Campaigns

Darkness in the Hill Country is, unsurprisingly, focused exclusively on the Humberland Hill Country, which is the original core of the Old Night setting. That one is done, although I'm making some modifications to it to make it an actual pdf product (not for sale, just for distribution as a freeware hobbyist endeavor). This additional level of polish will really finally make the thing complete in every way other than having been run. So, let's talk a bit about my plans for the rest of the Fronts.

Cult of Undeath is already mostly done. It's done, I should say, but it will also get the expansion and polish treatment, and I'm not quite sure what exactly that will mean for this one yet. Although Timischburg was literally created for Cult of Undeath, now the setting straddles western Humberland and eastern Timischburg, and much of the Timischburg heartland is excluded. As hinted at in the title, vampires, proto-vampires and ghouls (larval vampires?) feature very prominently, as does the intention of a lich or proto-lich necromancer to tap into the magical energy of Amrruk the Ancient, one of the weirdest of the Heresiarchs, and one that was based (at least conceptually, if not at all mechanically) on the old Oozemaster prestige class from Masters of the Wild way back in the early days of 3e before 3.5 launched.

Terror in Timischburg is mostly set at sea, to the immediate west of the western Timischburg coast, and some of the surrounding lands. The outline for this campaign exists, but it needs a lot more fleshing out to be workable. It's also mostly all homebrew stuff.

Curse of the Corsair Coast was created specifically to adapt a bunch of Freeport modules. I have no outline and no real plan, but I've read all of their material, so I just need to lay it out like a giant buffet and re-contextualize into a different framework. This one can be done relatively quickly. It will all take place in and around the Corsair Coast, and mostly even just in Port Liure itself.

Shadow of the Serpent God is also going to be largely based on a blending of two campaigns plus some other material here and there, namely—the Serpent's Skull adventure path, the Yig Snake Granddaddy SPCM campaign and a dash of the Sertrous chapter from Elder Evils. I need to still figure out how to do it, but given that all of the raw material is stuff that I've already read and am fairly familiar with, this should be relatively quick too.

And that, I'm afraid, is all that I have that I feel like I have a good plan for. I have several more campaigns, but they are little more than concepts; not even a paragraph's worth of material; just a couple of sentences in an elevator pitch. So, these five will be the ones that I focus on doing the rest of this year and in to early 2027. I would like, however, to see the rest of them start to develop to at least the level of the last three, where I have a rough outline, needing more work but with an idea of the structure, or at least a big pile of source material that I'm already convinced is going to be where I draw it from. These include Icy Graves of Hyperborea, Mind-Wizards of the Daemon Wastes, Daemons of the Gutter, The Sleeper Beneath the Sands and Secrets of the Blackness Beneath. So, five that are reasonably in development, and five that are really just a concept, i.e., Icy Graves will be in Hyperborea and be all frozen and cold/ice related stuff.

I'd like to get at least a rough idea of what they'll be about, though. For example, I want to feature grislings, especially Nyxians, as one of the main antagonists of Icy Graves but that's not much to do on; stuff is frozen and Nyxians are one of the bad guys. OK. I've got some images. That helps, believe it or not. But it isn't much. Here's most of my Nyxian characters, by the way, although the one sorcerer type is an NPC from Darkness in the Hill Country, so I doubt he'll make yet another appearance. His image is just a stand-in.

UPDATE: And I decided that Ampelius Pictor isn't a good choice there. Here's a selection of some other Nyxians, actually in abandoned Nyx. I said earlier that the Zobnans more or less dressed like Hillmen and the Nyxians held on to their culture stubbornly, refusing to assimilate, although younger generations often left the bitterness of the Nyxians aside for the happier and more prosperous way of life of the Zobnans in Lomar, causing a generational divide between older and younger Nyxians. But this isn't completely true, and the reality is that many in Lomar who aren't Nyxians are still influenced by their culture; Nyxian clothing, weapons, cuisine, etc. are actually relatively popular in Lomar even among those who aren't Nyxians. While the Zobnans generally welcome the Nyxians who assimilate, the reverse is also true, and in reality, a syncretic younger generation that is a bit of both has arisen... and many of them have little interest or patience in the political jingoism of their fathers. Many of them, in fact, both Nyxian and Zobnan, rally around the quixotic idea of a revanchist takeover of Hyperborea and resettlement there.

Which, I'm sure, will be an important part of Icy Graves of Hyperborea.