Here's my original summary for this front.. It's a nice place to start.
The swamp snake cult, centered around the blinded medusa who instead of petrifying her victims, she hypnotizes them and gradually starts turning them into snake cultists. She's not truly blind, because all of the snakes have eyes too, but you get my drift. Heavily based on Cult of the Reptile God combined with some of the early Age of Worms adventures and Lovecraft's story The Shadow Over Innsmouth except with lizards and snakes in a swamp instead of fish on the coast.
Eltdown is a place on my map that stands at the gap between the Knifetop Mountains in the south and the Sabertooth Mountains in the north. While this is "on paper" the border region between the Hill Country and Timischburg, the reality is that neither nation controls, nor even has much interest in the region of Eltdown. It would seem that Eltdown would be a regular trade route between the two, but for a variety of reasons, it's actually not. Rather, there's more traffic up the river through Timischburg to Mittermarkt, and from there across well-traveled overland routes, over some relatively gentle low passes in the southern Sabertooths, skirting around the southern edge of the Haunted Forest and from thence to Barrowmere. This is a change from what I've previously published, where I implied or even stated in vague terms that the Fenroad was the only reliable route; I now consider the Fenroad to be an alternate with an evil reputation; in fact, the Fenroad has fallen in many cases to disuse and disrepair because of the opening of safer routes over lower passes. Eltdown has, therefore become a bit more of a backwater than it already was. There is still some traffic between Barrowmere and the hamlets and towns of southeastern Timischburg on the Fenroad, and some even travel between Barrowmere and Mittermarkt on the Fenroad, but not much. It is—in theory—faster than going over the mountain passes, even if the passes are relatively easy, and certainly in the dead of winter when the passes might be snowed in, the Fenroad is the only good choice, but the Fenroad is known to be dangerous and undesireable. Eltdown itself has a reputation as a grim backwater best avoided, and the Fenshave a fell notoriety, and the quality of the road is poor, which could negate whatever benefit there is for crossing the lower road instead of the passes—even in the winter.
The Fens themselves are, of course, soggy and reeking of decay as rotten grasses and sedges gradually turn into peat. Heavy brush, matted grasses, bushes and low-growing or choked out trees are also common, and the Eltdown Fens are infamous for being almost constantly socked in with persistent thick fog. Sullen and unfriendly swampies, of uncertain ethnic origin live in small hamlets along the Fenroad, and even maintain a few stops for travelers, and they have more farmers, hunters, and swampie relatives who live a bit further from the road, but nobody human goes very deep into the fens, and what exactly is lurking in the center is the subject of garbled rumor and legend.
Of course, column #1: The Murder of Alpon von Lechfeld, has its finale in the fens themselves; that's where Otto von Szell and Loriana Stefanescu are hiding out, because they're trying to awaken Bokrug. That's part of what lurks in the center of the swamps; the half-buried city that was destroyed by Bokrug aeons ago, and where he still lingers in torpor or hibernation, or death or whatever exactly his status is. But there's more to the fens than just this, and this column highlights more of the dangers of the Fens. Clever or enterprising PCs could even, potentially, get this "cult of the reptile god" and the cultists of von Szell to cross paths; they're not likely to be amicable or happy with each other's agendas, although the PCs would have to put some real effort into actually getting to the "let's you and him fight" solution to dealing with either of them. They do have enough discipline to not jeopardize their agendas fighting another unrelated cult that happens to share geography. But it remains a potential idea for enterprising PCs to even the odds against both cults from both columns (and I still have one more column that will touch on the Fens too; more possibilities!)
Eltdown itself is a pretty sinister place, and many of the people who live there are part of a cult called the Learned Children of Heqet. Heqet is the blind medusa, who in spite of the fact that (because she's been blinded in her main eyes) she can't turn anyone to stone, she can dominate them instead and the dominated gradually start to take on snake traits as the domination fades, so that they become willing cultists. The snakemen also mate with some of the people of Eltdown, and as in Innsmouth of the Lovecraft story, they will eventually, as adults, turn into snakemen, although they first spend time as human-looking, albeit sometimes with funny features. Passers-by attribute these funny-looking features to the ethnically mysterious background of the Eltdowners combined with inbreeding that sometimes happens in small, backwoods places, so the truth is not suspected. In any case, these cultists don't really like strangers much, and most of the rumors about the Fenroad actually are attributable to Eltdown. The PCs might be accosted to be kidnapped and taken before Heqet on the road into or out of Eltdown, or if they look like trouble-makers, they might be accosted at night in their lodgings in town. (I'd give them a chance to escape before being taken to Heqet; that's more of a finale after they've been working the reptile cult for some time.)
Secondly, the PCs might well discover others who have been kidnapped by the snake cult (cult of the reptile god!) Some of them are beyond saving; they've either been too converted into snake people themselves to be saveable, or they've been blinded as part of a sacrificial ritual (makes sense for a blind medusa) and temporarily enslaved until they can be killed. Many of these are in town, and I anticipate that there's a lot of work to do to clean up the town, or at least save some of the people in town who aren't already cultists.
Thirdly, some of the smaller villages might be under attack by cultists too, or people have been kidnapped in large numbers, etc. A small swampie village celled Rael Kernal could face an all out assault, if you want to just have a good, tense combat. If you want the whole thing to be more sinister than an all out assault, on the other hand, you could have snakes or burrowing snake-men attacking more surreptitiously. Depends on how you need the game to play out at this juncture if you're running it; is a more straightforward defense of a village what you need, or a desperate attempt to root out hidden enemies that you can't see coming? Alien vs Aliens, so to speak.
Fourth, and this is the last one of what is a slightly abbreviated column; only four entries instead of five, the PCs would presumably root out the cult by entering the fens, finding Heqet's temple or lair, and killing her. Maybe they do something else with her, but I'm going to assume that by far the most likely result is that's how they handle it. Especially if they've had NPCs that they liked who were blinded or killed, or if they were themselves captured at some point. Most PCs I've known are motivated at least as much by revenge as by anything else.
Maybe there can be a fifth element as an epilogue too; what to do with the cultists? Most of them are irredeemable, many of the captives are maimed; but some of the snake cultists, because of the domination effect of Heqet, are victims rather than monsters. Of course, the PCs might say; "we beat the bad guy; the clean-up is on you now." And they might even have good reasons for doing so, because the rest of the campaign 5x5 of Cult of Undeath isn't sitting around waiting for them to set up the Eltdown Charity or whatever. But I'll leave open the idea that Eltdown has been decimated, and if it's even possible to recover is not clear, without some help or intervention from someone.
I actually kind of like the idea that if the PCs decide that they can't help Eltdown and move on that some other group of NPCs, maybe even my thoroughly despicable anti-PC group, comes in after them, sets something up, and even claims credit for liberating the town. Maybe it will eventually come out that these anti-PCs were allied with Heqet's cult all along. I did mention that they're the worst, right? Terrible, terrible people. I don't actually intend to set them up as an enemy to be confronted in this 5x5, but I still like the idea. When they show up in some other 5x5, if that's what happens, the PCs will automatically hate them.
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