Into the Devouring Wilderness : Location Overview: The Lazy Cockatrice

Hex 0203

Location: The Lazy Cockatrice Inn

Cockatrice Rampant by José
Gagliardi Jr CC-BY-SA

The lazy cockatrice is a roadside Inn that serves travelers on the North Road. It has stood since the time between the Third and Fourth Goblin Wars. Established by a freshly landed knight, Ector the Ardent, it is one of the last stops on the road before travelers meet the sea.

A man of common birth, Ector knew that neither his title nor the treasure he earned in foreign adventuring was enough to set his children up in the future, he decided to use his land grant to establish a business that would outlast his knighthood,

It is still run today by his five-times great grandson Gerald Ardin.

The Inn forever changes with the times: the Ardins are devoted to making sure it will always be a safe and welcoming place for those traveling the North Road.

Today that means a high stone wall with watched gates, a watchtower hosting its own detachment of the Baron's Road Wardens, and a smithy for raising wagons and re-shoing horses, repairing wagons, and re-arming coachmen along the road.

Tzwa Invasion

The inn is the perfect starting location for the hex crawl. It is a place with a handful of interesting NPCS, a place that the PCs are new to, and one with the possibility for safety.

But as this is a Deathtrap Lite campaign, I am inclined to make it more than just a starting point. I will have the vile high-tech dimensional invaders, The Tzwa attack the inn, filling it with horror and deathtraps. The PCs go to bed in an inn, and wake up to find it transformed into a lethal, trap-filled dungeon.

Once they escape the Inn, trouble really begins,: the PCs, and what PCs they are able to rescue are now in a monster-haunted and nightmarish wilderness hunted by killer Tzwa automata, that will force them to flee away from the road.