Connects to: 03.29, 04.30, 04.31, 15.11, 29.14 and 33.00.
Overview
This area is covered in ripe fields of corn which seem to grow all year round. The farmers of this crop dwell in a small and dusty village at the center of the hex. Insular in the extreme, they are also dangerously hostile to anyone who they think they can defeat. However, a show of force will easily cow them into submission.
The corn farmers drug and kidnap unlucky adventurers who pass through their town. They then steal all their victims’ possessions and, bizarrely, pull out all their teeth, before dumping them in the nearby Thorny Gulch (04.30). The teeth are ground up against the surface of their rocky god (03.29) and used to fertilize the corn crops; each stalk of corn having a different property depending on the type of tooth used. Molar-corn, for example, grants the ability to crush objects between one’s palms. Corn from wisdom teeth is used by shamans of the corn people, though its exact properties are still a secret.
It is a strange fact of the corn farmers that they consider teeth to be a rich treasure, but have no use for gold or magic items. These objects make them a target for bandits who are rife in the area, so they dispose of them by dropping them down a certain old well (04.31). There, the treasure is consumed by the sentient black sphere known as the Nothing. One would assume that such treasure is irretrievably lost. However some years ago Dormond of the Crooked Oak (04.31) returned to the Shuttered City bearing a single gemstone of unique color but relatively low value. He claimed that he had traced this gem’s lineage from the Hoard bank (33.00) to a party of adventurers lost in the southwest over a century ago. This was proof, he claimed, that matter could be retrieved from within the sphere. Before he could explain more, however, he disappeared.
Connection
- Grimvlech the Smiler lost his original teeth here (15.11).
Hooks
- What other types of corn can be grown, and who would pay for them?
- Tell me more about the bandits of the southwest.
- There must be an incredible treasure hoard hidden inside that Sphere! But how to get it out?
- What’s in Thorny Gulch? Will adventurers survived being dumped there naked and unarmed?
