Cult of Undeath: taking stock

I spent a fair bit of time looking over my latest Cult of Undeath stuff late last week to take stock of where I actually am, and it occurred to me after looking that I actually am closer to being done than I thought. In fact, I probably have more material than I can reasonably use, and if anything, I should cut back rather than look to add more. First off, let's take a look at my recent(ish) updates.

Old illustration from "The Black Stone"

1. The first front is basically a summarized version of the entire through-line story of the Carrion Crown itself, except with significant modifications, like Anton von Lechfeld actually being alive when it starts, etc. Honestly, this one is too busy. There's so much going on in this one, that all of the rest feel like minor side-quests in comparison. Which, I dunno, maybe that's not a problem. But I'm going to have a look at it and see if I can decouple some of the stuff out of the main arc and make it feel a little bit more like it's own story. The Frankenstein Werner Otten stuff in particular I feel is a little tacked on feeling, or is justified in being its own thing. Some of the rest of the stuff here can maybe be pared down or split off and associated with one of the fronts below. 

I'm also less and less happy with Bokrug being the villain at the end. I think I'm going to re-read Howard's "The Black Stone" and see if the monster from that works. I can't remember this being true when I read it a year or so ago. but Gemini thinks that it's Gol-goroth, while other references "posit" that it's actually Tsathoggua, or at least meant to be, even though Howard never actually claimed that. I had thought Gol-goroth was from "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" but it's been a while since I read either, so maybe there's a detail I'm not remembering. UPDATE: I streamed the HorrorBabble audio version of "The Black Stone" at x1.5 speed while commuting this morning (about the right speed for podcasts and audio, I find, for most applications. It actually sounds very natural.) It doesn't ever mention Gol-Goroth. I thought that Gemini was hallucinating, and it was. Still, Gol-Goroth is described very similarly in many ways to Tsathoggua, and many people believe that Gol-Goroth is the inspiration for the froghemoth from "Expedition to Barrier Peaks" or whatever exactly that old module was called. As I recall, that's a bit iffy, even though the claim is commonplace. "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" doesn't ever describe Gol-Goroth physically. It's just a monster that is referred to pretty obliquely. Still... I can use it. If Howard didn't bother to really describe it/him, then I can do whatever I want to with him for the most part.

2. The grafting of, essentially, "Cult of the Reptile God" but pretty heavily modified and blended with Lovecraft's "Shadow Over Innsmouth" story, but next to a swamp instead of next to the sea and snake people instead of fish people works very well. I don't think that that needs any additional help.

3. The feral vampire/ghoul attack on Gaskarfels also works very well. I just need to find a slightly more intriguing reason to make sure that the PCs feel motivation to go to Gaskarfells in the first place. 

4. The Strangers storyline isn't a storyline, it's just a collection of UFO-like things to investigate. I need to do just a little bit of connecting them to some kind of reason for them to exist. But once I come up with that, I've got plenty of material for the PCs to investigate.

5. The one that I hadn't done anything with previously was the bandits or outlaw attacks, but in one of my summaries of front 1 I talked about Grendlings attacking the PCs because of the periapt that they had. I think that's the solution there; not only does it connect to the first front better, but it's probably a little bit more interesting than just literally random bandits. 

So, I think I've got all of the material that I need to do my big supercut version of Cult of Undeath other than a few "connective tissue" items to make it all fit together better, and then I can consider that one "completed" too, after which I'll turn to adapting a bunch of Freeport stuff to Curse of the Corsair Coast. Not the order I originally meant to do it in, but let's deal with where we are today, not with where I thought I'd be a few years ago.