West Highland

This section of West Highland is even more rural than the rest. To the south, Hightown sits on the leather Road. The next large city is Black Stag across several hundred miles of forest to the river. Here, there are farmers living in the shadow of the mountains, and occasionally very small villages. And that’s it.

Encounters

When traveling north of the Leather Road, encounters occur about 20% of the time every 24 hours.

If the characters travel to Biblyon on foot or horseback, and if they have a random encounter, their first such encounter within five miles of Biblyon will be with an animal corpse, its eyes, nose, tongue, and ears eaten off. It is about two days old.

The wolf stares back at you with empty eyes. Flies circle about the blood-flecked corpse, and maggots crawl from the wounds where its nose and its ears used to be. The animal’s mouth hangs open in an empty, perpetual yawn.

Otherwise, their encounters will be standard for the wilderness of West Highland. Remember that you can determine these encounters by chance, or choose encounters as appropriate to the story, or simply use these charts as a guide to what else lives in the area. Also, these outdoor charts include possible encounters with creatures nearly impossible for first, second, and third level characters to defeat head-on. While poor decisions on the characters’ parts might lead to their deaths, you should not personally place the characters in untenable positions. Let them do that on their own.

Main Table

Civilized Peoples

Masquerade

Most masquerade encounters will be with a creature acting human; deity encounters may be with deities acting as just about any creature or thing, as appropriate. The characters may never know they met a werewolf, dryad, phantasm, or god. Such encounters are unlikely to result in combat now, but may set up a later adventure when the characters discover that their acquaintance (perhaps by then a friend) has a secret.

Humanoid Creatures

Encounters with Goblins are 15% likely to include 1 Orc running the show.

Natural Encounters

Animals

Snakes

Copperheads, waterheads, and rattlers are standard poisonous snakes.

Fantastic Creatures

Most animal-like fantastic creatures will hardly notice the characters; those that eat livestock might descend upon the characters’ packmounts if they have any, but unless the characters do something stupid to attract the attention of, say, a gryphon, these fantastic encounters will be marvels to tell about having seen when they return home. Undead encounters will occur in an appropriate location: phantasms or poltergeists in abandoned homes, ghouls in a cemetery.