Glåugust '26 entry 1: The Pillar Tideshore
The Pillar Tideshore
On the middle east coast of the Continent, nestled in the northern clutch of the Dawn Arm, lies the Pillar Tideshore. For a hundred miles, the sands and stones of the Dawn Arm's north shore relent to hexagonal pillars of many-colored stone. They stand and stoop and step, forming a broken stair into the warm waters. As the tide washes in, they hide their flat heads, and as the tide recedes, they keep some of it in their polygonal pools to cultivate microecosystems of pastel shellthings.
The tide's progress shapes massively the amount of "land" here, to a stronger degree than most places. At high tide, there is nothing but decreasingly fewer lone pillars the farther water-ward one looks. At low tide, several hundred feet of washed stone is exposed in striated layers of soft rainbow, pitted with myriad pools, some a dozen feet deep.
Travel across the Tideshore when it is flooded is treacherous for the unaccustomed; one misplaced step could drop you right into an algae-slick basin of stinging spines and razorshells. Dawnlanders sweep the water before them with canes to scare off poisonous critters and to check for dangerous drops. Any native who travels the Tideshore's length regularly can keep a brisk pace where others would slip or split their toes going faster than a careful shuffle.
1d8 things to find in the Pillar Tideshore's pools
When searching the pools, roll 1d8 to see what you find. If it is between tides, also roll 1d2 to determine a column.
| 1d8 | High Tide | Low Tide |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black and white striped fish. Stinging feelers, lazy. On touch, Save vs Poison or body part is numb for 1d4 hours. | Purple mussel. Strong dye, delicious. |
| 2 | Dark eel. Slimy, will bite if cornered. | Needle-pouch. Fist-sized ball, invisible spines. On touch: Save vs Poison or become terribly dizzy for 1d12 hours. |
| 3 | School of glitter-minnows. Dazzling, rainbow-scaled. | Foam crab. Squat, white. If endangered, sprays itself with a bitter foam. |
| 4 | Shellcracker. Stone-beaked fish, bites like a vice. | Gold snail. Bright, poisonous. Not actual gold. |
| 5 | False algae. Wide, spindly animal disguised with fleshy leaves. Entraps and air-drowns fish to eat come low-tide. | Warrior crab. Brandishing a sharp shell/arrowhead/stinger. Looking for rivals. |
| 6 | Plopflopper. Sad, flat fish. Goopy and pathetic. 50% chance to be pregnant. | Very cool shell. Pretty! Shiny! Describe it. |
| 7 | Seahorse. Strange, wise, silent. | Razorshell. Self-sharpening barnacle. Slides through leather and skin. |
| 8 | Pillar shark. Arm-sized, arrow-swift. Harmless, except to fish. | Jelly tyrant. Massive bowl of stinging gel tentacles. Decimates all creatures stuck in its pool during low tide. |
This is my first entry for Glåugust 2026, as well as my first post on my new blog! I went with the prompt Water Levels and detailed a small region in my OSR campaign world. I'm sure I'll write about plenty more of my setting as I go, and I plan on posting about some of the mechanical things I've been working on too. Go check out other people's Glåugust stuff too, like Archon's Court's inspirational interpretation of "magic amulets"!