The Bladeless Blade of Kammorachû

TL;DR: It's a blade that works as a spell. Any spell.

In the north the legends of the ancient kingdom of Tel Ammon are still whispered rather than spoken aloud, and never at night. Their enormous ruins, tombs, and broken statues still dot the north, and the darkness pooling in those tombs and in the shadows of those ruins is unquiet.

Still more is whispered of the Ammon mage Kammorachû, a bitter and black-hearted man, who deep in his cavernous lair beneath the city of Akh-Ammon forged the Bladeless Blade.

The Bladeless Blade, has, as the name tells, no blade; it is hilt only. Just a hilt. Useless. But for the gifted, those in the know, the Bladeless Blade is also a cage. It can capture spirits. It can capture spells.

When Kammorachû wielded it in battle against the southern birdmen the blade sizzled and thundered; some spells of water and lightning where intertwined there. It soaked and electrocuted the enemy simultaneously.
When the foul mage wielded it during the Ammon Kinstrife it sputtered and flared like oily flame. Fire and grease was on it. It set the enemy in flame as if they had been drenched in lamp oil.
When he cut off the head of the leader of the third slave rebellion, he had no spell on the blade at all. It is said that the Bladeless Blade caught the soul of the slave leader; sucked it right out of his heart, and used it as blade and that afterwards, the invisible blade screamed in anguish as it cut down its former comrades.
He wielded it with a spell of Cutting against the mountain hordes. Its blade was invisible but cut through sword, armour, and flesh as if it was nothing.

Rumour has it the dark one, Kammorachû, assassinated his own king and usurped the throne with the Bladeless Blade, using some vile curse set in the blade. He cut the king by stealth; the blade was mere hilt, after all, and easy to conceal. The curse could not be seen, nor did the king feel anything when he was cut; but it bit deep, and worked its way inside the king for 50 years, while Kammorachû waited patiently, till at last he died of some sudden illness - which the race of Ammon does not suffer. The Fifty Year Sword it is also called because of this. Deep its bite can be, but slow the blood to run...

Yeah it's a hilt you can put a spell on and I mean any spell. This is gonna fuck your game up.

d20 Escaped Spells

We all know that spells are actually spirits from another dimension that a wizard traps in his brain.

But we usually don't bother with the implications of that. He always meets them in books, doesn't he? He *could* meet them face-to-face, right there in the dungeon. Wild Spells. Escaped Spells. Spirits, for all intents and purposes.

Roll on this table for a random spell encounter. Or use it when your player's spells gain sentience.
Here they are.

by Apofiss.

1. Meln. A small, pink candlelight floating without a candle. Will strike up a conversation. 
1. Personality: hey heeey, my man! 
2. Speaks: like a ridiculously disarming friend with this voice who hasn't seen you in a long time. 
3. Wants: everyone to get along. 
4. Spell: Charm Person. The person regards you as a good friend and ignores the obvious spell you just cast on them. If you invest at least 4 dice into this spell, the duration becomes permanent.
2. Tutatat. Looks like any of the perfectly normal d3 following: 1. a red apple 2. a fresh fish (1 out of 6 odds it's swimming through the air) 3 a silver spoon. Ideally players take it with them before they realize it's a spirit. 
1. Personality: very, very shy. Will be embarrassed if the players figure out what it is. 
2. Voice: like a 4 year old girl, including the child-like cadence. 
3. Wants: to hide and to be hidden! 
4. Spell: Disguise.
3. Sashaan. An upside down green-stained copper mask wreathed in blue flame. 
1. Personality: seemingly harmless, but will express alarming interest in cutting tools and facial injuries. 
2. Voice: hoarse and after a while kind of creepy. 
3. Wants: to replace and become a face. All human corpses in the dungeon are missing their faces. 
4. Spell: Death Mask
4. Xoixoi. A floating eyeball in a reddish vortex. If it spots you it will scream and scream and scream until you can calm it down (CHA check). This may attract enemies, for which it will apologize.
1. Personality: skittish and anxiety-riddled. 
2. Voice: high and hysterical. 
3. Wants: for everyone to DON'T SNEAK UP ON ME LIKE THAT, CHRIST. 
4. Spell: Alarm. Becomes a floating eyeball for [sum] / 2 hours; if it sees an intruder it will scream; you’ll hear it at any distance.

The Bloody Lands of Circassa

First off, this blog is mainly an attempt to get some dnd personal worldbuilding organized. I was inspired to do this after finding Goblin Punch, which is amazing. I have tons of half-baked ideas lying around and some friends who'd like to play dnd if only someone was willing to DM, so I guess this is my foray into actually producing some sort of homebrew settings. If anyone ever actually reads this and likes it, that is a win for me.

Let's away!

The Lands of Circassa

Basically, it's a volcanic swamp-plain that is really the bloodstain of an ancient murdered god.
In the northern parts of Caraxe lies a swamp that stretches away for miles and miles in the shadow of mount Berammon. The entire landscape is dominated by shades of red and black, with only bright green and blue mineral deposits around the boiling pools popping out.

In the bogs, pools bubble with steam that tastes like metal on the back of your tongue. The thin-treed forests are all shades of red, brown, and purple. In the barrens, the very rocks look like congealed blood.

According to the Circassans, that's because it is. The Red Lands were formed when the Ruling King named Diluvian was betrayed by his two companions, stabbed clean through with the Pammachon sword which burns like the heart of the earth. His gigantic body toppled from his palace on the mountain onto a fertile patch of land which his boiling blood stained. To this day, the place where Diluvian's massive corpse lay is seeped through with boiling blood -- seething with the heat of the Pammachon sword or with lust for revenge. People can't seem to agree on it.

The Red People

The Circassans -- or the Red People as some call them -- believe themselves to have been born out of the seething blood. They look like it, sure. They're hairless and slightly misshapen, their skins ranging from anywhere between blood-red, brown, and blotted purple. They enjoy spicy foods, a good fight, poetry with a distinctive depressive streak, and a hot bath in any of Circassa's hot springs (the water is slightly reddish).

Circassans revere -- and fear -- blood, or rather the power inherent in it. A person's blood is a person's soul. The religion of the Red Men centers on the ritual letting and imbibing of the blood of (usually willing) others for whatever reason (marriage, mourning, pledging fealty). The bloodspeakers of the tribes use blood magic as part of sacred, divinitory rites. Don't call it blood magic though, since other and unsanctioned uses of blood magic are seen as severe blasphemy, or as a violation of a person on par with rape. These all function within the wider worldview wherein Diluvian is honoured as the Great Ancestor, the Dead Father.

These are the old ways, the ways of the blood. The tribes (calling themselves freemen) still practice these ways in their semi-nomadic travels over the Circassan plains and bogs. However, many Circassans have abandoned the old ways and live like a settled, agrarian people, either in their city of Godsgrave, or in the many cities of the lands surrounding Circassa. Some have even lost their old religion, the way of the blood and the Dead Father. The tribes call these city people stonefolk, and it is not a compliment.

Flora

The Bloodlands are filled with all manner of choking weeds and gore-like algae filling the smoking pools.

Bloodplum is an ever popular fruit with the Circassans. It makes your eyes turn red if you eat too much of it.

Purplerice is the main agrarian crop for cities like Godsgrave. The tribes sometimes buy it, since it is useful, keeps for a long time, and it isn't hard to find a boiling pool somewhere if you can't get a fire going for cooking.

Birch grows in Circassa. Ordinary birch, though the leaves seem a little reddish. Same goes for many other "ordinary" plants and grasses.

Fauna

Everything in Circassa has adapted to the heat emanating from the bowels of the earth in places.

Hotfrogs are frogs that have an incredibly high body temperature due to their adaptation to the hotter pools in Circassa's wilderness. They are a delicacy and the Circassans hunt them with long frogspears to avoid the hot steam.

Soarers are a type of very light and thin snakes that can - if weather allows - float crazy distances on the hot air streams that arise from the red ground. Some types actually hunt birds.

Pearl Beetles are delicious (and huge) insects that are not native to Circassa, but some have escaped after being imported to Godsgrave as livestock or pack animals.

Monsters

Some bad critters are the spirits that arise from the boiling pools at certain positions of the moons. They might be fragments of Diluvian's ghost or manifestations of his betrayal. Nobody knows, but they can possess a man and makes his blood boil. When you look at them, your eyes start bleeding.

Lurkers are half-real, hateful creatures that lurk in ponds and pools to drag in any passing little girl and drown/boil her to death. An adventurer will also do. They might be born out of Diluvians blood same as the Circassans, but they are cruder, lumpier, and turn back into liquid once killed.