A magical source of inspiration

 One thing I'm trying to get better at is developing ideas, rather than simply throwing together a bunch of notes and leave them somewhere "to finish later". While some can be used for later inspiration, I find that some end up becoming mental baggage that feel like they need to be developed to free up the space. So, to free up some physical and mental space, here are some notes that may end up becoming a very loose hex crawl at some point (in the vein of The Evils of Illmire).

Using liches libram awesome oracle I created a setting and took notes. The last day or so I've been working on it, mostly throwing a bunch of ideas onto a page through blitzed brainstorming. My mind kept wanting to go science fantasy in a Caves of Qud style, but I attempted to keep the notes a bit more generic. Is that for the better or worse? I don't know, I reckoned generic makes it easier to adapt and less niche, but who knows.

Where is this place?

 Who lives here?

Who are the faction leaders?

What great beast or danger dwells here?

What legendary loot is there to be found?

So, what is this place?

• Where sandy plains meet forest are numerous ruins of a past empire. Here roam bands of reiving humans and minotaurs who seek glory and plunder in the name of their dragon-god. These reavers also tell tales of a great slumbering fire giant who awakens every few years to eat and fight. Within one of these ruins is a crypt created by imperial mages for esoteric arcane purposes. A wizard, eager to unearth their secrets, stumbled into the crypt and left changed. Now known as the Metal-Mad Mage, he follows some secret agenda, in part advanced by machines of liquid metal. Their presence has awakened an ancient "Aspect of Death" who craves to devour the Metal-Mad Mage's essence.
• If I were to go more science fantasy, they'd be a lot more robots, cybernetics, the works, but I understanding it's a bit more niche and ideally I wanted to create something more people could use.

I had about 19 hexes very briefly written out. Part of why I wrote this out was to refresh myself away from an increasingly jumbled list. A couple of ideas have come to mind, perhaps I'll make a series of blog posts for this hex map. And maybe draw some more cards for inspiration.