Spooktober 2025

This was my first year participating in Spooktober, and I struggled a bit with the one-word prompt format. (I'm used to Summer Camp's more verbose prompts.) However, I ddi manage to complete the 13 article target for the event, though! As many of them are related, the articles for this year will be listed in sections.

The Knitting Witch

I had the opportunity to watch Coraline for the first time this month, and the inspiration from that movie was a major turning point in my progress with this whole challenge. However, only two are directly based on the movie: a fae predator I'm currently calling a Knitting Witch - a variant of the classic hag whose deals are stitched into the very souls of their victims, and the domains that they create.

The Northdowns

Inspired by Tolkien's Barrow-wights, I've made a district of the city that's built over some old, forgotten barrow mounds. Those within were subjected to a terrible spell, and their shades have been locked in the barrows for a thousand years, before finally being released by unsuspecting construction crews digging the foundations of the new city.

The Forbidden Archive

Caelester's Abbey library features a forbidden archive, where tomes of lore that are considered too dangerous for the average scribe to access are held. All but a handful of people believe this is merely a sealed chamber of the library, but in reality, that is just the entrance. The archive itself is in a pocket plane, watched over by a powerful golem known as the Eternal Archivist

Cinnamon Creek

While I was struggling for inspiration, I looked at the prompt "Pits" and eventually remembered that clay pits would be a major industry in any culture that uses pottery rather than plastic for its containers. These two articles are functionally ideas for separate but possibly related questlines related to the town.

The Shade Sea - the realm of death

The Shade Sea is where the dead go first when they die, and is formed by the energy released when souls pass to the other side. Unlike the Fae Realm, the Shade Sea is poorly understood, largely due to the broader taboo against research into necrotic magic in general.

And Three More

These last three aren't connected directly. One is one of the 8 relics that anchor the seal that binds Kalshazzak Aesymnetes in his eternal prison, one tells of how that seal was weakened, resulting in the disastrous earthquake that struck the city, and the last is a reluctant heir, currently doomed to become a puppet queen controlled by the ruthless leadership of the South Seas Company.