This is a campaign hook I came up with centered around mystery, an ancient language, prophecy, and solving the puzzle of words from the past.
Image: Spellbook by Fionn Hand
Making The Scrypt
The Prophecy
Let’s start with an ancient prophecy:
“When the Moon covers the Sun, Evil awakens.
The Seals will be broken.
Evil will lay ruin to the land.
Four holy gemstones exist.
Together, they can seal evil.
One gemstone lays in a temple upon the highest peak.
One gemstone lays in the city of the sea.
One gemstone lays within the sunken lands.
One gemstone lays in the guardian of the forest”
This is the full prophecy, as once written down by ancient peoples. We have an eclipse, triggering the release of an Ancient Evil™️, and a pretty cookie cutter quest to gather 4 ancient gemstones. One gemstone in the mountains, one gemstone in an Atlantis-like place, one gemstone in the ‘sunken lands’ which in this case means “underground”, and one in the “guardian of the forest”, i.e. the most ancient and tallest tree. Perfect!
This is what we’re going to obscure a bit.
Encoding Into Keywords
Let’s abstract the prophecy into keywords, that still somewhat conveys the meaning. No one speaks or can read this language anymore, so the true meaning is lost. All we can figure out in the present, is nouns and verbs.
Moon Cover Sun
Evil Awake
Seal Destroy
Evil Destroy World
Four Gemstone Seal Evil
Gemstone Temple Peak
Gemstone City Ocean
Gemstone City Underground
Gemstone Peak Forest
Transforming the Keywords
For each unique word, I’m going to assign a letter. Moon becomes A. Cover becomes B. When a word reoccurs, we use the same letter. Our prophecy is now:
A B C
D E
F G
D G HI J F D
J K L
J M N
J M O
J L P
Let’s also make a table, to keep track of our own translations:
| Word | Letter |
|---|---|
| Moon | A |
| Cover | B |
| Sun | C |
| Evil | D |
| Awake | E |
| Seal | F |
| Destroy | G |
| World | H |
| Four | I |
| Gemstone | J |
| Temple | K |
| Peak | L |
| City | M |
| Ocean | N |
| Underground | O |
| Forest | P |
Making It Mysterious
Next, I go to dafont.com, dingbats > Runes, Elvish. I pick a nice typeface that looks nothing like actual letters.
Next, I take my letter-coded prophecy and paste it into a text editor or image editor like Photoshop, and just set the typeface to what I picked.
And now we have a beautiful, mysterious prophecy for the players to decypher!
For an additional layer, generate fantasy words for each sigil. I used Ancient Sumerian on https://donjon.bin.sh/. This is for flair, but also has a practical use; in-universe, scholars can now refer to a specific sigil as “Ah, that symbol is called ‘Uthad’, an ancient word for ‘4’” instead of having to go “Ah yes, squiggly line-no, not that one, the other- yes, that one!“.
I’m also going to obfuscate some words a bit -the Game Master knows the literal meaning, but in-world historians do not.
| Word | Letter | Name |
|---|---|---|
| Moon, Heavenly Body | A | Anar |
| Cover, Conceal | B | Sina |
| Sun, Light,Star | C | Selepp |
| Evil, Ruin, Death | D | Susa |
| Awake, Arise | E | Sidi |
| Seal, Lock | F | Erech |
| Destroy, Kill | G | Alar |
| World, Reality, Realm, Land | H | Shina |
| Four | I | Uthad |
| Gemstone, Artifact, Relic | J | Baryl |
| Temple, Holy Place, Sanctuary | K | Neveh |
| Peak, High Place, Tower | L | Nimri |
| City, Place of Many People | M | Mashka |
| Ocean, Water, Blue | N | Anash |
| Underground, Dark, Darkness, Below, Black | O | Nimre |
| Forest, Green | P | Shemish |
Using It In Your Campaign
But why do all this?
- There is a logic-puzzle element to our prophecy, allowing players to figure out parts themselves, if they want to.
- There’s also a limit to how much they can figure out on their own/”outside” of the game. They will need information from within the game-world to truly figure it out.
So, what could this look like?
- An eclipse takes place just before the start of the campaign, and since, the realm has been in disarray, with a rise in monster attacks. The night itself also seems to last longer.
- A party of heroes arrives in the capital, to consult with the sages there.
- One sage mutters of an ancient prophecy, left by a predecessor-people that are rumored to have existed aeons ago.
- He takes out a big dusty tome, and shows the prophecy (above).
- During his long life of obsessing over this text, he has only managed to ascertain the meaning of 3 symbols:
- …which means as much as Death will come for all, or Ruin to everything or Evil will consume the realm.
- He is certain that this prophecy holds the key, but none in the capital believe him.
- Recently however, he heard of travelers who stumbled upon a strange circle of stones, each inscribed with sigils that look similar to these.
- Visiting this stone circle, deep in the wilderness, reveals 3 stones, each indeed marked with relevant sigils. The stones each feature a hole, and when peered through, one looks upon the landscape beyond. The one looking out to sea is marked with the symbol Anash, the one to the forest marked Shemish, the one to the mountains Nimri.
- He also once hired an expedition of travelers to delve into what he believed to be ancient predecessor ruins, but never heard from them again, and lacked the funds to send a search party.
- In these faraway ruins, the dead party can be found, along with their notes revealing the translation for Sina, Erech and Baryl.
Interacting with the Prophecy
I think that gives a bit of a taste. To sort of summarize:
The meaning of sigils could be learned from books, scholars, sages, relics, dungeons, ruins etc. The dungeons and ruins are dangerous and faraway, the books are stolen by bandits, or in the hands of ruthless wealthy collectors, the scholars and sages are in remote towers, hostile courts, kidnapped, taken etc.
Each sigil is a hook for adventure.
Expanding Further
- Once you have a base list of words, you can write new texts; “C G D” would be ‘Sun Destroy Evil’, in case a gemstone is guarded by an undead creature vulnerable to sunlight.
- There could be multiple languages in your setting at the same time.