The Verdant Lodge, Vorika, Zhylasha

In this post I'm detailing the last three otherworldly entities that will be included in the revised Krevborna book as possible patrons for cults and player characters.

The Verdant Lodge, The Eternal Home

The Verdant Lodge is both an entity and a place beyond the Mortal World; it is the wellspring of the fey, and all four fey Courts pay it homage—they regard it as their honored parent and homeland.

    • Like its fey children, the Verdant Lodge’s whims are mercurial; its motivations are frequently beyond human comprehension. 

    • Creatures such as treefolk, dryads, unicorns, and bog shamblers are loyal to the Verdant Lodge, but the Verdant Lodge’s greatest champion is Bercilan, the Green Knight of the Spring Court; Bercilan leads fey war hosts—known as the Savage Hunt—against the Lodge’s enemies. 

    • Cults devoted to the Verdant Lodge either take on the duty of protecting the “thin” places where the realm of the fey touches the Mortal World or terrorize mankind with the aim of driving them from the land.

    • In particular, the members of the Ulverkrieg beseech the Verdant Lodge for aid in their war against humanity.

Vorika, The Rotmaiden

Of the major known eldritch entities from the Outer Dark, Vorika is among the most alien and enigmatic. 

    • Vorika’s avatar manifests as a tall woman encrusted with luminescent fungal growths.

    • She is a force of entropy and decay and is particularly associated with the dissolution of mortals’ senses of self and individuality.

    • Vorika's cultists tend to be recruited from among the ranks of the oppressed and downtrodden; to revere the Vorika is an act of ideological suicide that appeals only to the desperate and wounded.

    • Cults devoted to the Rotmaiden choose to meet in places rich in structural decay, such as collapsing cave systems, abandoned and dilapidated houses, and untended cemeteries.

    • Vorika rewards her most faithful by granting them strange fungal growths that mirror her own; these growths grant uncanny powers.

Zhylasha, The Lady of the Drowned

Zhylasha is a monstrous abomination from the Outer Dark who now thrives within the depths of the Khorva Sea. 

    • Zhylasha’s physical form is that of a comely woman whose lower body is comprised of a mass of tentacles; her mouth is lined with shark-like teeth.

    • Zhylasha’s cultists are mostly drawn from the ranks of sea-faring folk who regard Zhylasha as a goddess of the waves; they pray to her because they believe she alone has the power to grant mercy to those at sea.

    • In truth, Zhylasha is nourished by her worshipers’ fear of shipwreck, drowning, sea monsters, tempests and squalls, and other nautical catastrophes.

    • Cultists who worship Zhylasha often undergo ritual drowning and resuscitation to prove their faith in their “goddess.”

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Design Notes

The Verdant Lodge was inspired in equal parts by Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing, medieval tales of Faerie, and Twin Peaks. I like the idea of it being both a place and a person; I have no idea what that truly means, but it would be fun to find out in play.

Vorika has an antecedent in D&D's Zuggtmoy, of course, but the flavor has been enhanced by any number of fungal horror stories that have dropped over the last few years. The Dishonored games were also a big site of inspiration here. In one of my previous campaigns, Vorika was the big bad and her cult was bombarding Krevborna with plague cannons from a Vlaak outpost on the Bone Moon. 

Zhylasha started life as my take on Scylla, with some additional Cthulhoid weirdness and piratical themes added. There's probably a little Iron Islands in the mix, as well. Zhylasha was actually borne of a prior campaign in which the players released her from an undersea prison in the first adventure--and never regretted their choice.