Cursed Culture

[Elvensilver]

Soon I will run a short adventure (~3 Sessions) in a homebrew setting. The adventurers will find themselves in a Cursed Land, where about everyone and everything suffers from some kind of curse. The reasons for that was a mortal trying to break fate, weakening harmful magic and ascending to become a god. In which they partially succeeded, but this one region was hit by a backlash which allows harmful magic to linger on, appear without good reason and complicate everything. The society is somewhat tribal, few nobles and little governance, with widespread low level magic. The climate is warm and dry (except for rains of blood), resulting in a savanna type of landscape.

The curses will range from bad-hair-decades, misfortune, magically altered offspring to death curses. The appear mostly for fairy tale reasons: Last words spoken angrily, misdemeanor against weird strangers or seeing a black cat.

So, what would this cause on a society level?
My ideas include:
-most only humans and halflings live there, since humans are really adaptable and halflings lucky.
-there are a lot of half humans, half whatever.
-Gnomes and fey folk are frowned upon, since they are known for playful schemes going infinite.
-the people are genre savvy and knowledgeable on adventure stories, fables and fairy tales.
-People are noncommittal, and never address anything directly, and never give their names.
-Promises are powerful, and are sometimes used as currency.
-Everyone is crazy about finding True Love, and potions, charms and divination are used for this purpose.
-people are often nomadic
-The government, if any, is weak and riddled with curses.
-Scores of foreign spellcasters come there to plot nefariously and craft dubious artefacts.
-most magic items are cursed.
-Unrealistic amounts of magic monsters and hags wander the land.

So what other effects will this have?

[Pleh]

Old buildings from before the curse have become ruins, at least the ones made from stone instead of wood that has rotted away. The ruins become haunts for monsters, more dangerous than the open plains.

You mentioned blood rain, but cursed storms are likely much worse than just blood. Winter blizzards keep the ground from producing food and the water runs off, wearing down the surface rather than sinking into the groundwater. In the spring and fall, tornados seem to maliciously target the nomadic tents that fail to find shelter in caves. The dry summer suns burn off the local moisture, blowing hot dusty winds so far thst the dust gets into everything, even indoors.

Probably have an unusually large number of solar and lunar eclipses.

[Lord Raziere]

One has to wonder why ANYONE stays there. Sure you can make an argument for particularly tough culture that refuses to leave because its their home and tradition and whatnot, but between cursed magical items that provide no incentive to loot them, foreign magic users coming with probably powerful magic, magic monsters and hags, and potentially more dangerous magical stuff that pretty much makes this place a death sentence in all but name, why would anyone come in to find stuff, and why would nomads never go outside these lands if theirs is cursed rather go be nomadic......somewhere else where there is less curses and probably better environment to hunt and trade in?

am I missing something here, because there doesn't seem to be much reason to stay in this place, shouldn't every one have just.....left?

[Kelb_Panthera]

One has to wonder why ANYONE stays there. Sure you can make an argument for particularly tough culture that refuses to leave because its their home and tradition and whatnot, but between cursed magical items that provide no incentive to loot them, foreign magic users coming with probably powerful magic, magic monsters and hags, and potentially more dangerous magical stuff that pretty much makes this place a death sentence in all but name, why would anyone come in to find stuff, and why would nomads never go outside these lands if theirs is cursed rather go be nomadic......somewhere else where there is less curses and probably better environment to hunt and trade in?

am I missing something here, because there doesn't seem to be much reason to stay in this place, shouldn't every one have just.....left?

You -seriously- underestimate just how stubborn people can be and the ability of people to become accustomed to awful circumstances. I'd expect most everyone that's native to the region to be utterly bat-crap insane by the standards of most other civilizations but I definitely would expect there to still be people there. Besides, did no one mention cursed births yet? Deformed, maybe even not-quite-human(oid) children would be an obvious result of -everything- being cursed. Perhaps they don't leave because the rest of the world rejects them and basically quarantines the area.

[Incorrect]

Insects will be much larger, even sentient in some cases.
This might create a small industry of hunting them and selling parts for potent spell components.

I would think people would be afraid of getting the better end of a deal, because naturally that will come back to bite them.
This could mean very careful and deliberate haggling, so all involved are satisfied with the result.

Will the inhabitants get violent if they think someone is spreading curses?
Like if the players suspiciously offers an apple to a child.

The night of a full moon is spend in locked basements.

[Cygnia]

You -seriously- underestimate just how stubborn people can be and the ability of people to become accustomed to awful circumstances. I'd expect most everyone that's native to the region to be utterly bat-crap insane by the standards of most other civilizations but I definitely would expect there to still be people there. Besides, did no one mention cursed births yet? Deformed, maybe even not-quite-human(oid) children would be an obvious result of -everything- being cursed. Perhaps they don't leave because the rest of the world rejects them and basically quarantines the area.

Welcome to Cleveland! :smallbiggrin:

The curse could also affect their thought processes via change blindness. Something that could potentially affect the PCs the longer they stay there...

[King of Nowhere]

i expect the casualty rate of those curses to still be less than they were for real world illness before modern medicine.
therefore, i expect that society will mostly go on as usual

[Devils_Advocate]

Perhaps they don't leave because the rest of the world rejects them and basically quarantines the area.
The most straightforward case is someone who significantly negatively impacts those nearby. Like, if you cause crops within 10 miles of you to wither and die, then anyone who figures that out is going to be very opposed to you coming within 10 miles of their crops, for example. But in an environment where that sort of effect is normal, it blends into the background. It becomes much less likely that you'll be identified as the source; and if comparable afflictions are the norm, you won't get exiled or killed for it even if you are.

So, you've got a bunch of cursed people living in a cursed land filled with cursed wildlife, cursed objects, and so on and so forth. How do those people manage to get by, with all of those curses?

"The real trick is finding ways to turn disadvantages into advantages."
"I mean, forget irrigating the Sahara and boring stuff like that, this guy has a whole new career ahead of him just being paid not to go to places."

Curses pretty much bad by definition, right? But here's the thing: "Bad" is relative. Something that is bad for some purposes may well be good for others. Being bad for one purpose can potentially make something unusually useful for another purpose. (https://xkcd.com/2270/)

Suppose that you're cursed with terrible body odor. You smell super duper bad, and as a result everyone wants to avoid being anywhere near you. That means that you're great at keeping people away from stuff just by being there! You could probably do pretty well guarding something somewhere. If a frog falls from your mouth every time you try to speak, then you lack the ability to communicate verbally, but you do have a free unlimited supply of frogs. When plants won't grow in a ten mile radius where you live and everything that could be hunted is likely to be dangerous to attack and unsafe to eat, that's a valuable source of food!

The most obvious application for curses is weaponizing them, but that can only go so far. A quarantined society has limited opportunities to work as mercenaries for outsiders; if you can't contact a potential employer in the first place, the value that your services theoretically would have doesn't matter. Preying on your neighbors is probably a very bad idea when those around you can and will fight back against that with curses on their own. Besides, someone has to produce the wealth of a society in the first place before thieves can steal it.

So, mainly, it's a matter of manifesting the effects of dark and sinister magic smarter, not harder.

[Incorrect]

The most obvious application for curses is weaponizing them, but that can only go so far. A quarantined society has limited opportunities to work as mercenaries for outsiders; if you can't contact a potential employer in the first place, the value that your services theoretically would have doesn't matter. Preying on your neighbors is probably a very bad idea when those around you can and will fight back against that with curses on their own. Besides, someone has to produce the wealth of a society in the first place before thieves can steal it.


It could make sense for the neighbouring countries to try and make living in the area kind of tolerable. To prevent the cursed people from trying to escape. If the guy who ruins crops in a huge radius escapes somehow, it would ruin the economy. So maybe send in some sacrificial donkeys with food, gold and maybe a few scrolls of remove curse (so the cursed people can remove the worst curses to show up)

[Unavenger]

If a frog falls from your mouth every time you try to speak, then you lack the ability to communicate verbally, but you do have a free unlimited supply of frogs.

Which is different in basically detail but essentially identical in concept to one of the most ludicrous TO builds in the game.

There are at least 2 cursed items that are used for optimisation tricks, as well: the dust of sneezing and choking and the -2 sword. Others, such as the mace of blood, the net of snaring and berserker sword are actually very useful, and some such as the ring of clumsiness have at least some upside.

On a similar basis, there's no reason why people couldn't be using curses to their advantage just as a general thing.

[Elvensilver]

Thank you for your responses! I didn't even realize this thread existed, since while I tried to upload my question a while back, the forum crashed.

[Grey Watcher]

As for why people don't leave, in addition to all of the above, it might literally be difficult/impossible to leave. Maybe it's a Mists of Not-Ravenloft situation, where some capricious force arbitrarily blocks or allows passage. Maybe it's more like the Lost Woods in the original Legend of Zelda: unless you know the trick, anyone who tries to leave ends up stuck in an endless maze whose only exit seems to be "back the way you came." If very few (or even none) who go there come back, that would also be a great disincentive for people to go in, making it even rare that there's travel and trade, meaning there are few if any caravans and the like going out, meaning leaving is dangerous, bordering on suicidal (lone travelers and small groups tend to end up as food for local monsters), so people learn to make the best of the situation they're in.

[Personification]

Another thing to think about is that it would act as a refuge for people who are already cursed. While obviously the people who live here would be superstitious (or just regular stitious, saying as they are right about everything) of curse generators, but have almost no stigma against being cursed. This would be a nice subversion of the general idea of the superstitious medieval town. Instead of, "Joey is cursed and all plants around him die! Burn him at the stake!" You get, "Joey is cursed and all plants around him die! Well, I hate to see him go but he should clearly move to Grimwood to help them solve their twig blight infestation. What a standup guy, moving out to the next town to help out. Lets throw a goodbye party for him!"

Similarly, if Joey is chased out of town in a region other than this one, he knows he can escape to here and find a welcoming, if somewhat more dangerous, home in Grimwood, which is thankful to have him. Even if there is no place that could benefit from Joey, they will not exile him, because they know that they are all potentially in the same position.