The Gloaming Lands are a place deeply etched with disaster. It is (like many OSR settings) a post apocalyptic setting. The cycle of civilisation and destruction creates room for mystery and adventure that can be easily understood (and exploited) by players.

It is, however, not a bleak, picked-over post-apocalypse. The last true disaster is now but a distant story kept alive by the lorespeakers. Lush forests grow between massive shards nuclear-frozen glass. Herds of deer drink from clear crater lakes. Peoples dot the land, working away in the safety of their settlements.

These tables provide a set of tools for creating those settlements. The settlements themselves are lightly detailed, hopefully providing the GM and players with just enough to describe a location and hint at a hook or two.

A future post will detail a quick procedure for generating a pointcrawl between settlements.

Settlement tables

Settlement size

Roll 2d6 and take the lowest value.

Very few settlements are larger than a few hundred people. Smaller settlements pay dues to—and are protected by—a baron or nearby city. Cities are often large enough to support their own standing milita, and some even buy full independence from the system of baronial rent.

d6	Size
1	Farm/manor – 1-3 families
2	Crossroads – 3-5 families
3	Hamlet – 50-150 people
4	Village – 150-300 people
5	Town – 300-1000 people
6	City – 1000+ people

Settlement details

For all settlements, Roll 1d20 for each column.

• Towns: Roll an additional time on either the Building, Industry or Event column.
• Cities: Roll an additional time on each of the Building, Industry and Event columns.

d20	Environs	People	Building	Industry	Event
1	In the ruins of an ancient temple	Extremely suspicious of outsiders	Imposing defensive walls	Fields of maize, yellow in the sun	A grand wedding
2	In the ruins of an ancient castle	Often intoxicated by strange mushrooms	Unmaintained wooden palisades	Rows of cabbage	Festival for the local god
3	Amongst the bones of a great beast	Fervent followers of their strange god	Ancient castle	Shallow ponds of green rice	Meeting of elders from afar
4	Atop a hill	Known for their strange delicacies	Wood and stone manor house with a high peaked roofs	Windmill for grinding maize	A building is on fire
5	At the banks of burbling stream	Have laws or customs confusing to outsiders	Comfortable, well-appointed inn	Wood mill	A god walks amongst the people
6	In a protected valley	Refuse to do business with outsiders	Shrine, of ornately carved and polished black oak	Bustling market	Children have been going missing
7	A pond, covered in lilies and the persistent croaking of frogs	Practice strange rituals under the cover of darkness	Shrine, newly constructed of stone	Staging area for cave-scavengers	An illness has struck
8	A gnarled tree, older than anything around	Cover themselves in odd tattoos	Shrine, recently burned to the ground	Renowned school	Under attack from bandits
9	Cleared for industry or agriculture	Brew delicious, potent maize wine	Shrine constructed of scavenged shards of metal	Quarry for marble or quartz	A plague of insects has ruined the harvest
10	Animals wander the streets, searching for food	Wear long hoods that cover their faces	Shine carved into the stone of a cave	Mine for copper, tin or iron	Strange creatures have raided the storehouse
11	A long-forgotten tunnel system links the basements	Wear large, wide-brimmed hats	A mess of closely-packed shanties	Deep mine for gold or silver, maybe abandoned	The folk are in the midst of a cutthroat factional struggle
12	Amongst tall, wind-eroded towers of stone	Wear brightly-dyed woollen garments	Meditative garden, carefully maintained	Alchemical lab, spewing strange-coloured smoke	A funeral procession, the streets thick with ceremonial smoke
13	Built into caves or the walls of a cliff	Are very curious about news from afar	Huge abandoned machine, it's interior stripped of parts	Traps for eels in a nearby creek	Market day, farmers from throughout the area flock to town
14	Overgrown with rare flowers	All descended from a single matriarch	Ornate wooden bridge, guarded by statues	Glassblower's workshop	Local baron holding a recruitment drive for their milita
15	Amongst giant, moss-covered boulders	Believe cutting their hair is bad luck	Ancient bridge of concrete and steel, reinforced with wood	Workshop for fine wooden crafts	A public execution is taking place
16	Nearby animals are strangely intelligent	Keep regimented hours of work and prayer	Shell or skull of a massive beast	Wool mill, draped in brightly-dyed cutoffs	A public trial is taking place
17	A field of enormous glass shards, blindingly bright at sunset and dawn	Wear finely-embroidered clothes	Grand hall built on stilts over a lake	Silk mill and tailor of fine clothes	A flying machine slowly drifts far above the clouds
18	Between high white karst hills, bursting out of the forest	Make pungent cheese, cured for years	Unnervingly tall and twisted wooden tower	Tannery, stinking of blood and piss	A wizard's walking tower has planted itself nearby
19	On the banks of a wide, slow river	Are mostly children	Strong, squat tower of stone	Kiln for lacquered porcelain	Seasonal festival, shirtless revelers and drunkenness
20	Atop the ruins of an ancient factory	Are mostly elders	Repurposed tower of glass and steel, built by the ancients	Wizard's tower, travelers coming to seek help	Baronial levy is called, tax collectors stalk the streets

Settlement names

Roll d10 for the structure of the name, then a d20 for each column indicated by the structure. Names will probably need a bit of massaging for mouthfeel.

d20	Structure (d10)	History A	History B	Thing A	Thing B	Place
1	{Thing A} {Place}	New	North	Tree	Ox	River
2	{Thing B} {Place}	Old	East	Oak	Eagle	Pond
3	{History A} {Place}	Broken	South	Jasmine	Crab	Lake
4	{History B} {Place}	Gallows	West	Jade	Eel	Manor
5	{History A} {Thing A}	Shield	Upper	Rice	Carp	Spring
6	{History B} {Thing B}	Bloody	Lower	Rose	Ape	Mountain
7	{Thing A} {Thing B} {Place}	Hidden	Dragon	Arrow	Monkey	Hill
8	{Thing B} {Thing A} {Place}	White	Ogre	Petal	Skull	Creek
9	{History A} {Thing A} {Place}	Blue	Lord's	Pine	Forge	Swamp
10	{History B} {Thing B} {Place}	Yellow	Ghostly	Maple	Sword	Gate
11		Green	Hell's	Blossom	Horseshoe	Field
12		Banner	Heavenly	Cherry	Anvil	Woods
13		Typhoon	Midsummer	Crab	Witch	Bridge
14		Friendship	Solstice	Stone	Wizard	Farm
15		Sunset	All-gods	Cloud	Willow	Tower
16		Dawn	Harvest	Iron	Machine	Road
17		Ancient	Wailing	Gold	Mineral	Bluff
18		Lost	Wailing	Glass	Copper	Harbor
19		Wounded	Glowing	Tea	Hoard	Rock
20		Singing	Winding	Crystal	Amber	Castle