Cogelos, The Seat of the Sleepless Drift

Written by Dennis N. Santana Illustrated by Rob Torno

Introduction

Once a thriving countryside, where wheat stalks made golden curtains across the land broken only by the rising and falling hill forest, Cogelos and its villages now face a grave threat to their continued survival. Cogelos is an old and simple region where the land and personal strength are what is held most important. What people remain are the outlying farmers struggling to grow crops in the dying earth and the hunters fighting a war against their old forest home.

Deep within the forest stood the village of Reekoh, once a community of loggers and hunters that never once troubled their neighbors, now an ruin, flayed by ice and snow. What many centuries of human habitation could not, Neirave the ice mistress of Rekoh did: she conquered nature and made it her most loyal ally. When Reekoh shunned and abused her, it brought about the end of itself.

Those organisms which could not be twisted was merely drained of all vitality. Trees now lay caked with frost and encrusted with ice, the soil is covered in treacherous snow that saps any life it could give to the forest. Any lesser animals by now have fled or died. Only the strong beasts that Neirave uses to hunt down humans remain.

Neirave’s icy domain acts as though alive, spreading slowly out of the forest and into the surrounding countryside. Whether it would even end with her is unknown, as the forest itself seems to act harsh as its new mistress, slaughtering those within with nary a visible command from the Sleepless Drift. Many now believe the forest itself to be under no one’s control, and quite deliberately aiding Neirave in revenge for all the years of abuse both suffered.

Background

Cogelos was not a cradle of the world, but when the harsher regions evicted the humans within them it became a natural spot to settle. It has a rich past history, but most of it would be uninteresting to a traveler, involving tall tales of mythical beasts, forest spirits and legendary hunters rather than wars, riches or romances. With a temperate climate and plentiful soil and forest, it was ripe for man to take. For untold generations people have settled in Cogelos, logging its trees, mining its rivers, seeding the land. Never once did they foresee how the land would be turned against them.

There were a few villages in Cogelos, most of which faded over time as their people left to the more successful settlements, with the greatest and most recognized being those outside the forest. Kepet is the oldest, a community now within reach of the Sleepless Drift. Kepet is a great source of wheat crop, and they traded with their brothers in the Rekoh forest village for prime wood and the skins of the woodland beasts. The two villages share a foundation of history that made them inexorably linked.

The tale of the founding of Kepet and Rekoh shows their veneration for hunters and their pride in taming the wild life. Kepet and Rekoh were said to have been founded by two different families. One was led by a great hunter and another by a great farmer. The farmer wanted to head into the forest where there would be lots of plants, while the hunter wanted to stay out in the open where he could better challenge the local wild life. But eventually the division proved too much for them. The farmer could grow nothing in the forest and there was not a lot to hunt out in the fields. The families sent messengers to one another and eventually intermarried.

Kepet became the village of great farmers, while Rekoh became one of great hunters.

The region of Cogelos remained simple. They never quite struck gold and only small amounts of precious material from the rivers near Kepet. While they heard tales of great nations beyond their frontiers and eventually came into contact with other civilizations and kingdoms, they were not pushed out of their ordinary lifestyles because of this. Rekoh had even less contact with the outside world and its changes, knowing little beyond Kepet. A neighboring Kingdom considers Cogelos part of its territories, but knows better than to antagonize the hardy people of the fields and forests. With benign and light-handed rulership they have managed to slowly squeeze some easy (if not altogether very precious) riches from Cogelos.

When Neirave manifested as the Sleepless Drift, her first course of action was the scattering of her childhood home. Hunters from the village that managed to escape told neighboring communities of that day.

News of Neirave having gone missing were quick to spread, as everyone knew who she was. Few if any of them cared about what could happen to a girl her age in the forest. She was a witch, an ill omen. They were glad to see her gone. In a place where men held power and superstition was rampant, a girl like Neirave was less than trash.

But she soon strode back into the village, each of her steps leaving behind a trail of ice. It is said that she stood in the middle of the town as though waiting. For an apology, perhaps, or at least for someone to show her any sort of kindness or care. No one did, no one said a word. People barely wanted to look upon her pale beauty, thinking she had finally given herself wholly to her supposed witchcraft.

No Hunter recalls what she said to them before beginning the slaughter.

With one breath she made a storm of ice which sent homes flying and flayed men where they stood. It took only that to send everyone running, but Neirave made sure to destroy everything with more of her powerful storms. For her, it took only five or six breaths to eradicate the place where all her worst memories lay. Hunters from Rekoh regrouped and are said to have a hold inside the forest, but things look bleak as the ice moves beyond the trees.

Appearance

Cogelos is a somewhat small region mostly dominated by the fields around Kepet and the forest around Rekoh. Though other small family communities exist, these two are the only large settlements worth mentioning, one of which is all but destroyed and the other which sits on the edge of an ice-encrusted razor. Though once the warm colors of spring and autumn, the skies around Cogelos have become increasingly gray and the ground increasingly white.

Kepet: This large settlement is a number of wooden and log homes around the main trading road. One can see nearby farmland which might have been covered in golden wheat, but are now a vast waste of brown and white soil where small plants struggle to rise from the dirt. The Great Lodge where the town convenes is its most impressive feature, built out of the logs of the largest trees in the neighboring forest, said to have stood since five hundred years back.

The Forest: The forest goes by many names, sometimes merely Rekoh for the village within it, nowadays called Cocytus for being the icy fortress of Neirave. It is a thick forest of enormous trees. The terrain is made treacherous by the rising and falling of the hills. Now a dark, treacherous place, where the days are silent and eerie, the nights filled with stalking predators, Rekoh is unfit to inhabit except by predatory beasts. The ground itself is an enemy, hiding pitfalls and sinkholes within the snow, and the only source of food remaining is the meat of the vast army of forest beasts stalking its trails.

Somewhere inside this forest is the icy seat of the Sleepless Drift upon which Neirave is said to rest, concerning herself not with short bursts of aggression, but with the slow, but permanent expansion of her icy mantle. The Hunters believe the forest to be alive now, and in full support of Neirave’s plans. They can see no other reason why the beasts, the ground, perhaps even strange spirits of the forest, would turn violent.

Rekoh: Little, if anything, remains of the childhood home of Neirave. Only memories of the glorious village of Hunters remain. For Neirave, only the haunting presence of her past remains, buried somewhere around this ruined village in the form of her old, preserved body. Many Hunters have tried to search the remains of Rekoh for some answer to Neirave, but it is here where Neirave’s hatred is at its strongest and her forces at their most violent.

Using Cogelos

Cogelos is a relatively simple region to add to any campaign with a temperate countryside or other large stretch of rural land. It is a simple woodland region with only the autonomy that matters to them, that of their local affairs. The one truly important piece in the region is the Forest, but Kepet offers the players an opportunity to roleplay with the locals in a more peaceful setting, allowing them to see the fears and dreadful rumors of the land and better prepare.

A sense of imminent danger pervades Cogelos as it is a set piece clearly tied to the narrative of the Sleepless Drift. Neirave’s ice is already harming the outlying places of Cogelos, and people are scared. Word from Cogelos rushes to the outside world to see just what aid may come to them. It is a fairly straightforward place that can be dropped into a setting to pique the interest of players looking for a dire land to explore.

Adventure Hooks

• The Kingdom that lays claim to Cogelos receives word of the strange and possibly disastrous happenings in this outlying holding. They actively call for explorers to confirm these rumors, since sending official military could agitate the situation even further.
• The PCs in their travels stumble upon the Rekoh forest, as it is in their way to more fruitful pursuits. While traveling during the day seems to be the same as any other wintry forest, when night falls they are beset by beasts of natural and unnatural sorts.
• On the edge of the wildlands, the PCs discover a grievously wounded man attacked by wintry wolves, quite far from their natural habitation. Should they decide to aid the man, he will most certainly try to involve them in his order of hunters fighting the Sleepless Drift in its own wintry hold.

Cogelos, the Seat of the Sleepless Drift by Nevermet Press is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.nevermetpress.com/contact.

Portrait of a Villain: The Sleepless Drift, Neirave

Written by Dennis N. Santana Illustrated by James Keegan

The Winter brings forth the new year by freezing and smothering the wrongs of the past year. But Winter has ceased to have meaning, because people have ceased to change. Now they fear winter’s judgment. What they deserve is an endless winter, to reflect their frozen hearts.

Background

The Sleepless Drift, Neirave is an odd-looking woman, with a sterile beauty that seems mournfully frozen in time, wearing a long robe covered with crystals and flecks of ice. Those who enter her domain greatly fear discovering her or the creatures she commands, as no heart seems warm or pure enough for her to spare the wrath of her wintry domain.

Neirave Eda was born in an isolated forest village during a grave winter. She was a normal child for the longest time, but each winter she seemed to go through a change. As the land whitened, so did her hair turn pale, her eyes turn ice blue, her skin become grayed and her lips darkened. Things she touched would quickly become cold. Sculptures she made from ice or snow would move of their own volition if she commanded them to.

Her sorcerous power attracted negative attention. The villagers believed she would become dangerous to them. The village had no other with such powers, nobody who could control Neirave should she anger. But then winter would pass and she would return to normal. The village would forget, until next year. The winter would transform them, reveal their true colors and torment Neirave with the apparition.

Each winter her change would become more pronounced and her powers stronger. And each winter, the spring would take longer and longer to come, exposing Neirave to more and more of the village’s wrath.

Eventually, Neirave Eda was driven to suicide. She sliced her throat open over a mound of snow that hid her body forever. But she did not know what she did, for the girl had little control over her powers. All the dread and sorrow she felt, the fear of her persecution and the stress caused by the villager’s intolerance, was imparted upon that mound of snow, and perhaps into the forest itself.

A different Neirave was created there. An animate of ice with her exact appearance and power, but none of her earthly limitations upon her power. Encasing her old body in the ice, to be able to rest undisturbed, the new Neirave brought to the region their greatest fear – a winter that would never end and the untold destruction that comes with it. The place became known soon for its unending winter. Deep within the forest, Neirave made allies of the wintry animals, and made servants of the cold wind and the endless snow.

Motivation & Goals

Neirave’s endless winter is confined only to the forest from which she hails, but expands ever so slightly with each passing day.

To Neirave, the winter is a transitional period. The year is encased in ice and destroyed so the world can begin anew. Each winter, she would transform to show the worst in humanity – their fear and prejudice and anger towards a helpless girl. Now she has turned the winter upon her old tormentors. Unless they themselves transform into beings fit to live, the winter will drain them of all life, burdening them with the cold of their own sin.

Most of Neirave’s weaknesses remain trapped in her corpse, somewhere in the forest. But her emotions have not been entirely drained from her. Within her cold body still beats a warm heart. As long as it does, she cannot truly become the winter she wishes to. Her current goal is to master all of her powers, to overcome her false flesh and inherited emotions. To drive the winter past the forest and out into the waiting world.

Organization

Though she has all the memories of her old self, Neirave is a sheltered creature nonetheless. She knows little of what lies outside her own forest. Neirave’s grand retinues are composed of wolves and bears, and other animals of the cold forest, along with automata of snow and ice given a partial life by Neirave’s winter. These beasts have but one mission, which is to kill any remnants of the Neirave’s forest home that oppose her.

Neirave resides deep within the forest, randomly traversing it from day to day, never once staying in the same place. Despite her restlessness and randomness, she does have some followers. People who’ve encountered her and have been turned into ice effigies, they themselves embodying only a hatred for their own worst sins. They do not travel with her, but wander through her domain nonetheless. It is said that Neirave has one particular area of the forest from which her winter hails, that it is there where she can be stopped.

Combat Tactics

Neirave does not actively engage in combat, or at least, she has never had to. Upon witnessing her and receiving her kiss most people immediately die, becoming ice effigies. She commands violent blasts of cold wind that can uproot small buildings or blow away a group of strong men with mere breaths. Some never even see her, turned away by the violent winter in an instant. But her powers fluctuate, and only one major display of them has ever been witnessed. It is unknown if she can perform with such strength at all times.

Within the endless winter, she controls the ground, the wind, the sky. She is like a God in her own playing field, but a God that has never bested anyone but thugs and hunters, fighting without finesse. She knows not what would happen should a warm enough heart seek her in combat, nor what would happen if her old self would be brought back to life.

Adventure Hooks

• A surviving villager braves snow, monsters and her own fatigue and escapes into the outside world, warning a nearby village of the endless winter.
• The PCs must travel across a somewhat ordinary-seeming forest, but only within do they discover something sinister.
• Winters in the region begin to last longer, and the ground loses some fertility. An encroaching mantle of ice, seemingly alive, could be to blame.

The Sleepless Drift, Neirave by Nevermet Press is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.nevermetpress.com/contact.

Alae Di Noctis

Written by Dennis “Wyatt Salazar” Santana Edited by Jonathan Jacobs Illustrated by Rob Torno

The unknown powers are worthy of only certain causes, certain ideals.

Background

The Alae Di Noctis began as an unassuming parish in the hill country. The high priest of Alae Di Noctis was a man named Tolus, who had studied scripture since he was an orphan boy, and now devoted himself to prayer and service to his community. He was known as a man who traveled the region, taking care of lost souls, healing the sick, and performing the occasional casting out of demons. For a time, Tolus considered himself unmatched in his abilities since he had yet to come upon a demon that he could not match. This all changed, however, when Tolus stumbled into an exorcism that was beyond his ability to control or banish.

This unknown power was unlike anything encountered before, and it showed Tolus the true scope of the universe. During the casting out, which eventually failed, Tolus touched upon the mind of this entity for a brief moment and his mind, in that instant, was utterly destroyed. The entity’s vast millennial history, its travels across the entirety of the universe, and the totality of the souls it had corrupted through time disintegrated the importance of Tolus’s gods and his world suddenly became a speck of dust.

Tolus succumbed to the power of this entity, which entered into his own soul, seemingly completing the exorcism. Knowing the time would soon come when he could never allow another unworthy eye to see him, Tolus led his order away. He set out to fulfill the mission given to him by his new gods, a most holy mission of salvation. He burnt down his old church and hid with his followers, traveling far until they reached a mountainside, an abandoned mine, which they declared the holy mount of their new, sacred order.

Mission

Tolus forged a new organization, the Alae Di Noctis. The entities which contacted Tolus showed him visions of their rivals, beings immaterial of incredible strength. The entities wished for Tolus to hunt down the servants of these beasts, who were using their own sacred power without aim and without respect. In reality, the entities wish only for Tolus and his order to create chaos and disorder. They know for a fact that a war between them and other entities of their power would end in nothing. But if, by chance, some of their rivals are indeed slowed or weakened, they would be most pleased indeed.

Structure

At the head of the organization is Tolus, a man warped by the horrible power now within him. Tolus receives no contact from the outside world, and few if any of his own monks have seen his new form. Those that have seen him are known as Alaes, wings, and they serve as his lieutenants. The Alaes main function is to delegate his orders to the Noctis, men of the dark who use shards of power to find and kill others that have foolishly opposed the Alea Di Noctis.

Benefits/Drawbacks

Members of the Alae Di Noctis are each given a shard of chaotic power, the whole of which is held within Tolus. These shards allow the members of Alae Di Noctis to sense others who share similar foul powers. The shard is not enough to grant them much more than this, but should they die, the shard can either use their flesh to summon a beast from another realm, or create a small explosion to cover up the death of the Noctis member. The Noctis are trained to endure great tortures, fight with great physical prowess, and to disguise themselves as ordinary monks or pilgrims.

Adventure Hooks

• The Alae Di Noctis have targeted a prominent local for assassination. What has this man been hiding, and perhaps, should he be given up to the Noctis?
• A crazed man begs the players for help in exorcising a strange presence from him, but the Noctis have their eyes on him already.
• One of the players has contact with an entity, and is then followed by the Noctis. Has he or she really been tainted far enough to attract them?

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Alae Di Noctis by Nevermet Press is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.nevermetpress.com/contact.