The Pegorans were an ancient culture of note, with a fascination for the "other worldly" and an emphasis on the symbolic, they have left their marks upon the world in the areas or architecture, math, and calligraphy.

Pegoran doors are special symbolic doors used in tombs, holy places, and places of the hearth. They are found in ancient buildings (when they were all the craze), places with pretense of being stately, artisitic, or "eternal" (like the City Folk of Artimas), or tombs. 

Pegoran doors are circular doors made of stone (except when used in houses - which are wood). The door range from a hand span to finger span thick. Thicker doors have been found when used as "main entrances" or "security doors". While they can be plain, most proper doors have a bas relief of an intricate interwoven geometric pattern. The pattern is based upon the symbolic need/ purpose of the space the door is a guardian of, the location/ facing of the door, and the era of the door (styles change over time).  The patterns weave, intermingle, and point, in a hauntingly beautiful way (think proper celtic knot work). Some modern copies incorporate heraldic or state devices into said pattern.

Some collectors use these doors as "art", either as free standing statuary or inset into a wall. The Prince of Artimas is known to pay many gold dragns (gold coins) for doors in good condition.

The door appears to be an circular indention in the walls. This door is set in a channel and rolls into wall to the right. That wall is usually thick with a carved out area for the door. When the door is rolled out, it leaves a circular passage to pass through.

While doors can be rolled by hand, most are moved by clever lever work.  Simply touching the door or a point on the right side of the wall, will cause the door to roll. Since many "frames" are intricately carved, it can sometimes be a challange to find the "right place" to press. And since interesting prick traps can also be intergrated into the artwork, those who do not know the proper place to open the door can be quickly poisoned.

Some doors will close automatically after a certain amount of time will pass, others have to be actively closed (finding the corresponding "right spot" on the other side).

Note: Most "old doors" have a basic enchantment woven into the pattern.  This prevents them from being opened by most knock or unlocking spells. Some will even resist magical liftings.

The problem with Pegoran doors is that they can be "tricky". 

*Some Doors have activation mechanisms that are multipart. So there may be a "right place" or knob that may need to be switched down the hall or in another room entirely. So for an entrance to a location’s chapel might require you to stop and "nudge" the Image of The Patron God in the entryway, showing proper piety by stopping to reflect before entering the chapel.

* They may open when using an easy to find "right place".  These doors will then slam the stone back in place (using a spring or sand and level mechanism). Some will slam when stepped through, others will wait a few moments and quickly roll shut automatically. Some of these are for security, others are simply door closers.

*A second "locking door" may roll or drop into place if the wrong door is opened the wrong way. Clearing these doors often required brute strength or a number of things to be tweaked to make it roll back.

*If a door’s weight if removed from its track (if removed or broken), this will often trigger a trap or locking door or heavy drop block.

*Getting in may be "easy", but out may be difficult. Especially if there is a timed trap involed to stop "interlopers" from entering the tomb.

*An reoccuring feature is the Hallway of the Gods. It is a hallway with a 22 doors, space every 8 feet for so. Each door has a touching challange. You must press the correct letters or pictographs to "answer" the common prayer. These answers can be memorized (okay 3rd door, we click here, here, here and over there) or if one knows the old tongue you select the answer to the classic prayer. However, in the Grey (late) Era, these Hallways were changed into "challanges of piety", so you needed to know the 22 gods and select the correct answer (requiring riddle or ancient lore checks).  In the Grey Era selecting the insulting or wrong answer would set off an ironic trap.

In metagaming, these are great doors for two reasons. The first is that they are complicated. They will make players wary. The second, is that since they are "treasure", your PCs won’t go breaking them down.

The languages of the Norther use the term Pengoran for Pegoran, it is just a lingual quirk based on how the "Great Scribe of the North" decided to spell Pegoran in the Northern Root Tongue.

Full Description
Selvaks - carnivorous squirrels

Appearance
An adult Selvak male will reach up to 3 feet in length..not including it’s tail. And will weigh roughly 45 pounds. They are very light and surprisingly agile creatures.
An adult female reaches only 2 feet in length. Again, that does not include the length of it’s tail. Females weigh about 30 pounds.

Selvaks have large pinkish red eyes, limiting their vision in the daylight. But at night they can see more clearly than any other nocturnal animal.

Society
Selvaks are pack hunters. Often using their young as bait to draw other predators to them. The mewling of an infant Selvak is almost a perfect match for a human infant.

This draws in the Selvaks prefered food of choice: Humans.
The pack will encircle their prey and attack from all sides. Their strong and sharp front teeth can easily pierce the thickest of leather armor. After the kill, the entire pack will eat their fill of the body. The only thing left is cracked and chipped bones. Not a drop of marrow is left.
Young Selvaks, still to young to consume whole flesh, exist on a diet of the blood lapped up from the ground and marrow sucked from the bones.

Selvaks are very territorial..and some packs have been known to take down full grown bears and pick the body clean in a matter of hours.

Enviroment
Selvaks are the most at home in tropical like enviroments. Possessing a gland in their bodies to regulate heat and warmth. Some Selvak packs have been rumored to exist in snow covered forests that nestle the base of moutains.

Weakness
After consuming a large meal, the Selvaks will fall into a deep slumber which lasts for several days. So after the meal is eatten, they will return to their nests in the high canopy to sleep. They are very heavy sleepers. Only waking when the hunger gnaws at them again.

Additional Information
Selvaks have very fine and highly prized pelts. In fact a Selvak pelt is very rare… and extremely hard to get.
Their fur is very fine and a dark blue-black color.As they age, a Selvaks coat begins to turn, silvery white patches appearing upon it’s pelt.

Arkon is the God of Small Things. Religious scholars are unsure of where he came from. Some think that he is one of the last of the small gods from the distant times when every valley and mountain and plain had its god or goddess, others that he is made up of leftover religious belief or, like Mathom, the God of Delays was once a human who found a way of elevating himself to the divine. He can hardly be thought of as a powerful god-not for him the smiting of sinners with lightning bolts, although he might be able to manage a jolt of static electricity.

His priests and priestesses normally have other jobs and he has no cathedrals and very few churches dedicated to Him and the circle, which is His symbol. Although it would seem to be little more then a cult, his religion survives unharmed by the big religions that have swallowed up or persecuted most or all of the other faiths in their territory. Partly it is because it is easily overlooked-very little clerical wealth to take, no grand buildings, and the clerics like to stay quietly in the background. Partly because of the rumours of what happens if you bring pain to, let alone kill, a cleric of Arkon.

One rumour was about a renegade general in the early days of Queen Yocastas rule who thought he could seize the throne by force. One the way one of his aides decided to molest and beat a pretty young priestess of Arkon just for the fun of it whilst the general looked on. When the generals forces and those of the Queen met in battle it was in the balance when the general sent this aide with a message to summon the reserve troops. As he galloped towards them a nail came loose on his horse, which threw a shoe and then the aide, whos neck snapped when he hit the ground badly.

The message never reached its destination and the generals finest unit died waiting for the reinforcements that never came. With their loss the battle and with it the Queendom was lost, and as the general was asked his last words a few days later before the sentence of beheading for treason was carried out, he said that he wished he had never angered the God of Small Things by harming His clergy. The clergy of Arkon take great pleasure in spreading stories like this and it tends to make those who would harm them think twice.

For those who donate a coin or two to Arkons priesthood, all kinds of little things will go right for them. The rainstorm or the blizzard will wait the extra few minutes for them to take shelter. The armed man chasing them will trip over his shoelaces and fall flat on his face (and if they are really lucky, on his sword.) Messages will reach them on time, shopkeepers and city guards will be in good moods and they will have a general aura of good luck about them. It wont normally be enough to get them out of dire danger, but it will make their lives better in a myriad of small ways.

For those who would persecute Arkons worshippers on the other hand, what little things can go wrong will go wrong. When out on the plains, the weather will often choose just that moment to go bad, not normally with anything deadly or highly dangerous, but with good old fashioned rain. Sleeping guards wake up just when they try and pass them. The gate guard at the city gates turns out to be really grouchy on that day and demands a bribe to let them in. If meeting a high ranking noble they end up struck with smelly flatulence. Shopkeepers swindle an extra coin or two from them, swords stick in the sheath at the worst possible moment, and whatever minor things can go wrong do go wrong.

Whilst not a God that demands a great deal of respect, Arkon should not be needlessly slighted either.

As they travel across the countryside, the adventuring party is accosted by a small, black Wyvern. He demands that they follow him to see his master, alternately threatening, cajoling, and bribing them with gemstones and minor magic trinkets to do so.

Should they choose to follow the beast, he will lead them through a warren of twisty tunnels to a great cavern, one that opens up over a cliffledge perfect for its inhabitant to take flight from. Ensconced in that great cavern, lying atop a massive pile of gold and assorted artifacts will be Jaelric the Black, an elder black dragon enormously beyond the ability of the party to kill. Jaelric, as he lies there, is wheezing pathetically, though he will attempt to rise as the adventurers enter, at least pushing the front of himself up to look well down at the human creatures. The pile of gold beneath his head will be coated with a rather disgusting mucus, one that few will want to theive from.

What Jaelric wants, you see, is a cure for his illness, which has now plagued his nigh perfect constitution for several days. If asked, he will describe his symptoms in exquisite, stomach churning detail, and even allow the adventurers some limited observation. (In reality, it’s nothing more than a very nasty common cold.) The adventurers will have two days to find either a cure for his illness or a remedy for his symptoms, which should come from some folk-tales with some difficult-to-obtain materials. (cue standard spelunking/forest trip).

Should the remedy be effective, the humans will be richly rewarded with gold, though no artifacts will be issuing forth from the horde today. Should the remedy be ineffective, the humans will be treated with contempt. Should the remedy prove harmful from poor mixing / improper ingrediants, Jaelric’s wyvern servants will attempt to kill the party. Jaelric himself will have difficulty fighting, due to his shortness of breath, but if attacked, will respond in kind.

Special Equipment:



Appearance:

Vendawan is an older man, appearing to be in his late 60’s or early 70’s.  He has a long unkempt beard, and often has assorted food crumbs in it.  He is average in stature, but stoops over somewhat from age, and he is of slight build.

Vendawan is of generally rumpled appearance.  His clothing is dishevelled, stained and worn, like that of a merchant who’s been on the road for too long.  Frankly, the only reason for this is because he often forgets to change his clothes, he’s got too much else going on to remember something like that.  Strangely, though, he doesn’t stink, he just looks messy.

Vendawan appears as though he has always just fallen out of bed.  He’s got crusties in his eyes, his nose needs blowing, his hair needs combing, and so on.  He tends to scratch himself more than normal, in any of the places one might expect from someone who has just rolled out of bed(rubbing eyes, scratching head, under neck near beard, rubbing face, etc).  He is decent and proper, of course, and doesn’t spend his time “adjusting stuff” and such(I think you know what I mean).

Background:

Vendawan is a man that was once a great and powerful wizard on the Ethian Council.  His particular area of expertise was in providing economic support to the region, advising on trade routes and other boons to economy in the area.  He is solely responsible for the prosperous trade route between the once isolated region of western Ceriloth and the City-State of Ethe, which provides a massive influx of prosperity into the local economy.

He’s always been one who was interested in experimentation, and his home is FILLED with strange and wondrous experiments.  If you have a plum crazy idea, and you want someone to run with it, Vendawan is your man.  He has spent his time LITERALLY attempting to get pigs to fly, for instance, and if you’re looking for something strange, odds are good that Vendawan knows exactly what you’re looking for, or by gosh, he can make it for you.

Quite frankly, when viewed from the outside looking in, his home is little more than organized chaos, with the magical experiments bubbling away, sometimes failing rather catastrophically, sometimes ending in decidedly strange results, sometimes coming up with truly useful, if bizarre, end results.  There are all sorts of strange contraptions and half finished inventions lying around.  Any visitor to his home is likely to be subjected to any of a manner of strange happenings and wierd things, that tend to be innocuous rather than actually harmful.

As a younger man, before he joined the Ethian Council, he was a typical adventurer, and he joined many an intrepid band of adventurers on many wild missions.  Most of the time he was adventuring, however, he had so many ideas that were “outside the box” that he tended to get on the nerves of his adventuring comrades, who had more serious goals in mind.  His adventuring partners all liked him, though, and saw through his quirkiness to realize that his power was one they needed to get through the day.  He has many powerful friends whom he NEVER forgets.

He does tend to ignore the more mundane details of life.  He’ll often go for days without eating, and when he does eat, it will often be simply what his caring staff essentially force feeds him(“You’ve simply GOT to eat, master Vendawan!”).  His staff is, of course, attentive but cautious, some of his experiments are time critical, and you need to pick the right moment to approach him with such a mundane thing as eating.

Likewise, it is possible for him to really need to use the restroom, but be unwilling to break away from his task at hand.  He is proper, of course, and won’t simply “let loose wherever”, but he often reaches the point of crossing his legs and jumping around(like a child), to avoid having to deal with it.  He simply has too many other things going on.

He’s always liked one thing, however.  He collects personal trinkets.  He’s always liked the stories that strange and different objects carry with them.  What he most values in his home is a curio cabinet containing literally hundreds upon hundreds of odd little things, specific rocks, a toothpick, a set of 3 dice, a small unhatched egg, a hand mirror, a quill pen and ink, just to name a few of the objects in the cabinet.  He collects things ONLY when they have a story that they will remind him of, and he meticulously cares for these objects, and NEVER forgets the details of those stories.  He so very much likes to share those stories with his friends, acquaintances and visitors.

If you want to get on the good side of Vendawan, offer him a personal object of some strange lineage, and relate an amazing story about that object.  The more amazing, wonderful and entertaining the story, the more Vendawan will like the person telling the tale.  It should be noted that many people try to have their objects put on display in Vendawan’s Curio Cabinet, but only the best objects, with the best stories, make it into the display.  Furthermore, it should be noted that none of the objects have much intrinsic value, the value to Vendawan is in the story, not the object.  The object is in the curio cabinet as a reminder, nothing more.

The stories he prefers are not for pure historical accuracy, of course, he actually enjoys the suspension of disbelief that comes from a “tall tale” or “fish story”.  As long as the story makes for entertaining conversation, he will accept anything as said on face value.  The less entertaining the story gets, the more likely he is to refuse to suspend his disbelief and question the story itself.  His most entertaining stories are told by him from the perspective of first person and are WILDLY unbelievable but enormously entertaining.  It’s not uncommon for his best stories to begin with a premise as unbelievable as “So, this one day, I was inside a dragon’s stomach…”

Roleplaying Notes:

Fortunately for his appearance, Vendawan is a man of very pleasant and disarming personality.  He is warm and friendly, even towards total strangers, who quickly forget about his appearance due to his friendly and inviting demeanor. 

He does tend to seemingly ignore or forget the minor details about life.  It should be remembered that the minor details about life tend to be a LOT more than minor when you’re talking about a powerful wizard like Vendawan.  In his home town, he is known for simply staying at other people’s houses after he magically forces the lock on the door after assuming he’s simply lost the key to his door.  The surprised family in the dwelling will often simply allow the entertaining and interesting old wizard to stay as long as he pleases, telling stories and spinning yarns, because he often will realize, later on, that he’s not actually in his home, and be most thankful that the person didn’t become incensed.

He will often make gestures to compensate the family for their troubles, never with money, of course, but often will grand displays of his wizardry that often help the people in rather immense ways.  It would be nothing for Vendawan to conjure up a grand feast’s worth of food, to magically spruce up the interiors of the commoner’s houses with fancy quality furniture, to teach a young child in the course of an evening to totally comprehend a foreign but useful language for later in life.

Of course, while he means nothing by it, this seeming forgetfulness is merely a ruse.  He doesn’t forget a thing, but it provides him with a conveniently strange excuse to assist those that he feels need assisting.  The commoners rarely notice that he actually targets people who seem needy at the time.  He will absent mindedly show up at someone’s house who have an ill person in the next room.  He will then put on his show for effect, and then suddenly remember he’s not in his own home, giving him the perfect opportunity to assist the commoners in some token way, such as using his knowledge to heal the sick, providing them food and clean water, maybe magically doing their chores to allow them time to visit with a loved one on a special day, and so on.

Now, while his forgetfulness is a ruse, he IS a very busy man, and he often simply ignores the minor things to get done his tasks.  As such, he often simply ignores bathing, eating and going to the restroom as being less worthy of his time.

Make no mistake about it, however, Vendawan is a wizard of awe inspiring power.  He has not used the full extent of his powers in quite some time, but he is fully capable of literally levelling an army with a pass of his hand if the situation calls for it.  He has made it clear to the ruling nobility and politicians of the land that he is not interested in that life any longer, and he will not offer his services up for mercenary use to the highest bidder.  He is retired, now, and does not wish to return to that life, for any reason.  He simply wants to experiment and putter away, tinkering in his workshop and living his life.  He truly has embraced the life of the retiree, seeking only to provide his “children” with all that he wasn’t able to have as a younger man.