I haven’t had a chance to write my UA breakdown article on the Bastions and Cantrips packet for Tribality yet, but today I’m makin’ gravy without the lumps! This is content that should be fun even if you’re not using whatever comes from the Bastion rules in the end. I want to help you tighten the narrative connections to the PCs’ bastions with history and NPC neighbors. I’ll be handling this in the form of tables.

Bastion Location

Where is your Bastion? Roll 1d8 or choose. If you want a little less strangeness, roll 1d6 instead.

1 – Isolated countryside
2 – Rural farmland or village
3 – Small town
4 – Major city
5 – Underground
6 – Island
7 – Sky Island
8 – Traveling (caravan or ship)

Acquisition

How did you come to own this Bastion? Roll 1d8 or choose.

1 – Own? In this economy? No, I’m renting. (Pay a monthly or quarterly cost in gold.)
2 – I built within ruins that my companions and I cleared out. (There may be secrets and dangers yet undiscovered.)
3 – I inherited a fortification from family or a mentor. (Their friends expect things of you, and their enemies are now your enemies.)
4 – I won it at cards or dice, or in an arena. (The previous owner may keep challenging you to get it back.)
5 – I received or was awarded a royal commission to establish a bastion here. (The monarch has laws and expectations that both protect and constrain you.)
6 – I bought it for a princely sum, and now I have debts to pay. (You’re either paying that debt steadily, or you risk someone calling it in all at once. You may be in trouble with the bankers.)
7 – This is the home I grew up in, which I have reclaimed from my enemies. (What is left of those enemies now that you have driven them out? How long will they remain dormant?)
8 – I washed up here after a shipwreck or other catastrophe and built it into something that can last. (What did you lose in the catastrophe?)

Neighbors

What sort of people or creatures live near your Bastion? Choose your relationship with them, or roll 1d6: 1-2, hostile or extracting tribute; 3-4, trade partners; 5-6, friendly or allied with you.

Isolated Countryside

Roll 1d12 three times or choose. If you roll a repeat result, decide whether the groups are allies or rivals, or a more significant group of that type.

1 – Warren or village of kobolds or goblinkind
2 – Orcs or Lizardfolk
3 – Outlaws of various species
4 – Secret elven (roll d100: 1-40, wood elf; 41-80, high elf; 81-95, drow; 96-100, avariel) or gnomish enclave
5 – Metallic or gem dragon
6 – Chromatic dragon
7 – Barbarians, druids, or rangers
8 – Small settlement of giants
9 – Hag or hag coven, dwelling in a swamp, cave, or glade
10 – Sphinx or legendary talking animal
11 – Fey (roll d100: 1-40, Summer/Seelie; 41-80, Gloaming/Unseelie; 81-95, no court alignment; 96-100, solitary Archfey)
12 – Farm overtaken by scarecrows

Rural Farmland or Village

Roll 1d12 three times or choose. If you roll a repeat result, decide whether the groups are allies or rivals, or a more significant group of that type.

1 – Camp of outlaws of various species
2 – Village of halflings or dwarven salt miners
3 – Haunted churchyard, with a lurking necromancer
4 – Satyrs, pixies, sprites, or brownies
5 – Abbey of monks or warrior-monks
6 – Local lord’s hall, a noted giver of gifts
7 – Pride of griffons or herd of hippogriffs
8 – Slumbering giant
9 – Secret enclave of aasimar or tieflings
10 – Heretical or schismatic religious sect
11 – Fortress or garrison of an expansionistic kingdom or empire
12 – Fiend-haunted ruin or elemental rift

Small Town

Roll 1d12 three times or choose. If you roll a repeat result, decide whether the groups are allies or rivals, or a more significant group of that type.

1 – Extensive estates belonging to a viscount or bishop
2 – Ruined wizard’s tower or witch’s hut, teeming with servitors or animated objects
3 – Caravanserai, full of visitors from distant lands
4 – Tavern that is a front for smugglers or cultists
5 – Town commons, busy day and night with people and grazing animals
6 – Market square and tax collector’s office
7 – Pauper’s field, the graves tended by a druid and her two sons
8 – Local lord’s hall, defended by seven hearth-knights
9 – A well that whispers strange tales to any who toss in coin
10 – Amphitheater with bards, poets, actors, kenku, and preaching zealots
11 – Mixed neighborhood of goblins, kobolds, and dragonborn
12 – Hilltop observatory, run by scholars or occultists

Major City

Roll 1d12 three times or choose. If you roll a repeat result, decide whether the groups are allies or rivals, or a more significant group of that type.

1 – Sculptor, his yard full of marble or bronze grotesques
2 – Grand cathedral, still under construction after twenty-five years
3 – City forum, with barristers loudly arguing legal matters from morning to night
4 – Ironworks, run by dwarves, fire genasi, or constructs
5 – Gambling hall, a front for more serious crimes
6 – Warehouses or derelict buildings, inhabited by unsavory or desperate folk
7 – University, run by an ancient shadar-kai, with students from every land and species
8 – Sewer access, from which strange creatures emerge on moonless nights
9 – Ossuary, where flameskulls and a mimir are hidden
10 – Alchemical guildhall, with strange smells, lights, and explosions
11 – Townhouse with an ominous reputation, owned by the black sheep of a wealthy family
12 – The city’s oldest tavern, a clearinghouse of rumors

Underground

Roll 1d12 three times or choose. If you roll a repeat result, decide whether the groups are allies or rivals, or a more significant group of that type.

1 – Svirfneblin village on the banks of an underground lake
2 – Fomorian enclave
3 – Prison of a bound, tormented djinni
4 – Labyrinthine tunnel complex that holds a clan of minotaurs
5 – Densely-built city of goblins and tieflings
6 – Fey glade, where it is always twilight
7 – Flame rift full of elementals, azers, and salamanders
8 – Drow listening post, carefully concealed
9 – Den of a legendary cave bear
10 – Cavern of magically resonant crystals, inhabited by psionic mystics
11 – Hook horror spawning ground
12 – Kingdom of ghouls

Island

Your neighbors might be underwater, elsewhere on your island, on another nearby island, or on the nearest part of the mainland. Roll 1d12 three times or choose. If you roll a repeat result, decide whether the groups are allies or rivals, or a more significant group of that type.

1 – Extended family of sea elves who farm the seafloor
2 – Undersea castle of a storm giant or marid
3 – Shipwreck (submerged, partially submerged, or beached) that houses a witch or hag
4 – Sea caves that are a hideout for a pirate fleet
5 – Kelp forest with a circle of oceanic fey
6 – Port city with major trade routes
7 – Fort overlooking a strait or river delta
8 – Lighthouse, inhabited by a family of gnomes or dwarves
9 – Demon-haunted island, with an intermittent planar rift
10 – Sheer cliff with caves inhabited by harpies or aarakocra
11 – Ducal seaside villa
12 – Village of pearl divers or fisherfolk

Sky Island

Your neighbors live on mountaintops, other sky islands, or on solidified clouds. Roll 1d12 three times or choose. If you roll a repeat result, decide whether the groups are allies or rivals, or a more significant group of that type.

1 – Mountaintop monastery of the sun god
2 – Tribal lands of goliaths or a high-elevation human culture
3 – Goats, yaks, and the dragon that feeds on goats and yaks
4 – Nesting grounds of a flight of wyverns or a roc
5 – Improbably tall tower, occupied by people who are secretly cultists of Pazuzu
6 – Floating platform-village, built on a bowl-shaped structure of one hundred immovable rods
7 – A legendary talking eagle, possessed of supernatural wisdom
8 – A college of mages who have lifted up their own sky island
9 – Airship trade route, with lurking airship pirates
10 – Rift to the Plane of Air
11 – Djinni palace, invisible except for a moment at dawn and dusk
12 – Cloud giant’s castle, tethered to ground by three impossibly long vines

Traveling

These neighbors are people or creatures who follow much the same routes that you do. Roll 1d12 three times or choose. If you roll a repeat result, decide whether the groups are allies or rivals, or a more significant group of that time. Alternately, use this table to create groups that often visit your Bastion of any other type.

1 – Carnival of goblins, tieflings, and genasi
2 – Trading caravan from a mining town to a trade hub, run by dwarves and warforged
3 – Camp of free-traveling folk, of many different species, gathering magical lore
4 – Guard patrol of a dragonborn mercenary corps
5 – Masked herders, tending to dozens of basilisks or cockatrices
6 – Young gem or metallic dragon
7 – Trio of revenants or ghosts, lost and unable to find the target of their vengeance
8 – Pilgrims visiting a local holy site, or cultists seeking a defiled place
9 – Modrons separated from the Great March, malfunctioning in a surprisingly useful way
10 – Fey in a seemingly endless revel or a Wild Hunt
11 – Wizard and apprentices riding in carts pulled by oversized golems or other constructs
12 – Roving monster hunters of many species, perhaps hunting something the PCs have already slain

As an alternative to avoid rolling doubles on any of these d12 tables, consider rolling 1d4, 1d4+4, and 1d4+8.

Design Notes

These are ultimately plot seeds and a variation on classic encounter tables. I’m imagining long-term situations more than immediate encounters. The PCs can reconnoiter or ask around to learn about their neighbors without coming face-to-face with them.

As you can see, my approach to creatures and groups grew more specific as I went, but that also comes from imagining neighbors that were nearer at hand and made up of (usually) smaller groups. My hope is that I’ve left a lot of room for PCs to have any sort of relationship with their neighbors, though some may strike you as more innately hostile or friendly. (I tend to think that finding a way to establish peaceful contact with chromatic dragons and the like makes a really interesting story.)

As the PCs expand their power, maybe they drive away nearby enemies and expand their territory – establishing contact with a new set of neighbors. Or maybe their neighbors seek protection from other threats, and become vassals or otherwise pay tribute to the PCs. The most important thing is that your Bastion drives stories in the campaign and introduces new wrinkles in the context of PC actions and decisions. Everything in this post exists to serve that goal.

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