My Pointcrawl Contest Victory

Chris Kutalik of the Hill Cantons blog recently announced a contest to design a location for his upcoming pointcrawl adventure "The Slumbering Ursine Dunes."  Potential prizes included having your location included in the finished adventure, and receiving a wargame from Chris' personal collection.

The winners were announced even more recently, and my entry won second place!

You can read my completed entry by clicking the link below.  If you want to wait to see it in the finished adventure, or at the gaming table, then allow me to leave just the following picture to whet your imagination.

"Castoroides" by Charles R.Knight,via Wikimedia

Diluvian Reservoir.

A millennia-old dam complex here holds a reservoir of the last floodwaters of the Deluge. The reservoir sits in the low point of a deep ravine. The birch forest here grows thick and ancient; the eldest trees stand like watchtowers around the dam. The floodwaters contain the last undying pairs of extinct prehistoric fauna. Antediluvian treasures lie buried beneath the mud in a ruined Nephilim village. The valley can only be entered from the southwest and northeast. The paths are steeply sloped and choked with seedling birches; ascending out of the ravine takes twice as long as entering.

The dam is maintained by a family of 6 giant beaver engineers [AC 7 pelt, HD: 4, Attack: 1 (bite or tail or weapon), bite 1d8 and save vs. rods or sunders wooden weapon, tail slap 1d8 and save vs. paralysis or knocked prone, auto-reloading crossbow 1d6]. They are an unbroken lineage from the megafauna shipwrights who built the Lesser Ark. Their lair is built into the dam. Its public areas include a reception desk, model architecture display room, aquarium viewing room, and store selling hand-held wooden analytic engines. Private areas include family sleeping area, reservoir access, workshop, food storage, and spillway control room.

If the spillways are fully opened, the entire ravine will be flooded, and the two sites accessible to the ravine will become marshland. Prehistoric marine life will begin showing up in waterways throughout the Slumbering Ursine Dunes region, and the Last Nephilim will awaken beneath the ancient mud.