Chaos In the North: So, first spoiler. The Grand Duchess really is a witch; this isn't just a rumor. In fact, she's a real beaut; basically a supernatural, life-sucking Elizabeth Bathory type; except instead of just justification for being a psycho serial killer, it actually works. The confinement in the tower isn't what it seems; she actually has sorcerous means of coming and going if she pleases, although she rarely does, because she also has sorcerous means of communicating with her minions without leaving. In reality, the Grand Duke didn't imprison her at all, she entered the tower and fortified it with thaumaturgy against him and his own pet sorcerers. It's her panic room, not her prison, but he's spun the story differently for the people, of course. His advisors also suspect that she may be a lich with a canopic talisman that will bring her back from the dead like Koschei the Deathless.
But the Grand Duke isn't any better. In fact, although he's not really a lich, because he has no sorcerous talents, his own sorcerous advisors have created for him a canopic talisman, so he is also like Koschei the Deathless. Not only that, he wants to militarily conquer Southumbria and turn the entire freedom-loving Hill Country into his own private demesne, the Hill
Kingdom with himself as its first reigning king, of course. He's been kidnapping poor or foreign girls for the Grand Duchess's "blood baths" for some time, in fact, he'd started in particular kidnapping Southumbrian girls, in the hope of raising a hue and cry for him to save the Southumbrians from the terror of their missing daughters. That didn't go on for very long, however, before he had to move against his wife, because she was about to move against him.
Both of them have as their primary goal to destroy the other, and end their deathless state, so that they can rule undisputed and unchallenged by the other. The Grand Duke does have a canopic talisman, locked in his own secret chambers, in a place nobody else knows (or so he believes). The Grand Duchess does not have a canopic talisman and is not a lich; she's just maintained her youth via renewal by killing and torturing various young girls, and stealing their vitality. But the Grand Duke doesn't know that, so he's on a quest to find her talisman, which does not exist.
She has discrete agents searching for clues to the whereabouts of the Grand Duke's own talisman, as well as how to get rid of his two sorcerous advisors; one a wizened old warlock of frightful reputation, and the other a vampire from Timischburg. She would have some agents located in Burham's Landing, looking for discrete and capable people that could be talked into trying to do assist in this task, which naturally the PCs will be prime candidates for as they will kind of obligatorily (by means of geography) have to pass through Burham's Landing to get from Barrowmere to Garenport.
Meanwhile, the second row of the x5 is that as the PCs approach Garenport, they will find the countryside in a state of turmoil. The Lady's Guard, her own personal bodyguard and (small) military unit was disbanded and declared outlaw, but their oaths to the Grand Duchess mean that they are living outside of town attempting to find a way to overthrow the regime that has imprisoned their patroness. However, they don't really have a solid plan or the manpower to execute their grander ideas, so they're mostly just accosting travel into and out of the city to the villages and hamlets of the Garenkarst Peninsula. They also have no means of supporting themselves very well except via banditry. This has had little impact on progress towards their goals and has angered the common people who live outside of the city. I suppose it's possible that the PCs may want to help them get their act together and stand against the Grand Duke (especially if they fall really hard for the story that Josephine's agents will tell of his wickedness—which has the added benefit of being true, even though it leaves out the fact that she's every bit his match). Or they may want to stop them from harassing regular people in the countryside. Or they may want to avoid them, but they'll have to deal with them in some way, because the Grand Duke has laid false trails for anyone searching for his canopic talisman that it's hidden in the hut of a witch or warlock deep in the wilderness. It isn't, but there really are witches and warlocks deep in the wilderness, as well as other unsavory things, and the Lady's Guard is on their way to becoming one of the more unsavory things themselves, even if many of them are well-intentioned albeit desperate.
The third row of the x5 is the City Watch, which has become a Stalinesque secret police, as they beat down the doors of anyone they suspect might know anything at all about Josephine's canopic talisman. Because it doesn't exist, they're getting more desperate and more aggressive in their tactics. Many of the Duke's people, including many who run the City Watch, are using the excuse to finger rivals or enemies as having information, even if it's just invented. Many of them simply disappear never to be seen again. In reality, the Duke's vampire runs the City Watch as his own personal military in the Duke's name, and not only do the abuses of the Watchmen themselves need to be stopped because they are throttling the freedom and livelihood (not to mention the actual lives, in some cases) of the citizenry, but the vampire, Lucien Russo, is using the opportunity to take victims. Some of them are now enthralled ghouls or lesser vampires, but most are just vampire food. I'm not sure if he is happy just empire-building as a subordinate to the Grand Duke, or if he hopes to supplant him, but I suppose it doesn't really matter as his problems will come to the fore long before he makes a move on the Grand Duke, if he ever wants to.
That said, as part of this, the PCs (and the Duke's inquisition) will get wind of a carefully planted red herring on learning that the Grand Duchess's personal huntsman left on a ship for Cayminster, and from there by coach to Burlharrow, an isolated town in the far north. In truth, the Huntsman (Morcant Gunderic) doesn't know anything about any talisman of the Duchess's, because he believes that she doesn't have one, but he does know that the Duke's castle is riddled with secret passages, and that he once saw the Duke putting something in a safe in a secret, cobwebbed chamber with no windows, accessible only through the secret passages. The Duke never saw him, and he never told anyone about it until now. Plus, this will allow the PCs to interact with two other columns; the ratmen plague in Burlharrow and the orcling pirates on the Darkling Sea. Three birds, one stone.
The fourth row will be the several other practitioners of witchcraft who are getting careless in the chaotic environment. Some are seen by the populace, and lynchings and worse (of the guilty, and occasionally of the only suspicious or unlikeable) start to become semi-regular occurrences in Garenport, as well as riots as the Grand Duke isn't addressing them to the populace's satisfaction. In reality, these other practitioners are often freelancers, but some are minions of either the Duke or the Duchess as well, and as the PCs get involved with them in one way or another, they can start to get clues and hints that will allow them to piece together the true story of the corruption in Garenport. The Rangers, in particular a few operating Shadows, are here too, and have had to, much to their distaste, make some temporary accommodations with some of the freelancers to bring about the greater good. Plus, they provide a slightly more trustworthy source of information, if needed. Their long term goals are to bring down the Duchess and her reign of murderous terror, and make sure that both the vampire Lucien Russo, and the sorcerous seneschal, Grigori Nicholas, as taken down. If they are aware of the Grand Duke's Koschei-like state, he'd be a target too. Of course, that's barely a step down from regicide because Northumbria has no king, but it's way too political for the rangers' taste. There'll be some hard conversations and decisions to be made along this row.
The fifth and final row hinges on the Grand Duchess, in a ploy born of frustration, impatience, or desperation, or maybe even on accident, summons some kind of daemonic entity to end those who she's buttressed her defenses against, namely the vampire, the seneschal and the Grand Duke himself. This obviously will go wildly wrong, and a daemonic entity will run amok through Garenport until the PCs can put it down.
How this all ends is TBD. What will the PCs do about the Grand Duke? His wife? His corrupt court? The City Watch and Lady's Guard, both of which have turned into secret police, gangsters organized criminals at best? I don't know. You'll have to ask them. But I've got all this stuff set up about what the villains will actually do, and that's how I run. The details of how they accomplish those goals can't be established until I get a handle on the PCs and what they're doing. And even then, details is used somewhat flippantly. I don't believe in detailed planning.
The Tazitta Death Cults: This threat is a regional specific threat that will cause a great deal of problems for entire area that's west and south of the Darkling Sea. This means that it doesn't really impact the whole Grand Duke and Grand Duchess scenario that I described in front #1, on purpose. I've thought it over a bit since I wrote my initial summary of all of the fronts, and made some minor changes to this one, as you'll see below.
First, the Damsel In Distress from the Southumbria scenario is, as I said earlier, the daughter of, if not a Lord exactly, then certainly a landed gentleman, with estates in the more northerly part of Southumbria, a little north of the town of Waller's Grove. His lands, and the villages that have grown up around them are not on the map, but would be a bit north of Waller's Grove, but not all the way up to Cockrill's Hill. They're nestled in the fairly wide lands between the Chokewater Forest and the Garenkarst Bay. There's an inland village of tenant farmers and freeholders who provide food for the whole area called Rettersville, and near the shores of the bay itself is the small port town of Benchley. This isn't a major center of trade; it's on the top of a cliff that goes down to the water's surface, for one thing. There isn't a good place to land large loads of goods for miles, but the townsfolk have built a trail of switchbacks that goes down to a broad pier, and mules or donkeys bring smaller loads down to the water, or up to the town. Small numbers of passengers make this run too, because it allows easier access to the interior towns north of the Chokewater Forest, Chokewater Ridge, and the Copper Hills than wagon trains from the Barrowmere or the rest of Southumbria.
I like this step because it kills two birds with one stone. It's directly tied to step one of the Southumbria front too, since rescuing the D.I.D. there is, voila! the same girl we have here; one Joan Wilmere. She's fairly young; hopefully the PCs don't think that a 16 year old girl should be traveling across the Hill Country on her own, especially as she's been a fairly sheltered and naïve 16-yo at that. But if for the some reason the PCs rescue her and just stuff her on a boat, then there's more hints here; she says that before her own kidnapping people had been going missing in Rettersville and Benchley, and that gossip of strange disappearances were coming down the road from Cockrill's Hill and Pineytop even. They can also hear more gossip from sailors or traders at Burham's Landing, or on the ship before it stops briefly at the Benchley docks. Obviously something is threatening the good people of this area.
Anyway, this first box isn't usually how I do things. Rather than describing what villains are doing, it is just kind of a set-up and scenario for this particular column of the 5x5, and how the PCs would hear about it.
Secondly, Tazitta tribesmen have been targeting the narrow strip of land from the Copper Hills to the mouth of the Umber River; the majority of the
Northwoodshire area. This has so far been small raids on isolated farmsteads and homesteads, so only a single family or small group have been vulnerable. But there's an escalation underway. The village of Roan's Mill which is between Rettersville and Cockrill's Hill, has been attacked by a much larger raiding party, but given that Roan's Mill has some several score people living there and a low stone wall around the settlement, as well as—more by luck than by design—a more defensible situation, they've managed to hole up and hold out, and are under a minor siege. This isn't going to last forever, but they can hold out for a day or two, and if—as I think is likely—the PCs have come to Rettersville or Benchley to return Joan to her father, or because of the rumors of trouble that they've heard, they can be right there when a desperate rider from Roan's Mill shows up looking for help.
But, again, this happens whether or not the PCs come to Brinchshire, although naturally if they don't come, then Roan's Mill will be in a more serious situation, and will likely suffer many more losses; both deaths in the attack and kidnapped victims who are dragged into the woods for sacrifices. A more curious detail, which again, I'll have to figure out how to have the PCs find this out if they aren't here for the attack, but find out they will is that the Tazitta attackers have created little effigies of the PCs out of bones, feathers, a bit of cloth, etc, and hanged them (by the neck) with small cords from the branches of the trees on the eaves of the forest where they entered with their captives. Once in the forest, their trail is lost as they walked over rocks and through a stream to throw off pursuers. A man from Roan's Mill will know of a famous scholar who lives in nearby Cockrill's Hill after leaving a post at the prestigious Academy of Mittermarkt to retire to to the countryside. He supposedly knows more about the forest Tazitta than anyone, having spent many hours interviewing captives or quislings over the years specifically to gain this knowledge. This will, of course, be Alpon von Lechfeld himself, unless the players have already played CULT OF UNDEATH, in which case obviously he'll be dead, since that's the whole premise of CULT OF UNDEATH; that it starts with the death of von Lechfeld under suspicious circumstances. I love that tie! Of course, it's entirely possible that the PCs don't go to Roan's Mill or Cockrill's Hill. But the effigies are still there nonetheless. If the PCs ignore that for too long, they'll find that the Tazitta hoodoo witch doctors have some kind of voodoo doll like effect on the PCs, and they'll start to notice that things are happening to them because of this.
Why do the Tazitta hoodoo witch doctors have these, and why the PCs? I'm not sure yet. Plenty of time to figure something out there, though.
In any case, what I think is most likely to happen is that the PCs will be in the area, will consult with von Lechfeld, and he will tell them that a Tazitta quisling a few years ago gave him a crude yet accurate and useful hand-drawn map of Tazitta sites in the Haunted Forest, including a few clearings with henges or menhirs, and a village deep in the woods almost against the mountains. There is the Mother of All Henges in a clearing in the forest. The sacrificial victims won't be sacrificed right away, although the PCs won't know that, so there'll be an element of trying to get there before it's too late. But they're waiting on a Nyxian sorcerer to perform the sacrifices, so if the PCs are in the area, they could get there before they're actually done. If they're not, then obviously they won't, and the sacrifices will be worse. In fact, they'll power the voodoo dolls against the PCs, and they'll start working almost immediately.
This Nyxian is from Lomar and he is even known as a researcher to Professor von Lechfeld, although he's not known as a cult-sorcerer; that's news to him. His name is Ampelius Pictor. If the PCs stop the sacrifices and kill or incapacitate Pictor, the threat from the forest Tazitta clans will be blunted. Honestly, they're not really into that whole Death Cult thing, and they were wary of the Prophetess all along. They'd love an excuse to give the whole thing up and slink back into the woods.
If they don't, they will still be unreliable and surly about their involvement, but they will remain a threat to Brinchshire nonetheless. Pictor is an ambassador from the Cult, sent to shore up their support with these sacrifices and a show of witchcraft meant to intimidate and frighten the people of the Haunted Forest.
Oh, by the way, the Haunted Forest, as its name implies, can be a source of all kinds of other bad news if more is needed.
The third stage is to figure out what the devil is going on with the Tazitta and why do they have a Nyxian sorcerer working with them; one who's actually well-enough known that people in the area can even give the PCs his exact address in Lomar! If the PCs are not around addressing this stuff, then this stage can be skipped, or if they decide that they'd rather tackle the greater Tazitta cult-lands head-on, they can also skip it. At least for now, although that will leave the greater Nyxian conspiracy (see below) unresolved. This involves going to Lomar, investigating Pictor's home and or office (Lomar also has a University on par with that of Mittermarkt, and Pictor was a scholar there professionally.) Lomar has problems right now; the Nyxians are getting a little restless and unruly, and while the Zobnans are sympathetic to their cousins' situation, being a mirror of their own in many ways, they also have established a new life here in Lomar, and become relatively friendly with the locals; they trade extensively with the Hillmen, and other peoples further west, for instance. And even before settling in Lomar, both the Zobnans and the Nyxians had a very different and mutually exclusive view on what it meant to be Hyperborean. The Zobnans have no desire to take on the Nyxians' strange dark cults and culture, and are starting to get impatient at their lack of assimilation. Pictor was heavily involved in sedition and treason against the government of Lomar, and his people have no desire to see the PCs or anyone else poking around in his affairs. One of the reasons that this particular box in the chart works well for me is because not only does it give an opportunity to explore a new area and new people, but it also has a different vibe than the rest of the arc, with intrigue and skullduggery being a major theme.
Pictor's death, if it happened, will set the Death Cults back a bit, but the potential fourth and fifth boxes, if the PCs "trip" them and cause them to happen are related to this conspiracy. The Tazitta death cults have had their grip on Tazitta society slip in recent generations, and their witch doctors were on the lookout for a way to re-cement their role. The Nyxians, on the other hand, have been increasingly frustrated with the Zobnans in Lomar being unwilling to embrace what—to them—were clearly the "pure" form of Hyperborean culture and cultic religion. The Tazitta witch doctors and the Nyxian death priests, who were forced underground by Lomarian law, entered into a pact to enable each other, brokered by the true master of both cults. The Tazitta wanted to rid all of the Hill Country, or at least Northwoodshire and the surrounding area, of Hillmen and return to their traditional way of life while the Nyxians needed a place to establish their own new city and settlements. The deal that the Death Cult of the Tazittans made with the Death Cult of the Nyxians requires that the Tazitta clans unite under the leadership of the Prophetess and the Nyxian death priests to drive the Hillmen out of the area.
The driving force behind both cults, in spite of their fairly different appearance among two very different ethnic and cultural groups, is one of the feared Heresiarchy of the Twelve, specifically Jairan Neferkare the Soulless. She hides Outside of the world, in a realm all of shadow and darkness. It may well be beyond the PCs to storm her fortress in the Shadowlands and kill her; in fact, I very much suspect that it is unless they are willing to muster an army of Hillmen to support them and still make it a Pyrrhic victory, if victory can indeed be achieved. If you've ever read Glen Cook, imagine a group of scrubby Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay characters taking on one of the Ten Who Were Taken. But still; players are clever. They'll probably figure something out.
Pirates of Chersky Island: As the name Chersky Island somewhat implies, it was named by the Hamazin when their empire stretched its farthest colonies this far, but it has been largely abandoned except by a handful of secretive fisherfolk, hermits, pirates and runaways or criminals who have lived a precarious life on the island. Now, however, as the migrant crisis from Gunaakt has grown, many of the orclings (again; a common term for both morphs of the race; orcs and goblins) have decided not to try and force their presence on people who's way of life would be harmed by their presence, and have sought out Chersky Island as a refuge where they can live in peace and friendly relationships with the other city-states around the Darkling Sea such as Cayminster, Lomar and Garenport. For about ten years now, streams of orcs and goblin settlers have moved to the island and established small ports, fishing villages and farming hamlets. However, this is somewhat threatened by those who arrive and decide that fishing, farming and trading are less effective than piracy. Now the friendly relations with their neighbors are souring, and the piracy problem threatens to become a major international incident between the orclings and the hillmen and the Hyperboreans of Lomar. With that, let's get to the column, which deals, in fact, with exactly this piratical problem.
First, the PCs should be approached in one of the port cities that they are in. It could be Burham's Landing or Benchley, where they are trying to book passage to Garenport, or alternatively it could be in Garenport itself trying to book passage to Cayminster to follow up on the Morcant Gunderic clue. Or, if you've decided to make this a late game front, it could be in Cayminster or Lomar trying to get to Garenport back again, or even just in any one of those towns without the PCs necessarily looking for passage to anywhere. Here they will hear rumors all over the place of the latest ship to limp into port in the last day or two with its cargo stolen and its crew reduced significantly either because they fought or were taken prisoner by the orc pirate captain Taurak. There's another ship anxious to leave with cargo, but worried about the safety of the sea-lanes, who are looking for extra protection (I know, I know, it's a tired RPG trope, but it'll work.) This is especially helpful if the PCs are trying to book passage somewhere; just make sure that your own ship captain Borus is heading to the same place the PCs are headed. Naturally Borus' ship will be attacked by Taurak's, and there's be ship to ship boarding action and swashbuckling combat for the PCs to engage in. I envision that the most likely outcomes are that Taurak is driven off, but as he leaves he swears revenge on the PCs and the captain that thwarted him, or Borus surrenders before he's left with too few crewman to get the ship in to port, and the ship (and the PCs, probably) are robbed by pirates. But if you want to do something more dramatic, or if the dice and the PCs crazy plans head that way, awesome.
Secondly, it seems likely that the PCs will be irritated at the villain that dared to rob them, but if that's not the way it goes, then the villain could well be irritated at the PCs that thwarted him. Spies from the Chersky settlement, usually corrupt goblins who can blend in easier than most, but possibly some paid humans or demihumans as well if that works better, will be keeping a watch on ships arriving in the various important ports, looking for the PCs arrival. Then, via messenger bird, quick communications will be sent to Chersky Island's pirate haven,
Calak, where agents of Taurak or the pirates at large will send waves of thugs or assassins to kill them.
Meanwhile, regardless of what does or doesn't happen to the PCs, Garenport, Lomar and Cayminster and other port authorities are losing patience with the increased piracy and are talking of mounting a military expedition to wipe the orcling settlements off of the island, since they don't realize that the majority of the orclings are simply peaceful farmers and fishers, rather than pirates. There may even be an approach made to the PCs to scout the island before an invasion, but perhaps the PCs just want in on the action because they've been involved already. There are a number of peaceful settlements on the island, all relatively small, such as Wrynn, Edenna, Roclus and Barion. Even a quick and casual reconnoiter mission will demonstrate that only Calak is where the pirates are from, and that the majority of the orclings are very nervous and hesitant about the pirates; they are as much victims as the people of the other port cities, but are in less of a position to do anything about it.
A deeper reconnoiter mission will prove that Calak has an even more sinister side to it than simply piracy, although naturally that's bad enough. A priest of Dagon has started the violent and depraved cult of said daemon among the pirates. While not all pirates are members of this cult, enough of them are to make the pirates a force to be reckoned with because of their occult sorcery and zealot approach, as well as the sacrifices that they make on a regular basis. Those who are part of the cult also take a Deep One on as an officer, and this underwater perspective of the Darkling Sea makes them especially dangerous to the ships that they would target. Taurak and his crew are among the strongest supporters of the priest of Dagon, who's name is Guarg Dreghu.
Fourthly, whether the PCs reconnoiter on the island or not, there will be an eventual invasion; a joint operation coordinated between the Harbor-Master of Garenport, a self-styled "admiral" of privateers, who's the brother of the Lord Mayor of Lomar, and the ships of a consortium of merchants and marines from Cayminster, with a few additional boats or troops from other smaller port-cities all along the Darkling Sea. Without the PCs to direct them to the right targets (Calak and the pirate ships vs the other towns and the fishing and merchant fleet of the orcling civilians, they'll probably mostly just kill innocent civilians, farmers and fishers, while giving the actual pirates and cultists ample time to make their escape (mostly, anyway.) With any luck, the PCs could actually muster a militia of local orclings to assist in the cleansing of the pirate cove of Calak. Regardless, Guarg Dreghu isn't there when they attack, having been given advance warning of the approach by the Deep Ones. Although he wasn't given enough advance notice to evacuate most of the pirates, so he escaped with Captain Taurak's flagship to an even more remote cove with an even more remote temple to Dagon in it where...
Fifth, Guarg will summon a ketos (or the Ketos, perhaps) to attack Lomar, which is the closest target. After that, if he isn't defeated or otherwise stopped, he'll continue to attack coastal cities, including eventually Garenport itself, until the PCs either do something about it, or Guarg and the cult of Dagon are the undisputed rulers of the Darkling Sea's waters.
As you can see, I've done my best to interweave this column with stuff going on in the two bigger, "major" columns, to reduce the temptation to ignore this one as a smaller threat that deserves to be ignored. It isn't, but I can see the players thinking that if they don't have really immediate reasons to get involved with it directly.
Savages of the Thursewood: First off, recall that the original, core 5x5 has the PCs starting in the largest city and de facto capital of Southumbria: Barrowmere, and from there they have to get to Garenport, where the majority of the 5x5 takes place. There really aren't a lot of options to get there, and the most obvious is to take the road directly east to the southernmost shore of the Darkling Sea and Burham's Landing. This will take them through the territory near Rabb's Hill. If, for some reason, they don't go near Rabb's Hill, which seems unlikely because it's by far the most obvious way to make the trip, the encounter can still be relocated to somewhere in the wilderness near Barrowmere. Even if they're going directly north, or something else bizarre like that.
They'll encounter a caravan that's been recently raided (within a day or two tops) and robbed; there are dead guards and other members of the caravan that are still being buried, etc. A gentleman's daughter, probably Joan Wilmere, who I also made use of in 5x5 #2, is missing, as is a number of important parts of the cargo. One of them is a chest that Professor Alpon von Lechfeld was shipping to a correspondent in Roanstead (notice the attempt to reuse elements and tie these 5x5s together to each other?) One of the survivors of the raid, who is too injured to immediately move, is nearly apoplectic with anxiety about this missing shipment; he admits if pressed that it included an incomplete copy of Nameless Cults being sent for protection, because von Lechfeld, even though he should have destroyed the thing, couldn't bring himself to get rid any source of knowledge, even one so balefully evil and obviously illegal. Von Lechfeld is actually a recognized expert on the occult, and is consulted semi-regularly by government agents, including the Shadow Rangers, so he has a bit of an indulgence against being arrested for holding illegal and blasphemous tomes of witchcraft and sorcery like that. This wounded caravaner (Eoman Gast) strongly suspects that the raid on the caravan wasn't about any petty robbery or kidnapping in a mundane sense, but rather that was the cover for the theft of the book. He also is very anxious about Joan Wilmere, suspecting that she's the chosen sacrifice for some horrible ritual from the grimoire. This conjecture is actually wrong; Joan was taken for a completely different reason that has nothing to do with the theft of the book (see below), but it makes sense, at least.
The robbery was carried out by bandits, but Eoman and others from the caravan note that several members of the caravan, who had been standoffish, seem to have disappeared at the same time; they are not among the bodies. Although this isn't conclusive, he's right in assuming that they were agents of evil the entire time, and arranged the ambush to run off with the grimoire. Their patron is a hermit witch-lord in the forest who seeks to "upgrade" his situation before he dies of old age into becoming a lich. This is Jareth Grym, and he was an infamous necromancer, heretic and murderer in Barrowmere a generation ago when he was younger. Presumed dead, he was merely lying low all these years instead. In reality, although he's certainly a terrible person and a force for evil, he's not been terribly concerned with the doings of Southumbria or anywhere else for that matter since he prompted the thurses to attack Rabb's Hill some time ago and burn it to the ground. The ritual he needs from the book doesn't require any sacrifices or damsels in distress, although it will eventually mean that daemonic and undead forces will congregate in the Thursewood around his tower. This will directly threaten Southumbria eventually, but it indirectly threatens them more immediately, as the thurse population has rebounded significantly since the purge of the forest after the Massacre at Rabb's Hill, and will be stirred up by the comings and goings of Grym and his undead.
Secondly, as I just mentioned, the thurse's are gathering in great numbers, and a powerful war-chief and his cannibal-shaman are whipping up the thurses into a frenzy deep in the forest. So far they've clashed with daemonic and undead servitors of Jareth Grym, but they don't recognize the source of them, but they've been raiding southwards into Gunaakt, and have hit the migrant route through the forest towards Chersky Island a number of times. They're tired of the incursions of the orclings into their territory and want to strike hard against both the orcs and the Southumbrians (who they imagine are inviting and harboring them; in truth, the Southumbrians aren't very happy to see migrant orclings either and encourage to keep moving.) They will continue to cause loads of problems for anyone in and around the Thursewood—which will include the bandits hired by Jareth Grym, and the PCs themselves, until the chieftain Gorthos and his cannibal shaman Morghox are both killed. That's easier said than done, given the vast number of thurse savages gathered to their human-skin banner.
Thirdly, as noted, the corridor of migrating orclings comes right through the forest. Gunaakt is suffering a prolonged drought over much of its farmland, ironically and flooding through much of its jungles, a population bloom of not only the orclings themselves, but also dangerous wildlife which preys on them when they're alone in the wild and upon their livestock otherwise, as well as political and social chaos as warlords and self-styled bandit kings have replaced a strong government. There's been a fairly steady stream of orclings heading for the new colonies on Chersky Island for some time. The journey isn't very safe, though—traveling to the Gunaakt border accounts for many deaths, and the territory south of the Thursewood isn't any picnic either. Passing through the Hill Country, they're not particularly welcome unless in small bands who behave themselves well and move on quickly, but the Thursewood itself has become the most dangerous part of the journey because of the thurses.
It's entirely possible that the PCs won't care about the plight of orcs, goblins and their families. They are somewhat unlovely, and prone to violence and poor impulse control, and they're less intelligent and have less foresight than the people of the Hill Country. They're not really capable of integration except in very small numbers, and they don't make particularly good neighbors. (Ironically, my orcs who are quite a bit different than D&D orcs are making the D&D designer's ridiculous assertions about orcs and race in D&D come true in my not-D&D game. That wasn't an intentional correspondence, though—just something that developed organically.) But even if they don't take some compassion on the poor orcs and agree that allowing them to escape their basket case Third World hellhole of Gunaakt to try again on Chersky Island is a good idea, the orcs are at least more sympathetic than the thurses, who have no redeeming qualities whatsoever and are truly just monsters in a human(ish) form. To make it a little more appealing that the PCs might help a migrating caravan make it safely out of the forest, and maybe even establish a secure route that they can use for some time, I'll give the orcs and goblins a little bit of a friendlier face in the form of Balogh, a charismatic and even handsome orc soldier who's much more intelligent and civilized than the majority of them, as well as the orc sisters Cryn and Heren who are friendly and appreciative rather than entitled and demanding, hopefully making them a bit more likable and sympathetic too.
Of course, I want to challenge the character of the PCs; so there will be plenty of unlikable orcs and goblins in the group too. Are the PCs heroes, or just mercenaries, or even villains? This third column of the 5x5 will be a bit of a test for them; what will they do about this stranded caravan struggling quixotically against a forest that's a bit too tough for them to chew on their own?
I also like the idea that Joan was stolen by a hired mercenary who was supposed to just grab the book for Grym, but became infatuated with her and thought he could win her over by taking her along too. This hasn't panned out. He's a narcissistic and ridiculous man, not to mention amoral and inordinately self-absorbed. Evil in a very modern entitled leftist toxic beta male kind of way. Frankly, he would have long ago raped her despite her protests, believing himself entitled to her, but as luck would have it, they fell in with the orc caravan, when he left Grym's tower. The orcs sensed that this mercenary Cesan Dughlas was shady and that Joan might be in some kind of trouble; Balogh has made sure that she stayed with them. Cesan has not been willing to run for it just yet, although he's very frustrated by the situation, but as the trip with the orclings becomes more dangerous, neither of them will be very willing to leave until they get out of the forest at best.
Fourthly, speaking of mercenary pursuits, before the raid on the caravan that sparks this entire episode of columns, Eoman Gast was also tasked, if he could manage it, with sending any information about a golden idol buried in a lost villa in the forest back to his professor patron. The villa and idol go back to ancient times when the kingdom of Vuronezh stretched under the northern eaves of the forest. But Eamon has clues gleaned from von Lechfeld's research that makes him believe that he could find it. Sadly, in his injured state he can't, and frankly, the situation was more dangerous than he believed or even still believes. The villa is not unoccupied. I know this sounds kind of trite, but I'm not going to turn it into a sad dungeon crawl imitation. There is a hag named Eigyr Gwynn who lives there even though the villa has turned into a forested swamp and is very difficult to reach safely. Like all hags, she's not a good neighbor; she loves to eat children and all that jazz, but they rarely find their way in to her neck of the woods, and her forays abroad for human flesh are rare. But honestly, she's mostly just minding her own business when this opportunity to grab a solid gold Raiders of the Lost Ark head from the ancient house that she's squatting in comes the PCs way.
Fifth, the last column may be one that the PCs don't choose. I like the idea of some kind of Predator-like monster deciding that it wants to hunt people in the forest, the more dangerous the better. Plus, the Erlking will be my first foray into what elves in Dark Fantasy X could actually be like; maybe dangerous enough not to rate a routine monster line, but treated more like a unique monster of considerably more stature. The PCs might at first assume that finding the bodies of thurses or even orcs isn't a terrible thing; when they discover that the elf who's killing them wants to make a trophy out of their heads, and that he's much more dangerous than most other unique encounters that they'll have in the forest, they'll probably change their tune. Riding at the head of his Wild Hunt, the Erlking will be especially perilous, so I'll need to give some thought to exactly how to deal implement him.
Ratmen Scourge of the North Shore: The northern shore of the Darkling Sea is disconnected from the rest of the Hill Country; although you can travel by land to this area, you will pass through the separate polity of Lomar to do so (discussed in the past), and most people arrive from Garenport or elsewhere by ship. Cayminster is the largest town here, and while it has strong commercial, political and cultural ties to Garenport, the hinterlands beyond is much more independent and has, at best, a kind of resentful dependency for some things from the bigger cities. They prefer to be left alone and not get involved in anything from the cities; from commercialism, to politics to even fashion, where they are stubbornly and in fact defiantly rustic.
There are, again, many smaller communities which the map does not show, but Burlharrow is the largest of those that does show up on the current iteration of the map. (By large, I mean a few thousand people, though. Burlharrow in size should be comparable to some of the classic D&D and Pathfinder small starting towns like Hommlet, Sandpoint or Saltmarsh, etc.)
North of the Darkling Sea, the land is mostly clear of trees, except for relatively small stands, copses, or riparian stretches of forest. It mostly looks like shrub savanna with rolling hills, occasional lakes, streams or other waterways where thicker vegetation and trees grow, and small buttes, mesas and other rock formations that pop up too. The ground slopes steadily yet slowly upwards too, and once you hit high enough elevation, you get to the southern eaves of the Wolfwood, the great boreal forest that separates the Three Realms from whatever lies to the north (Old Hyperborea, Kurushat proper, etc.)
Burlharrow also specifically lies in the floor of a shallow valley, and small lakes and marshes surround the town, but make for good irrigation for farming and the watering of herds; it's much drier in the rolling hills around town. The lieutenant-mayor of Burlharrow, one Gothbert Erhard, is determined to make Burlharrow independent. The mayor himself (Gunne Woodrow) is weak, indecisive and self-indulgent, and has become moreso over the years, so his advisors and other powerful people in town have taken to ignoring him and attempting to enact their own agendas, for good or ill. As rumors of the nonsense happening in Garenport that makes up the first column of the 5x5 reaches his town, Erhard is even more committed than ever to this independence-minded course of action for the good of the region. However, other relatively wealthy and powerful players in town make a lot of their money with trade through Cayminster, much of it ultimately destined for or coming from Garenport. As this difference in opinion becomes more rancorous over time, the two factions have even acquired labels: the Loyalists, who favor closer ties with the cities to the south and west, and the Sovereigns who see Burlharrow as culturally but not politically allied with any of the greater powers with their intrigues and ambitions on the entire Hill Country region. In this, they are more similar to the Southumbrians, who also resist Garenport dominance and the Grand Duke's ambition to turn the Hill Country into the Hill Kingdom with himself as the first king, but Southumbria is far away and has its own local concerns rather than ambitions on bringing Burlharrow into its orbit. That said, Lieutenant-Mayor Erhard looks to Barrowmere as a model for how to create an independent political axis as long as you have enough geography between yourself and Garenport, and has even recruited a few Southumbrian advisors and others to support him; the militia captain of Burlharrow (Berold Geissfalk) was a successful soldier in his youth in the Rabb's Hill campaign in the south, and then retired from the Rangers. Erhard has also started an aggressive plan to lure homesteaders to the countryside around Burlharrow. There is plenty of open and empty (well.. empty-ish. You know how it goes) land to the south, along the eastern edge of the Darkling Sea. This is still an initiative in its infancy. Of course, the Loyalists, led by Dockmaster Murchad Gibson is alarmed by the attempt to grow his opposition by migration of people who have every reason to be Sovereigns and oppose the Loyalist agenda.
Anyway, this is the context in which the Burlharrow column of the 5x5 will be set. First, assuming that the PCs are playing along and biting on the hooks that I've set up for them, the first column would have them going to Burlharrow anyway to look for Morcant, the Duchess' former huntsman, who's got important clues about the whole "who's actually got a canopic talisman and who doesn't" affair. If they don't, however, someone they trust, like a Ranger, or someone else can set more hooks that there's urgent trouble up there that needs some attention right away. In reality, the town is beset with a plague, but it's not a natural plague, and the townspeople suspect that it isn't. Rats are all over the town, staring at people unnaturally, showing little timidity, and generally being creepy. Reports of rats the size of dogs attacking people are starting to make their way around town. This is true. The plague is man-made. Or... well, ratman-made. And the rats are the delivery vehicle for it. Why is some ratman trying to depopulate Burlharrow? Actually, the ratmen don't really care about Burlharrow at all; it's just a dry run of a new plague that they've developed. Of course, ultimately, they want to depopulate much of the rest of the Hill Country and spread from their home on Leng in the lands where humans once lived. (Wow, this could be a whole 'nother column by itself. But I'm not developing it for now.)
Secondly, the rats need to be stopped before they can spread more of the plague. While they've gotten bold enough to wander the streets by day, they can be traced to a nest outside of town which they normally enter through the sewer systems. Here the PCs will not find the absolute source of the plague, but they will discover lots of swarms of rats, some giant rats, and a handful of ratmen and maybe even a rat brute (see monster list.) This confirms that the plague wasn't natural. They'll find some clues here, though, that with a little effort and investigation will lead them back in to town (maybe not right away; other problems will also be pressing on them; see below) where they will discover that the mayor himself had something to do with the ratmen; they have his signet right in their possession among the detritus of the nest.
Thirdly, because so many of the townsfolk died so quickly, the graveyard outside of town hasn't really been properly tended to; many of the townsfolk have been buried hurriedly in shallow graves. As sometimes happens when graveyards are poorly tended, necromancy seems to coalesce almost of its own will, as if a malignant force with its own sentience, and ghouls are starting to plague the town; also stealing victims, eating them, or otherwise turning them into ghouls in their own right. While fighting off ghouls who have also become too emboldened to be left alone (I imagine, possibly an attack on the inn at night; which I'll conveniently locate kind of on the edge of town near the graveyard.) Curiously, through much of this trouble, the mayor has been seen very infrequently.
They'll find that there are quite a few more ghouls and bodies than they would expect from the townsfolk, and through a series of clues which I haven't yet invented, they could eventually be able to discover that many of the recently arrived settlers and homesteaders who have set off to establish and build homes in the hinterlands have been murdered and brought here. This is a major black eye on Erhard's plan to grow the region into an independent place that doesn't need Waychester, but even more so because it turns out that Geissfalk has been murdering them. He's brought in a number of mercenaries to stiffen the militia, who are actually little more than brigands, pirates and other murderers and criminals, and he did it because he was paid off by the mayor himself to blunt Erhard's plans, in spite of the fact that he showed up (publicly) at Erhard's request in the first place!
Of course, I imagine that everyone will want to confront the mayor when they discover this, but if they attempt to, they will find that the mayor has been dead for two weeks, and he's been Weekend at Bernie's-ified around town while mostly being holed up in the mayor's mansion. There are more ratmen there, as well as the ratmen mad scientist who created the plague, and rat brutes eating the flesh of the mayor's dead household and servants. The PCs can eventually discover two important things at the mayor's place: 1) the mayor was actually murdered and had nothing to do with the plague; it was Gibson who murdered the mayor, offered Burlharrow to the rats for their experiment, and paid off Geissfalk to murder the settlers and homesteaders, and 2) there is a horrible black book made of dried and withered human skin with the remnants of a face on the front cover. It will take the PCs some time to decipher and read this book, and it will have many of the same problems as a magical tome or grimoire, save with a study time in days instead of weeks and its not really about spells (although if any PCs are in to that, they could find a couple); it does have a cure for the plague detailed in it, though. In a pinch, the dried leather human face on the cover could even whisper the hints to the PCs.
I imagine that many sanity checks could be made as a result of what's found in the mayor's mansion. I love it.
Fourthly, hopefully the PCs are willing to bite on that hook all its own, but while they're perusing the book, the plague's real diabolical nature starts to make itself manifest; some of the townsfolk who survived contracting the plague are now turning into plague-zombies on their way towards becoming ghouls as a secondary set of symptoms, and have to be put down, probably. The situation is now quite dire, as they can probably deduce that the experiment has been going on longer than they thought and that's the source of the ghouls in the graveyard that they faced earlier.
Unfortunately, and fifthly, the cure isn't exactly easy to get. It involves, in fact, finding a rotted fairy ring in the woods nearby (referenced or whispered by the Book) and traveling to the Shadowlands, a parallel realm similar to the Plane of Shadow or the Upside-down, to use two references that most will probably get. I'm a little hazy on what exactly they'll need to do here, and maybe I can play it by ear as I get closer. I'm thinking that they need to find one of the shadow rosebushes with black roses and bring back enough of the flowers to brew a cure, but fighting off undead and minor daemons, and avoiding daemons that are probably over their heads to defeat, like a nosoi daemon might be involved.
I also like the idea that having traveled to the Shadowlands and partaken of a black rose draught, that they will be marked going forward in some subtle way that will be plot hooky in the future, although again; need to determine exactly how that will play out as I get closer to it actually happening. I'm thinking of giving them a benefit/cost; something that's a cool thing to have, but also there's a cost to it. Shadowy animal companion for the group, and an improved resistance to any disease or poison, but their shadows now occasionally move independently of them. It takes them a while to realize out of the corners of their eyes, and they start to suspect that they've brought back something with them that they can't identify and confront, but which was not invited...
Characters: Even with a complete 5x5, I prefer to have actually a 5x6, with one column entirely made up of character-specific plot hooks. However, since I'm doing this as an example without actually running it (at least not right now) I'll need to do it with my iconic characters and pretend, for the sake of this exercise, that the iconics are actually real player characters.
First, my lead iconic is Dominic Clevenger, a hillman ranger. He's in his mid to upper 20s; still young, but has been around enough to be skilled and experienced. He spent time not only as a Hillman Ranger, but as part of the infamous Shadow Division, which the Ranger Corps does not officially admit exists, and some people don't believe in. As such, his task was specifically to hunt down supernatural threats, as well as support the general Ranger Corps mission of blunting other threats to the people of the Hill Country. The Ranger Corps is an interesting organization, in that it ignores any of the political nonsense that goes on between the two largest rival city-states, Barrowmere and Garenport, as well as between the Northshores section and the West Marches (where Cayminster and Bucknerfeld are the most important city-states respectively, and which have tried to extricate themselves from the politics of Garenport, at least, as much as is reasonably possible.) The commission of the Ranger Corps is to the people of the Hill Country as a whole, and while various politicians and would-be tyrants have sometimes tried to lean on the Rangers for their own purposes, the Rangers have staunchly resisted being coopted as such, and the current crop of leaders of the various locations are loath to try again.
In any case, this post isn't meant to be about background on the Ranger Corps. Dominic is a former Shadow, but now is a freelance supernatural bounty hunter of sorts. He is often supported (and hired) by his old commander (Sir Liamond Wreldane) who appreciates having talented and trusted freelancers that he can work with "off the books." Dominic "retired" early after tussling with a corrupted ranger (Audrey Hardwicke). Hardwicke's corruption was exposed, but he fled from facing justice. He still has lots of supporters in the Ranger Corps (some of whom simply don't know the particulars) as he was a popular figure among them, and well respected before his corruption was outed to the leadership of the group. They decided, for better or for worse, not to make the cause of Hardwicke's fall public. What was Hardwicke involved in? Kidnapping women and children (mostly) for occult sacrifices. Hardwicke was no cultist; just a mercenary who was paid to not only look the other way, but even enable and assist with gathering "resources" for various cults. Now that he's been exposed, he's still doing the same thing, but he has to be more discrete, and he no longer has his wages from his Ranger Corps day job. He's gotten more involved with various crimes to pay the bills and has had to lay considerably lower than he's used to. In fact, he's mostly relocated out of the Hill Country entirely to Simashki. He's also consorted even more intimately with various shady characters, including taking as a lover the kemling witch Merra Kuzalash. (Who is actually another anti-iconic; I have one group of anti-PCs who are all bad guys, and she's in that group normally.)
Since I never came up with an origin for the voodoo dolls from the second part of the 5x5, let's have Audrey and Merra be the source. Rangers, or former rangers, still loyal to Hardwicke keep him informed from time to time on the comings and goings of their organization and the Clevenger brothers specifically (older brother Ragnar appearing as an iconic in the next 5x5 Front). He'll have a few ambushes set up for Dominic and his gang of meddling kids, although they'll just be lackeys, not Hardwicke or Merra themselves. When the campaign gets closer to its endgame, Hardwicke will himself make an appearance in an urban setting—probably Garenport itself—for a cat and mouse hunt at the worst possible time.
It'll be nice for Merra to at least get a nod, although I don't intend to feature her much, or probably even have her make an in-person appearance at all. I intend for whole entire group of "anti-PCs" to be one of the columns in the third MIND-WIZARDS 5x5 when I get there. Some foreshadowing through this vector is cool.
Second, Dominic's best friend and blood-brother is Kimnor "Kim" Rugova, an expatriate shadow sword from Lomar. As described in the graymen post, his people are cursed so that a small percentage of them fall victim to a cannibalism curse where they must eat the flesh of a human or demihuman or slowly turn in to a ghoul (damned if they do and damned if they don't, when the curse manifests.) A younger and more idealistic Kimnor was engaged to a pretty girl from his neighborhood, who later contracted this curse by pure blasted bad luck. Vowing to find a way to beat it, Kinnor tried to hide her in a Nyxian neighborhood. She was captured and lynched by a mob, and Kimnor fled in grief, disavowing his entire people and race and homeland in his despair. However... his fiancé (Bethan Arghavad) was actually not lynched, or at least not terminally, and was taken by a Nyxian cult and protected from the law which mandated her death. She was prevented from devolving into a ghoul by being transformed into a dhampir—but she now gleefully hunts, kills, and eats her own people as per her curse, but does so with enhanced physical abilities and lucidity. Kim is going to have to discover and face this when circumstances bring him back to Lomar over the course of the game.
In the meantime, Kim has been hiding from both the terror of facing the supernatural, and his grief over Bethan (as well as his fear that it could come to him too) by being loud, boisterous, boastful—a hard partier, basically. But he also has a small pseudodragon as a pet. (Note that as an iconic, this is not an animal companion. It's just a color NPC animal that tends to hang around with the group and gives Kim something to do to humanize him more because he cares for it so much.) Kim's arc is rife with potential for really good character development as he faces his past and shows himself to be a much more serious person than he pretends to be.
Thirdly, Shule is an itinerant goblin thief. One of the main reasons Shule is wandering around the Three Realms with Dominic and Kim is because he's looking for his brother, who disappeared mysteriously. He occasionally runs into an old orcling pal who claims to have seen him, but the clues are always vague, often second-hand, and they've pointed to little other than the fact that he's still alive somewhere. As the party gets closer and closer to Garenport, the sightings and rumors increase. Turns out, his brother (Kemish) was press-ganged by orcling pirates on the Darkling Sea, but has done well with them and embraced their lifestyle. He's now first mate to an orc pirate (Charakaz Rees) who runs a sloop associated with Captain Taurak (of earlier 5x5 column infamy). I'm not a huge fan of contrived moral dilemmas, but even I'm curious what happens when Shule's brother doesn't want or need to be "rescued." Or, at least he doesn't think that he does.
Fourthly, we have Oisin Dughall, a woodwose outdoorsman. He spent some time in his youth running with a bad crowd, and was an enforcer for a Chersky Mafia-type in Simashki (the true wretched hive of scum and villainy in the Three Realms, if you haven't gathered that already.) Because Oisin was fundamentally too principled to be successful as a mafia tough guy, he bailed on an operation that was a bridge too far. The operation proceeded anyway, but was a total mess because Oisin wasn't there doing his part. The boss's (Vaspar Oksandros) brother was killed and others of his organization were snatched by the Watch, necessitating expensive bribes to free the most important ones. Assuming Oisin had betrayed him on behalf of one of his rivals, Vaspar put a death mark on his head. Vaspar's rivals would also like to get their hands on him to find out what he knows. Oisin fled to the Hill Country, hoping that beyond the Sabertooth Mountains he'd be free to the gangster turf wars of Simashki. For a few years, this was true, especially as Oisin stayed in the rural areas. Vaspar himself has fled east as Simashki started to get too hot for him, and now operates a "startup" in Lomar, although he's got agents and spies throughout the Hill Country looking for opportunities. Oisin's ability to hide from his past is likely to take a turn for the worst, since Vaspar still blames him for not only his brother's death, but now even his entire fall from his perch in Simashki.
Finally, I've considered re-arranging some minor details from the original column of the 5x5. I feel like the original front establishes an urgency that would work against all of the other fronts; responsible PCs might ignore distractions that actually represent the other fronts, and focus on getting to Garenport and rescuing the Grand Duchess. And yes, I have consequences from fronts that are ignored, but honestly, I feel like it's just not structured very well. There's a difference between making hard choices and being stuck in a catch-22, but it feels a little bit too much like the latter instead of the former. The prompt or hook that sends the PCs on their way to Garenport needs to exist, but it needs to be toned down so that it isn't so urgent, and it needs periodic updates or amplifiers as they get closer to it. This way the PCs can pursue the other hooks too, but continue on track. One of the later amplifiers, but before they arrive in Garenport, is a request for help because of the locking up of the Duchess; instead of that being the principle reason for the trip, it needs to happen as they've been taking their time traveling to Garenport solving other problems on the way. Representatives should petition the PCs for help, or maybe better yet, the PCs should petition experts or occult sages for help themselves as rumors start to reach them of the goings-on. This request that they make for help might come with a bargain that they can't easily refuse; an expert consultant and advisor in the form of Alys. Alys is charming, beautiful, engaging, and most of all: helpful and useful. But all of this is a lie. She's actually a hideous undead wight-witch, and she's only helping the PCs because for now it serves her purpose and the purpose of her master who assigned her this role, to do so. I expect that unless the PCs are unremittingly suspicious or rude to her that she will develop some fondness and loyalty to them, however. What will she do when the moment for her sudden but inevitable betrayal comes up?
As an aside, I don't know why I just put that reference in there. I couldn't even remember where it came from and had to look it up. I'm not a fan of Firefly or Joss Whedon. And although I do have the name Wash on my name list, it's not because of the character who said that. My great-great-grandfather was named George Washington MyLastName and went by Wash to his friends.
First Sessions: The Devil-Spice of the Barrows: First, some context. What will I do with the players before actually playing? I'd expect relatively little investment from them before starting, and I'd like to start modestly; with a small "module" that will kick off the campaign and only last two to three sessions tops, but give clear indication towards the campaign, so that assuming that they like what they're getting in the sample, they'll be willing to commit to more. I think this is a good way to start, especially as my tastes aren't necessarily universal, and it's not a given that my friends will click with what I want to do.
So, other than telling them when to show up, that we'll take about three hours per session (or maybe a bit longer if things are going well and we aren't ready to quit) and that the system will be easy, and that all that they'll have to do is describe in normal language what their character would do, and I'll facilitate the mechanics without them needing to worry about knowing them (although they'll get the hang of them after half an hour of play and be comfortable with them from that point on.) I'd also tell them that if they have expectations about if being like D&D—whatever they think D&D is like—that from my perspective D&D has been like the Avengers or the Justice League in fantasy drag; they should expect this game to be more like the X-files or Supernatural in fantasy drag and be much more cautious with their characters accordingly.
When they first show up, we'd roll up characters, and I'd talk them through it. I'll also stipulate, or maybe just not tell them otherwise, that all characters must be human to start with. Later, as the game goes on, they'll "unlock" access to other races, potentially, if they want to (or have to) retire a character due to death, insanity or they just want to do something else. Even if they're chatty and distracted, there's no way that this is taking more than 30-45 minutes, so we'll be good to start playing after that.
Second, remember how in many episodes of The X-files or Supernatural that there'd be an opening sequence where some poor chumps get killed by the monster of the week, or otherwise come to some kind of bad result? Then you break for commercial and the next thing you know Mulder and Scully have blown into town to investigate. I've started games before with that paradigm, and I like it. I'll give them some pregens to run with, and then I'll go out of my way to kill them. They'll be some regular chumps in Barrowmere, the "capital" of Southumbria. We'll open with a tense scene on a rainy night while in a bad part of town; graveyards, abandoned houses, partially collapsed sewers; the works. They've been paid to escort a merchant to a meeting with a client in this bad part of town (because by "merchant" obviously I mean smuggler) and offer protection, but they've been waiting for close to an hour without the contact arriving yet. Granted; precise time-keeping isn't normal in a setting where watches aren't common, but they realize that things are getting late and the situation is looking bad.
Then a pack of daemonic six-eyed baboon-like creatures will attack them. (About four or five DAEMON, SERVITORs will do, from the monster list.) Yes, I know that's weird. That's the whole point. If some characters die, that's OK. If they don't, or if there are survivors, the Master of the Pack comes out; a creepy guy with a mask who's clearly practicing witchcraft of all kinds of perverse and disturbing sorts.
He's got some real magical power, and shouldn't have any difficulty polishing off the remaining pseudo-PCs, thus ending the opening sequence. He's also got some distinctive gear and attributes, including the horned green lantern, and the strange hoop that he wears at his belt, not to mention the weapon he uses which looks more like a finely made sickle than a weapon.
Third, we cut to the actual PCs, with all of the pseudo-PCs dead and the mood and tone of the campaign firmly established. They're standing by the bodies of the smuggler and the characters that they were just playing. It's a gray morning, cold, but the rain has stopped. They've got some clues as to what happened, but they will need to describe to me why they're investigating this. This is kind of a character funnel; they're not "somebodies" yet, they're nobodies, and they'll get the attention of the patron that they picked earlier on after solving this mystery.
There will be three clues that they will immediately see, and they will be subtly encouraged to follow-up on all three.
1) There's a nearby dive tavern and flophouse. Some the guests, employees and other neighborhood locals are standing around outside gawking at the torn bodies, and some of them are talking with knowing nods and meaningful looks at each other with and grim faces. The PCs can interview them for potential witnesses and discover that the smuggler and his bodyguards had waited in the dive tavern before going to their meeting, and that many had seen them. They looked shady, and after talking to a few of the witnesses, they'll be able to discover at least one of them who knows the name of the merchant (Eric Gylle) and somebody else who has heard the name as a notorious dealer of the highly dangerous and illegal devil spice. While some wretched souls use this stuff as a dangerous nostrum, it also has a reputation as being used as a component in some rituals of witchcraft, daemonology and necromancy. While interviewing these guys, one guy is acting especially suspicious and tries to slip away, but not without the PCs seeing him (no need to make a check. I'll make sure that he does something clumsy, turns around with a frightened look at them, and then starts running, or something like that.) Assuming that they chase the guy down, he's got a slightly scintillating turquoise powder on his upper lip. It's kind of a red herring; the guy's just a devil spice addict, and Gylle was his supplier. He was kind of desperate, however, since Gylle had told him a couple of days ago that he had a big score coming up, after which he expected to be able to afford leaving town for good, leaving this poor fellow (Glendon Droge) high and dry.
2) The smuggler's (Gylle's) body is mangled beyond all reason, but he doesn't appear to have been robbed. His messenger bag is torn open, but the items seem to have merely been spilled out in the mud, and there's enough laying around to have had it pretty full. If something was taken, it was something small and particular. However, some of these scattered items have the residue of a turquoise, luminous powder on them. If they've already done the first clue, they'll know what this means. If not, they'll have the chance to do it still. Among his things is a wooden cigar case with the name Eric Gylle on it, as well as an address here in town. It's his house, although it looks scantily furnished, as if he doesn't spend tons of time there. While there, however, the house also receives a visit from Gylle's distributor's thugs. Gylle owed him money which the big score was supposed to cover, but since he never showed up last night to deliver it, a number of obviously criminal types have come to shake him down. Instead... they find the PCs, of course.
There's nothing remarkable about this; the PCs just have to deal with angry and suspicious criminal gangsters. It's possible that they won't have to fight them, but most likely they will. If they somehow get more information from them, they'll find that they work for a crime lord named Renwick Bennett, a notorious figure about town. They may even try to track down and confront Bennett, which shouldn't be too difficult to do. He's anxious to find out any information that will lead to his missing money. If the PCs go in guns blazing, they'll probably not do well; Bennett lives in a very nice part of town in a luxurious villa, with tight and intimidating security that a handful of 1st level PCs should not feel confident in assaulting. Besides, he's reasonably helpful without overtly incriminating himself in anything illegal; Gylle owed him money, but he had promised that a "big score" was coming last night that would give him enough to pay the debt back with interest, as well as set him up to leave town, which Bennett thought was a good idea, since Gylle was a shady character who didn't brighten up the neighborhoods he lived in, if you know what I mean. Bennett isn't going to give them any info on his supply, or even that it is his supply, but he'll be happy to have a few disposable do-gooders out there investigating what happened, so he'll be helpful. He'll point out that Gylle mentioned that his customer supposedly lived in the run down part of town, or maybe just outside of town in that direction, which is part of the reason they met there, and which should point them back to the final clue, if they haven't already discovered it...
3) While the rain that fell last night obliterated any signs of where anyone went or came from (i.e. footprints) near the body, after a more thorough search of the broader area, they will find a partially collapsed sewer tunnel that has strange footprints and traces of the glowing turquoise powder. (I guess I realized I haven't spelled this out yet; the blue powder is the devil spice, in case you didn't put that together.) Following the rain-flooded sewer tunnel, it doesn't take them long before it leads them, through a loose rusted iron grate, to an old cemetery on the edge of town. There are some mouldering old nice graves from a time long ago, but mostly this has become a ghetto pauper's cemetery in more recent years. Beyond the cemetery are even older graves; ancient barrows that predate the arrival of the hillmen entirely. But, they can follow the tracks in that general direction. Here, they'll see a nuzzle-rat, basically Lovecraft's Brown Jenkin. An obviously supernatural and evil little creature, it spies them, and runs screeching further into the barrows.
Fourth, these three clues, hopefully discovered in more or less that order (which I can help facilitate) will lead them to the Master of the Pack's hideout, in an ancient barrow that he's unsealed. There they'll have to confront him as well as the servitor daemons again that he'll be summoning. There will probably only be two this time, since they're pretty powerful for 1st level PCs who almost certainly won't have silver weapons, or even know that they should have silver weapons.
With any luck, the PCs were scared enough knowing what they were getting in to that they didn't just barge in shouting huzzah, and maybe they've been fairly successful in killing the Master of the Pack, his nuzzle-rat familiar and any daemons he may have summoned. Maybe even all of the PCs survived. If not, they probably at least all made it to this point in the game. I'll have a couple of spare characters on hand just in case, though, so players will have something to do if their character bites it.
If the Master of the Pack was involved in some master plot, there is little evidence of it here. Along with the ancient bodies originally buried in the barrow, there are some much more recent remains, looking like murdered victims of the cultist, but what exactly he was murdering them for is unclear.
Given that this isn't a D&D game, he's not going to be loaded up with treasure, either. A very modest amount of money will be found in a small pouch; not nearly as much as Bennett told the PCs that Gylle expected to be paid. Whether the Master of the Pack has another stash hidden somewhere else, or if he always simply meant to murder Gylle and take his devil spice is unclear. There is his weird sickle as well that has a soldered bead of silver right along either side of the edge, making it a silvered weapon that will be more effective against daemons and certain other monsters. Too late to help the PCs with the daemon baboon things, but handy, no doubt, going forward. There's also the bag of devil spice, leading to a bit of a moral quandary for the PCs. This stuff is super dangerous, very illegal, and possession of it could be a death penalty in many jurisdictions. But... it's also worth quite a few nobles. What are they going to do with it?
And finally, there's a moldy and stained copy of the Third Cryptical Book of Hsan. Also illegal and dangerous to own... but if any PCs are excited to start studying magic in spite of the very sensible taboos against it, this is a potential starting place for them. Well, I guess that's not finally; there's also his weird hoop. The PCs won't be able to make heads or tails of it now; it's made of bronze and iron, and doesn't appear to be special in anyway. I'll leave that as a mystery to be resolved down the line for now...
Fifth, where does the game go from here? Well, Bennett isn't pleased that his money didn't show up, and he'll want to satisfy himself that the PCs didn't just run off with it. Once that happens, he probably isn't terribly interested in them, but he may give them a token of appreciation for helping resolve a problem that he had. If the PCs don't take the time to address this, they'll raise suspicions that they did in fact run off with the money, which will put a nasty price on their heads in the underworld.
Also, while the Watch and any other authority figures are happy that the PCs broke the case for them, they don't exactly want to advertise to the people that a necromancer and daemon cultist of some kind was operating on the outskirts of town, kidnapping and murdering townsfolk. The PCs won't exactly be famous, but a few people in the know will hear of them. Which leads to... invitations from the potential patrons to meet with them, and start the SHADOWS OVER GARENPORT campaign fer real!
Hopefully this will have been a knocked out of the park session or two (or three at most) and the players are both attached to their characters and drawn by the hooks, and eager to see what more there is to offer. If not, well... I guess no real harm done and I'll try it again with a different group. At that point, I can start making a similar plan for what will happen in the next session or two. As Professor Dungeon Master says, the most important session of your game is your next one, so let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. This post outlines the direction I presume to take the PCs on in the first session to get them acclimated to the game, their characters, and the setting. After meeting with the patrons, the game will become more open. I'm a fan of the "narrow-wide-narrow" school of campaign design; most players need some direction at the beginning of a campaign, or they'll be flailing around trying to find the game in frustration. And most campaigns need to funnel eventually towards a dramatically satisfying conclusion. But between these narrow options, I want the players to feel more open to explore what they think is most interesting, tackle things at the pace that they feel comfortable, etc.
I should also note, that in a D&D paradigm, this little adventure would probably bring the characters from 1st to late 2nd or even 3rd level. I imagine that in Dark Fantasy X, the entire campaign would get them to 3rd or 4th level tops, so this is just a small speedbump on the way towards 2nd, which I wouldn't expect them to hit for many more sessions.
Fast leveling is anathema to both the tone of a dark fantasy slash horror game, as well as to games that you hope to actually have last for a long time. You'll also notice that the rewards for the game are fairly modest. A couple dozen nobles, a silvered weapon, a bag of illegal and dangerous daemon-tainted drugs, and a cursed book that will allow the PCs to learn spells at the cost of their sanity and soul... as well as bearing the very real risk of being lynched by a mob, and the mob being encouraged by local law enforcement or authority figures.
Always remember your tone, and don't let yourself get distracted from reinforcing it.
