The Ashen Ledger
- Goal
- Buy every debt in the city and own the people behind them
- Method
- Ruthless bookkeeping, quiet blackmail, generous loans
- Secret
- Their founder died a decade ago; clerks forge his signature
Free tool
Fantasy World Builder
Names for the places, the people who run them, and the rumours that get your party moving. Browse the tables or roll something new, then take it into the Forge.
Place names
Fantasy place name generator
Towns, taverns, ruins, keeps and wilds. Pick a category to browse hand-written names, or roll a fresh set built from the same word tables.
Everyday settlements: market towns, farming villages, river crossings.
- Ashcombe
- Duskmere
- Hollowford
- Greyhollow
- Thornwick
- Fenmarch
- Oakenrest
- Stillwater
- Bramblegate
- Whitehallow
- Corvin's Rest
- Marrowdown
Factions
Faction generator
Every faction needs three things your players can push against: what it wants, how it gets it, and the thing it would rather you never learned.
Order of the Quiet Lantern
- Goal
- Extinguish knowledge that would drive the common folk mad
- Method
- Book burnings dressed up as accidents
- Secret
- They keep perfect copies of everything they destroy
The Bramble Court
- Goal
- Return the old forest to the borders it held a thousand years ago
- Method
- Seeded ruins, bribed foresters, sudden overgrowth
- Secret
- Half their leadership are exiles from the fey courts
Saltbound Company
- Goal
- Control every safe harbour on the bitter coast
- Method
- Escort contracts, wrecking crews, harbour taxes
- Secret
- They pay tribute to something that lives under the third pier
The Grey Choir
- Goal
- Prove their drowned god still answers
- Method
- Public miracles, quiet drownings, relentless recruitment
- Secret
- The miracles are engineered by one very tired artificer
Wardens of the Cracked Sky
- Goal
- Hold the mountain pass against whatever comes down it
- Method
- Watchtowers, signal fires, conscription
- Secret
- Nothing has come down it in sixty years and funding is running out
Lore
Lore hooks and legends
Small strange facts that make a region feel lived in, and hooks that give the party a reason to ask questions.
- Every seventh winter the river runs backwards for a single night, and the old families lock their doors.
- The city's bells were cast from surrendered swords. One bell has never been rung.
- Cartographers here are licensed, because an unlicensed map once redrew the coastline.
- The local temple keeps a ledger of names nobody is allowed to read aloud.
- Two moons rose the year the keep fell. Only one came back.
- A road leaves town heading north and rejoins itself. Travellers who follow it come back older.
Turn a name into a place
Take any of these into the Forge: generate the battlemap, the tavern keeper, or the artifact the faction is hunting.