Monday 15 December 2014

30 Unholy Hexes

Inspired by the macabre poem 'Tam-O-Shanter', penned by the Scottish poet, Robert Burns. I give you thirty unholy hexes for your hex-crawl games. It would be best to set these encounters at night to add to the eerie ambiance. I should have done these for Halloween instead of the festive season, oh well, here goes anyway.





1)    13 witches, dancing naked in the throes of a Black Sabbath
2)    A bloodstained altar that shrieks ‘kill them...kill them ALL! ‘ louder, and louder the closer you get   
3)    A hangman’s tree, with skeletons hanging from the branches, spinning, twisting, and knocking against one another ... like unholy wind chimes
4)     The words, ‘ All hail, Asmodeus’ in fiery, smoking, writing
5)    Huge glowing tentacles, writhing from a steaming hole in the ground. Pick a player characters name, that’s who they are shrieking  for, over, and over again

Art by Noistromo

6)    A human sacrifice is taking place. It’s not too late to stop them.
7)    A circle of flesh-covered standing stones with hair growing on them instead of moss
8)    A huge lidless eye, at least 20ft in diameter, staring at you, with yellow pus weeping from the ground around it
9)    A headless horseman on a fiery steed
10)A large goat-man, with flaming eyes , hooves, and horns, holding a pack of baying hellhounds on a straining leash made of black chain

11)A faeces elemental. Save vs. Poison Gas or spend the entire time on your knees vomiting uncontrollably
12)A painstakingly laid out 30ft pentagram, made from interconnecting bones that holds a writhing  arch- demon. The summoner is dead, and one of the bones looks like it is going to roll off the others, thus breaking the pentagram and releasing the demon into the night
13)A treasure chest containing a pile of sliced off faces. Upon closer inspection, they appear to resemble the players visages
14) A deep pit on top of a hill, slashed into the ground, that is in the throes of giving birth to...something horrific
15)A storm cloud that engulfs the party and follows them everywhere, and it is constantly raining blood

16)A circle of corpses, standing upright in their coffins, holding candles made from human tallow
17)A fiddler, playing an unholy jig, that screeches and scratches, leading a long line of sulphurous demons round, and around, in circles. Save vs. Spells or join them.
18)An altar shaped like a sphincter
19)A rip in the weave of the world with a giant tongue French kissing its way through from the other side, moaning ecstatically
20)A Wicca man filled with the local townsfolk. Around it are their children, baying for blood and for the sacrifice to commence.
21)A bubbling, steaming cauldron over an open fire. It contains a hell-broth of intestines, hair, gizzards, slivers of bone, and quarts of congealing blood. A severed goat’s head winks at you, and then licks its lips.

22)A cairn made of eyeballs
23)A desecrated roadside shrine.
24)Ghouls and Ghasts involved in unlawful acts of carnal knowledge
25)A well, full to the brim with corpses and maggots
26)A tent of skin, flapping in the wind, while a guzzle of vampires lie around inside making merry
27)A flayed man, on a cross, with his torturer rubbing salt on his wounds
28)A field of mushroom shaped nipples, lactating blood
29)A pile of priests hearts wrapped up in bloody vestment robes
30)A cave full of torture instruments. Thumb-screws, wracks, Iron maidens, and gibbets for the unlucky few.



 “Warlocks and witches in a dance:
Nae cotillon, brent new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
A winnock-bunker in the east,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl. -
Coffins stood round, like open presses,
That shaw'd the Dead in their last dresses;
And (by some devilish cantraip sleight)
Each in its cauld hand held a light.
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table,
A murderer's banes, in gibbet-airns;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns;
A thief, new-cutted frae a rape,
Wi' his last gasp his gabudid gape;
Five tomahawks, wi' blude red-rusted:
Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted;
A garter which a babe had strangled:
A knife, a father's throat had mangled.
Whom his ain son of life bereft,
The grey-hairs yet stack to the heft;
Wi' mair of horrible and awfu',
Which even to name wad be unlawfu'.
Three lawyers tongues, turned inside oot,
Wi' lies, seamed like a beggars clout,
Three priests hearts, rotten, black as muck,
Lay stinkin, vile in every neuk.”

Tam-O-Shanter. Robert Burns

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