HYPERBOREA / Hyperborean Encounter Tables!

**Posted by Blackadder23** 4/18/2017 12:51 pm

Ever wanted to let your players just hex crawl all over Hyperborea? Here are the tools you've been lacking. Customized encounter tables for every region, city, and body of water listed in the gazetteer. These suckers have it all: Monsters of every kind. Weather. Natural disasters. Human encounters from individual NPCs to pilgrims and merchants to armed patrols to rival adventuring parties. THE DREADED CELESTIAL PHENOMENA (now with new horrors like "Fortean Fall", "Voice of Doom", "Seas Turned to Blood", and "White Death"). Hundreds of different possible encounters in every region!
For the most part the tables are weighted toward encounters with animals, natural phenomena, and humans - in keeping with the popular perception of what "sword & sorcery" means - but some regions are a lot more monster-ridden than others: The Aeries are crawling with mythical beasts, Sharath is thick with aliens and the undead, and if you go to Thaumagorga's Teeth, you just might meet a bunch of daemons. Keep a sharp eye out for my unique sense of "humor" too ("Tornadoes in a village always strike the lowest quality housing first." - hahaha I kill me).
I know people have been asking for these, so download them today. Your players won't thank you!
http://www.mediafire.com/file/xp2y59ssdixm3p4/Hyperborean_Encounter_Tables_Revised.pdf

Last edited by Blackadder23 (4/21/2017 9:20 am)

**Posted by Chainsaw** 4/18/2017 1:42 pm

Thanks Ben! Can't wait to check this out.

**Posted by Monkeydono** 4/18/2017 2:09 pm

This is immensely helpful for my current situation (I've been tediously building customized tables as my crew moves about...) especially with the environmental encounters (I still need to take the time to reread the monsters' descriptions to list the possible causes for their monstrous condition - only russet mould begetting spore-man comes to mind atm)!
My gratitude, BA23, truly amazing!!

**Posted by Blackadder23** 4/18/2017 2:11 pm

Thanks, guys! I hope you get some use out of them.

**Posted by mabon5127** 4/18/2017 3:10 pm

At first glance all I can say is holy crap these will be useful!! Will dig in later.

**Posted by rhialto** 4/19/2017 5:01 am

Superb work! I thank you on behalf of my ingrate players.

**Posted by Blackadder23** 4/19/2017 4:43 pm

Make them die screaming.

**Posted by Doctor_Rob** 4/20/2017 5:14 am

Crikey - that's really impressive! Thanks for this. [Rolls dice with glee whilst the players quake]

**Posted by gizmomathboy** 4/20/2017 11:50 am

(Originally posted over at the Alehouse but I thought I would post here as well, because once you do a little digging you realize how big this project had to have been).

Ok, so I started figuring out how I would automate this using some pre-existing stuff. Man this was a monumental labor of love. There are 90 "starting" tables (the geographic locales), 14 terrain types, 9 base encounter types (animal, celestial, etc), and descriptions for some stuff. There are also the damn appendices to generate NPC parties!

Damn.

Now, while I was trying to figure this out and cross-reference to the Gazetteer and the map I did notice 3 terrain types weren't listed: Volcano, Volcano Glaciated, and Tar Pits.

I'm not asking or desiring you to flesh those out because the mountain, mountain glaciated would work just fine, and the tar pits are just tar pits.

For the coding geeks amongst you I'm using Roland. If I had to guess Rik and I might be the only ones using it. It took me a bit to get my head around it but I'm getting better with it. I mostly use it to generate random loot using the Hyperborea treasure tables.

Rik the DM for the one online campaign I'm a player in and used to be the Pumpking (basically project leader and final say on things) for Perl.

https://rjbs.manxome.org/rubric/entry/2013

**Posted by Handy Haversack** 4/20/2017 12:05 pm

Damn, BA23. Thanks so freaking much. These are going to help immediately.

For you, they will die screaming.

**Posted by Blackadder23** 4/23/2017 12:26 pm

Time for your daily encounters! (Mostly for my own amusement, since I put so %@!* much work into this thing, but you could also use this list if you just don't feel like rolling encounters.) First up: your players are in the marshes south of Abbica's Mere. What lucky thirteen encounters will they have?

Fog bank
Comet
Cloudburst
Fog bank
9 red deer
3 black bears
Fog bank
16 red deer
Geyser
500 bats – night only
Shining mist
Vermin (PC loses food and water, the poor sap)
12 giant ants

Wow, it's pretty foggy around Abbica's Mere. Also, the bats and giant ants are going to leave a mark! But I was really hoping to roll an '18' and summon Abbica herself. Better luck next time...

Last edited by Blackadder23 (4/23/2017 12:44 pm)

**Posted by Ghul** 4/24/2017 7:30 am

Blackadder23 wrote:
Time for your daily encounters! (Mostly for my own amusement, since I put so %@!* much work into this thing, but you could also use this list if you just don't feel like rolling encounters.) First up: your players are in the marshes south of Abbica's Mere. What lucky thirteen encounters will they have?

Fog bank
Comet
Cloudburst
Fog bank
9 red deer
3 black bears
Fog bank
16 red deer
Geyser
500 bats – night only
Shining mist
Vermin (PC loses food and water, the poor sap)
12 giant ants

Wow, it's pretty foggy around Abbica's Mere. Also, the bats and giant ants are going to leave a mark! But I was really hoping to roll an '18' and summon Abbica herself. Better luck next time...

Sounds like my kind of adventure! Great stuff, BA23!

**Posted by Blackadder23** 4/24/2017 8:31 am

It's time for daily encounters again! This time your players have foolishly made landfall on the Aeries, where a "plethora" of mythical beasts are known to dwell. Will they die by poison, blood drain, minotaur club, harpy fang, or gorgon gaze?

2 harpies
2 wyverns
5 minotaurs
3 harpies
Thunderstorm
7 griffins
11 griffins
10 griffins
2 manticores
Sleet storm
13 stirges
11 hippogriffs
5 wyverns

And the winner is... griffin beak and claw! I guess the moral of this short, sad story is: don't go to the Aeries. And if you do, don't bring any horses.

Last edited by Blackadder23 (4/24/2017 9:47 am)

**Posted by Blackadder23** 4/25/2017 8:27 am

It's that time again - daily encounters! Today your players have traveled to Alus Mercury, the ancient Hyperborean city buried by Xathoqqua as punishment for worshiping Mercury, probably to see what loot they can grub from the ruins. What thirteen horrors await them there?

18 wolves
12 wolves
Geyser – only in volcanoes, so no encounter!
1 viper
7 skeletons
1 cave bear
1 viper
Snowstorm
80 bandits (possibly a gang of tomb raiders who don't intend to share)
8 hippogriffs
5 giant toads (I see these as white bloated things with sardonic expressions, left by Xathoqqua to guard the ruins)
1 mountain ape
1 giant weasel – night only

A bit of a grab bag of encounters.

Last edited by Blackadder23 (4/25/2017 8:38 am)

**Posted by Handy Haversack** 4/25/2017 7:51 pm

Awesome.

If you ever do a "reprint," I would beg for page numbers and cross-references. Because I'm a lazy, lazy man.

**Posted by gizmomathboy** 4/26/2017 8:29 am

Handy Haversack wrote:
Awesome.

If you ever do a "reprint," I would beg for page numbers and cross-references. Because I'm a lazy, lazy man.

Some day soon there might even be a web page thingy

**Posted by Blackadder23** 4/26/2017 8:37 am

You know what time it is: daily encounters! This fine day your players have ventured to the Anlates Isles, home of the insane buck-naked statuesque Amazon berserkers. (It's always the crazy ones...) What encounters will they have there?

17 aurochs
Sinkhole
14 aurochs
1 giant toad
1 giant tick
19 wild horses
Stellar conjunction
14 aurochs
13 aurochs
1 black bear
Sleet storm
Lost
1 boar

So it seems, at least on this visit, the Anlates Isles are less "islands of the insane buck-naked statuesque Amazon berserkers" and more "islands of the livestock". Five table entries for berserkers, and I was rolling all around them. Oh well. I guess the PCs can set up a hibachi on the beach, grill some steaks, and search for more adventurous locales tomorrow!

**Posted by Blackadder23** 4/26/2017 11:23 am

Handy Haversack wrote:
Awesome.

If you ever do a "reprint," I would beg for page numbers and cross-references. Because I'm a lazy, lazy man.

I did try to number the pages, but I couldn't find a way to fit them in and still cram nine tables to a page.
But if I do another version, I'll see what I can do.

Last edited by Blackadder23 (4/26/2017 11:24 am)

**Posted by Blackadder23** 4/27/2017 8:13 am

Time once again for your daily encounters! This time your players have traveled to Atlantica, where the last remnants of the Atlantean race are slowly dying off and turning into fish. How many of those sad sacks will the PCs meet?

400 bats – night only
Hunting party of 13 bowmen, led by Pelagios. They haven’t bagged any game yet.
Hunting party of 16 bowmen, led by Elpis. They haven’t bagged any game yet either.
14 reindeer (someone needs to tell all those hunters)
5 giant bees
Flash flood
Patrol of 19 light infantrymen, led by Euphemia (4th level fighter). Maybe the hunters tipped them off (if the PCs left any survivors).
Hunting party of 14 bowmen, led by Galenos. These guys haven’t bagged anything either!
15 aurochs (okay, the animals are just mocking the hunters at this point)
Patrol of 13 light infantrymen, led by Heron (1st level fighter). Probably trying to catch all the Atlanteans who are wasting their time “hunting” when they should be fishing.
Patrol of 13 light infantrymen, led by Lysandra (1st level fighter). I would probably make this a duplicate of one of the earlier patrols, unless the PCs have been killing them all. Atlanteans are supposed to be nearing extinction (probably because they can’t shoot straight) so there shouldn’t be that many of them running around. The hunting parties could also be the same one over and over, which would make it even funnier – the PCs keep meeting the same unlucky hunters in between stumbling over game animals.
Vermin (some unfortunate PC lost all his water)
3 rats (their corpses might make good trade goods with the Atlanteans – they have to be getting pretty hungry by now!)

Man, the Atlanteans are lousy shots. They should really stick to fishing (and turning into fishes).

Last edited by Blackadder23 (4/27/2017 8:17 am)

**Posted by gizmomathboy** 4/27/2017 8:49 am

What terrain did you use for Atlantica? I think that would be the same for other small islands that don't have a specified terrain like a mountain or forest or such.