The Valleys of the Winter People

Alongside BGSJ and another project, I am also working on something tentatively titled The Valleys of the Winter People. It is a hex-crawl-with-dungeons module set in early 19th century Japan. Here is a hex entry:

0301 - The blind necromancer, Yama-no-Itako, wild and hateful, able to commune with the dead and guarded by the wraiths of three dogs. She appears as a shriveled old woman of tiny stature, wearing faded green robes and with the merest wisps of remnant hair on her mostly bald skull. Her paper-like skin barely conceals the blue veins beneath. Her dogs were transformed into wraiths by an ancient ritual in which they were buried up to their necks and starved within sight of food; Yama-no-Itako then fed their spirits in their afterlife and thus bound them to her in infinite loyalty. They are of a lanky, wolf-fighting mountain breed but are invisible to the naked eye except for the long shadows they cast on the ground. Those attacked by them smell earth, death, and dry leaves.

Her modest hut, which contains a bed and some statues of the Buddha, sits in permanent shade in a grove of beech trees on a hilltop. She burns incense which may be scented from 1 mile away; the smoke is visible from 200 yards. She almost never leaves her hovel. Her dogs are always within 30 yards of her.

Yama-no-Itako: 0-level seer. AB 0, AC 12, Move 70. She can Speak with the Dead as a 15th level cleric at will, but only does so in return for communication in reverse; the questioner must reveal a secret for the Itako to pass on to those in the afterlife, at which point all of the dead know it.  

She wears a necklace of pearls taken from freshwater oysters of Lake Usori, near Mount Osore, one of the traditional gateways to the underworld from ancient folklore. There are 16 pearls and each is worth 300 gp; but each also holds a secret. Carved minutely into the white surfaces of the pearls and only visible when held up to the light of the moon are the words and instructions for a spell to Raise the Dead.  

Yama-no-Itako's wraith dogs: HD 5, AC 16*, AB +7, Move 180, Attacks 1 Bite*
*Invisible to the naked eye except for a shadow visible in sunlight. If fought in the open during the day they may be attacked by missile weapons at -6 and melee at -3. If fought at night they may not be attacked at all except in melee, at -4. At night they always act first in initiative order and this supersedes any other special factors affecting initiative.
*The wraith dogs bite with infinite hunger which drains the very life force of those bitten. The victim loses 6 hp (do not roll) which transfer to the dog if it is harmed.