DMing Chemistry

 The Weaver of Five Dooms is a spider demon who lives in the mines of Caeledor. Due to the services she performed to the gods, she was allowed to decide the fates of five mortals of her choosing. Obviously she chose the five greatest heroes she knew about, and has decided the most humiliating deaths for each of them. However she has a problem: Conn, the fourth hero has escaped her clutches, and now wanders the world, his destiny unfulfilled.  The Weaver of the Five Dooms looks like a giant black spider, with multiple animal skeletons for heads, the eye sockets of which burn with ghostly purple flames. She can stand more than two meters tall, and has the bodies of her previous three victims rigged up like marionettes with her silk threads, making a confrontation with her quite dangerous (the bodies of the heroes still have their fabled magical items, and Weaver knows how to activate them). The one weakness of this setup is that if someone spots the very fine threads she uses to...

 The Spear of Kush is said to be the first steel weapon ever made. It may even be the first steel item to have been made, as some claim the way to make steel was discovered during its creation.  It is a long-shafted spear, with a leaf-like blade, and no decorations whatsoever, as it was intended to be a bog-standard iron spear fit for a conscripted fighter, and not a noble or mighty sorcerer. During the many years it has been used, it has allegedly killed over a thousand people, with their blood seeping into the blade and making it seek the vitals of the unfortunates it is pointed against. It is also known to affect the wielder's dreams to make them more bloody and horrific each night, though it's hard to tell if that is truly the doing of the spear's magic, or just a consequence of all the killing most wielders of it commit. The spear was previously in the possession of the royal family of the city of Kush (hence the name), but after the unfortunate adventures of one of t...

  Old Man Death is the colloquial name of an huge and ancient dragon that lives near the eastern side of the mines of Caeledor . While the old beast is quite temperamental, he has been known to on occasion help the locals in exchange for vast amounts of gold and iron. This help comes usually in the form of him sniffing around for new tin deposits (he boasts that his nose can smell all sorts of metals, and judging by the fact that he can tell the grade and purity of metals offered to him without even looking), but he sometimes lets humans use his fire for melting metal. On at least one occasion he even used his gigantic claws to dig around for tin, but that came at such a gigantic price, that no.one has attempted to ask such a thing from him ever again.  Of course dealing with a dragon is never easy, but especially one as old and bad-tempered as Old Man Death. The locals will tell you that even if you bring unimaginable wealth to his doorstep, he's just as likely to eat you th...

 One of the easiest ways to deal with a demon or malevolent spirit is to trap it in an incantation bowl and bury it in the ground. However that is not not the only way evil can get buried underground. Powerful sorcerers can trap various entities in other items (usually statues of the entity in question), or cursed items can get buried deliberately. Sometimes these buried dangers are older than anyone can remember, and indeed some are even said to have been left behind by Those Who Came Before .  Needless to say, this makes mining, sapping, or digging any kind of tunnel or even just a particularly deep ditch potentially quite dangerous, and usually before starting such works, it is customary to perform animal (sometimes even human or other sentient creature) sacrifice, both to seek the help of the more benevolent gods in protecting the diggers from these dangers, but also to the buried things themselves, in order to placate them. The other common way to mitigate these dangers ...

  Incantation bowls are a common magic item sold for relatively cheap in most markets. As the name suggests, they are simple bowls with written incantations on their inner surface. They are used to trap demons  and other spirits by slapping the bowl on top of the creature. Unless there is a large gap between the bowl and the ground, the demon or spirit cannot leave.  Incantation bowls come in different sizes and can be made from various materials, depending on the creature they are meant to trap. Larger entities obviously require larger bowls, though it must be noted that only the entity's original size counts for trapping purposes. Spirits or demons who have shapeshifted into larger sizes will shrink down to their original size when they come into contact with the bowl. Stronger entities require stronger incantations, which require the bowl to be made out of different materials than the standard clay or wooden bowls.  Incantation bowls can be made for general use, ...

 In the far northwest, in the lands of Caeledor, the land overflows with tin. While the frequent storms make it extremely difficult to sail to the island, it is also a very lucrative endeavor, since the tin brought from here can be used to make the highest quality bronze , when combined with an appropriately good grade of copper. A large boatload of the stuff can make a person rich enough to never have to work again in their life, and even just a few ingots can fetch a nice price on the many markets of the southern empires. Of course the locals have begun extensive mining operations, with various kingdoms vying for control of these lucrative mines. As of now king Hebras of Wynnig runs most of them, but with southerner traders coming less and less frequently, he is losing ground to various upstarts, who don't quite know or in some cases care that revenue from the mines just isn't what it was in the days of their fathers and grandfathers. Hebras is looking for allies, but the gr...