls and aqueducts.
8lying in the shadows of cyclopean ruins it could never hope to replicate.
9a vast prairie, built up with mounds and firebreaks both ancient and modern.
10laid along a prodigious river in the middle of a desert waste.
11planted on the boughs and tremendous polypores of gigantic, dying mangroves, rooted in the silt of a routed sea.
12as much below the earth as above it, qanats and catacombs and alcazars carved throughout its soft stone.
13salt flats in the shadow of mountains, a briny delta washing over the encrusted land.
14an island-nation, near-paradisical except for the constant and torrential rain.
15enclosed by mountains and rivers, a natural fortress.
16chapparal hills and groves.
17in an arid basin, quenched by a labour-intensive canal network.
18on a peninsula all but severed from the mainland by a catastrophe in olden days.
19beset by excessive and unpredictable seasons.
20a craggy and pitted coast.
D20This kingdom is ruled
1by an obese gourmand who cultivates myconid servants in the damp of their many fat rolls.
2by the kind-hearted yet tragically-inbred scion of an ancient dynasty.
3by a renowned warrior rendered prematurely decrepit by a web of old wounds and scars.
4by a literal lapdog, per the appointment of its mad former king.
5by a council of squabbling regents - its heir was cursed with eternal youth as an infant.
6by an authoritarian reformer loved by the common people and hated by the nobility.
7by a bon vivant who's kicked off an age of aestheticism and decadence in the kingdom.
8by a masked schemer who sold their soul to a demon to take and hold the throne.
9by a trio of minor gods, incarnate and conjoined in the same mortal body.
10by the lord-abbot of a sealed monastery dedicated to divining the will of the stars.
11by a senate composed entirely of veterans who've been maimed in defense of it.
12by a preternaturally lucky drunkard who accidentally stumbles onto the right solutions to the kingdom's problems.
13by twin monarchs, one mute yet mighty, the other frail and erudite.
14by a seemingly-bottomless hole in the earth. It gives sage commands when fed living things.
15by a paranoid master of spies and poisons who had all their many siblings killed.
16by the harem of the king, who hold him hostage in their fortified seraglio.
17by a fanatical convert to a strange foreign cult who's attempting to force its teachings on the kingdom.
18by a life-size puppet. No one who's ever tried following the strings to its puppeteer has ever returned.
19by a sapient perfume distilled by a secretive guild - those intoxicated by the perfume's scent become possessed by it.
20by an immortal queen who is able to give birth to herself - surpassingly wise, yet far removed from the concerns of the finite.
D20This kingdom is renowned
1for its grand monuments.
2for the skill of its physicians.
3for the loveliness of its music.
4for the works of its philosophers.
5for its fabulous wealth.
6for the industriousness of its peasantry.
7for the learning of its scholars.
8for the bravery of its warriors.
9for the pedigree of its horses.
10for the savour of its wine.
11for its public works & services.
12for its vivid dyes and fine textiles.
13for the intrepidity of its explorers.
14for the hilarity of its theatre.
15for the quality of its arms and armour.
16for its awestriking vistas.
17for the flavour of its spices.
18for the beauty of its people.
19for the marvels of its mages.
20for the craft of its potters.
D20This kingdom is reviled
1for blaspheming against the heavens.
2for the coarseness of its poetry.
3for the licentiousness of its lotharios.
4for its walking and haunting dead.
5for its abominable mutants.
6for practicing human sacrifice.
7for its ease at taking offense and the disproportionality of its vengeance.
8for flaunting the customs of hospitality.
9for its slaving expeditions.
10for the unfairness of its merchants.
11for making league with fell creatures.
12as a den of lepers.
13for its war-mongering.
14for its rank banditry.
15for its two-tongued diplomacy.
16for its debased currency.
17for its backwards laws.
18for its unsanitary practices.
19for the greed of its creditors.
20for the brutishness of its soldiers on campaign.
D20This kingdom's capital
1is far older than the kingdom itself, running deeper than anyone living in it cares to know.
2is overrun with petty, penniless, honour-starved nobility.
3is under quarantine due to plague, and a cutthroat black market has scabbed up around it to get goods in and people out.
4is a bristling kludge of forts, towers, and walls, district-fiefs left over from an old and settled intra-municipal war.
5was recently moved for politico-theological reasons, though the former capital remains the kingdom's economic center.
6is maze-like, requiring local knowledge or understanding its system of road-god idols (which grow larger the closer one gets to the central palace) to navigate.
7holds hostage the children of outer nobility, and increasingly, powerful non-nobles.
8is awash with monkeys, who steal food & hats (they have a great fondness for hats (and for biting the noses of snoring sleepers)).
9prohibits bearing weapons within, on pain of death. Schools of martial arts have developed within which teach how to kill with everyday items like brooms or combs.
10was built on unstable foundations - it is sinking, and being built up upon itself in an attempt to outrace the decline.
11is warren'd under with the smuggling-tunnels of black lotus petal dealers.
12bears the unfortunate iconography of a previous regime - defaced and stucco'd over, yet peeking back through by erosion and graffiti.
13is in thrall to the fuel-monopoly of its chicken gong guild.
14is criss-crossed with elevated aqueduct-canals which its elites reserve for their transit.
15was cursed to drift away into the sky, and although it has broken apart into floating chunks its doom has been delayed under the weight of leaden chains.
16swoops into the bowl of a crater, rope-slung gondolas carrying people and cargo from its rim into its dip and back again.
17was built according to principles of sacred geometry, and was recently disrupted by an earthquake - now waves of disorder and mutation emanate from damaged quarters.
18was once split by a waterway - now drained - apartments and markets built into its dried and grassy bed.
19is unconquered, its defenses legendary.
20was burned a half-generation back, and conspiracy theories abound as to the cause.

1 comment:

  1. Glad to see you swung back around to this :)!

    These peculiar peasants wear long skirts regardless of gender, sewn with loops to hold tools.

    These peculiar peasants inhabit dug-out shelters in the sides of deep pits.

    These peculiar peasants subsist on the regurgitated fodder and meat of wooly grubs that must be rolled around their grazing grounds.

    These peculiar peasants are troubled by the leaders of a failed revolt holing up in their homes, and the sheriff pursuing those rebels.

    These peculiar peasants entertain themselves by doing barbershop quartet-style singing.

    This kingdom is chapparal hills and groves.

    This kingdom is ruled by a paranoid master of spies and poisons who had all their many siblings killed.

    This kingdom is renowned for the intrepidity of its explorers.

    This kingdom is reviled for the greed of its creditors.

    This kingdom's capital was cursed to drift away into the sky, and although it has broken apart into floating chunks its doom has been delayed under the weight of leaden chains.

    I just rolled these two together and ya they do seem to complement each other well, could easily make a setting out of these two.

    ReplyDelete