Weekly J3H Campaign Starts 13: Dakton
I'm making 3 hexes and a town every week of 2024 in the style of Chgowiz's Just 3 Hexes format. Check the J3H tag to see all entries in the series.
(Hex tiles used in the image are from Zeshio's Pixel Hex Tileset, the map was created using Hex Kit)
Campaign: The dead walk in Dakton once more. Skeletal dwarven kings and their retinues crawl from the desert sand and river mud to roam the land, clashing whenever two groups meet and vying to hold territory. Guards armed with obsidian and silver stand at the walls of Dakton to repel the forces of the dead, but many whisper that the living cannot stand forever.
Homebase (2008): Dakton - A traditional dwarven river town built in the foothills of the Coldheart Mountains. The town was old when the dwarven empire fell hundreds of years ago, and it hasn't gotten any younger since. The entire surrounding countryside is filled with neat rows of trees grown for timber and orchards for fruit.
Location 1 (2107): River's Mouth - The source of the River Dak, it flows off the Coldheart Mountains in an impressive waterfall. Large rounded orange mushrooms the size of a dwarf grow prolifically all over the cliffs surrounding the waterfall, they're not found anywhere else except within a mile or two of the falls. Local rumor says that the famous Dak is buried somewhere behind the falls and that the mushrooms are his loyal soldiers, giving the mushroom the name "tombguards."
Location 2 (2208): Eastspire Stand - The carefully maintained orchards and groves of trees give way to a ring of cleared ground surrounding a half-mile of standing dead trees emitting small wisps of purple smoke and glowing with a sinister pink light. A small stone fence has been carefully erected around the trees with warning signs every 200 feet. There's a farmhouse visible in the middle of the stand with a smooth obsidian monolith in the front yard.
Location 3 (2110): Black Tower - A tower made from obsidian and burned stone stands at the top of the sand dunes overlooking the river and Dakton on the other side. Obsidian gargoyles in the shape of winged demons perch on the outside of the tower, taking wing to form strange shapes in the air at dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight. The inside of the tower houses black stone sarcophagi, when the ground floor's stone coffins are filled with the dead the whole tower rises to expose a new ground floor with its own set of empty sarcophagi.