Dark Fantasy X and Shadows Over Garenport and Cult of Undeath

OK, I'm done with HOMM3 posts. I'm done with SWTOR posts. I haven't done much of anything else in several months, but it's time to start working again on DFX and the campaigns.

DFX as a game, of course, is done. I'm not doing anything else with it anymore. Here's the link, just for reference:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i6SlE8bF1mmGmgMKtkj2OHoP_-FrtKAo/view?usp=drive_link

And the character sheet:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ols2sEepL5KwkiqoapwgiVYEKMfSymqC/view?usp=drive_link

But I've posted those before, and when I say that I'm working on DFX, I don't mean on the rules, I mean on the setting and campaign discussion.

I think that I've done everything I need to for SHADOWS OVER GARENPORT, and I don't have anything else needed to run. In fact, I've already started running, although for various reasons unrelated to the game itself, I never made it an ongoing thing. I'm actually more interested, in light of my pending relocation, in converting that campaign outline into a novel outline (or more than one, possibly) and start writing it in my spare time rather than imagining TTRPGs that aren't happening.

But what I really want to do is start migrating into working on my revised CULT OF UNDEATH. As a refresher for people who haven't been reading for years, I originally did CULT OF UNDEATH years ago as an attempt to summarize and adapt the Carrion Crown adventure path by Paizo into a game that I could run. That was a fun project to go through, but what I realized fairly quickly was that I couldn't really do it. There were too many ideas and too many concepts that didn't work for me, and while there were certainly some ideas that I could borrow, there were also a great many that would have to change so much that the whole project would be pretty unrecognizable as an adaptation of the original source material in any way whatsoever except maybe the set up of the story. This sat in this state for a long time until I started doing these campaign briefs, and this 5x5 FRONTS exercise, where I thought I'd dust off the idea and rebuild it from the ground up. I think that I'm ready now to talk about how I'd move from SHADOWS OVER GARENPORT to CULT OF UNDEATH, and how they'd differ. (Lets start calling them SOG and COU to avoid me typing that out over and over again.)

First, whereas my original idea was that I'd propose all three campaigns to the players and let them choose which to do, I'm now going to assume that COU will follow SOG and that if I'm running COU that the players playing it will have first already played SOG (this will carry on when I get to MIND-WIZARDS OF THE DAEMON WASTES (MWotDW) too; to play that, you will have needed to already completed COU. But that's not going to be something to talk about for likely months to come.

Before I begin, although you never know until you run it, of course, I have to make some plans, and in order to do so, I have to make some assumptions. I'm going to assume the following about the resolution of SOG:

• The PCs played all five fronts to completion.
• For the Garenport front, the Grand Duke and Duchess as well as their supernatural supporters all ended up dead. This leads to a political vacuum and a great deal of chaos, but that's not the PCs problem, and in fact they probably have plenty of incentive to stay away from Garenport for the short term, hence their decampment to the Northwoodshire countryside, where they pick up the COU thread.
• Since I'm using my sample iconics as stand-ins for the PCs, I am also using the fronts I developed for them. Dominic's is the most developed at this point, having confronted Audrey Hardwicke in Garenport. That was resolved for now, but Hardwicke will have escaped or at least his death can't be verified, so when he eventually comes back again, it won't be shocking. I also believe that Kimnor would have discovered that Bethan is still alive, and while I don't believe that that will have been resolved either, he's not going to be going anywhere near Lomar in the near term, so that will also hibernate. Ragnar and Cailin's story will be the star of the COU portion of the longer meta-campaign. Hardwicke will reappear more in the West, however, and even Bethan will find a reason to eventually leave Lomar. If Kimnor decides to try and find her again, she won't be found until I am ready for her to be found, and she's no longer in town, giving him no reason to stay.
• Joan was rescued. Grym was defeated permanently, and the thurses were pacified one way or another. Southumbria is going to be relatively quiet for the time being.
• The Tazitta threat will have been redirected. The Prophetess was killed and her movement unraveled, but not all of the Tazitta just slunk back into the wilderness; many were stirred up, relocated, and are now running around being a nuisance. The Northwoodshire area was saved, but is still in commotion of sorts, and it is a bit more dangerous now than it was.
• Guarg and Taurek were defeated, but as above; some of the individual pirates now remain on the sea, perhaps more desperate now that they no longer have a haven in Calak or powerful patrons uniting them.
• Burlharrow and the East Marches were rescued, Gothbert has become the new mayor, and if anything he's seeing more influx of homesteaders and settlers who are fed up with what's happened at Garenport.
• There is no chance that the PCs went to the Shadowlands and killed Jairan the Soulless, but whatever machinations she was attempting with the Nyxians and Tazitta cults is done for for now. I do have a thought; what if somehow the PCs were able to redirect Guarg's Ketos to the Shadowlands? Kind of like in Thor: Ragnarok when Thor defeated Hel by siccing Surtur on her, I suppose. I don't think that that means either Ketos of Jairan is defeated for good, but they should be out of the picture for the duration of the meta-camaign, at least, unless I want to have Jairan make a play for revenge later on. I probably won't; I see her as more likely impressed and amused rather than overly put out by their efforts, even if it stalled her plans for the time being. 
• I also believe that the PCs will have strengthened or created relationships with potential patrons that will have them hopping around with stuff to do for a long time to come.

For COU, the PCs will start out in a familiar setting, Cockrill's Hill in the Northwoodshire, but will be inevitably pulled westward towards and eventually in to Timischburg. Timischburg is a kind of Transylvania analog, created by me to take the place of Paizo's own horror subregion, Ustalav, which is also kind of a Transylvania analog. Most of their concerns in the east, in the Hill Country proper, will be left behind except those that specifically pertain to the COU campaign (maybe I should see these campaigns like seasons of a TV show; SOG was the first season, COU would be the second. If it gets that far without being cancelled, then we're on to MWotDW as the third, and I don't have any visibility to what I'd do after that yet. Not only does each season focus more on a different main core area of the Three Realms, but they'll also have different main villains and problems. COU's main front will be undead related and focus heavily on vampires in particular, as is appropriate for something set in Timischburg, the fantasy analog to Transylvania of the movies that I've created.

Anyway, here's the library version of Jairan that I decided replaces my original image. Clearly based on the drow goddess Kiaransalee or however you spell that, which wreaked havoc on the Forgotten Realms many years ago (in actual years I mean, not in setting years)