Cult of Undeath Front #3: The Bitter wood of the Bitterwood or something

Here's the Cult of Undeath 5x5 Front as it currently stands:

Front #1: Murder of Alpon von Lechfeld, etc. Already done.

The Shadow Over Inns... uh.. .Eltdown meets Against the Cult of the Reptile God(dess). Already done. 

Ghouls and other "savage" proto-vampires are also coming out of the swamp in the other direction, westwards into the Bitterwood, and are attacking villages, hamlets, and even hunting lodges frequented by wealthy and powerful. This will replace the werewolf and/or swamp witch idea that I had previously, which was loosely based on one of the adventures of the old Carrion Crown adventure path. Y'know, who whole reason Cult of Undeath was originally created.  This may replace the vampire threat, since I'm going to be treating ghouls as savage proto-vampires, probably ruled by vampires or at least near vampires, not unlike Age of Sigmar's Flesh Courts vampires.

The Frankenstein monster stuff in Mittermarkt. This is the sad and tragic fate of one of Alpon von Lechfeld's academic correspondents, and important clues to the murder need to be found here... while also dealing with the obvious problems of a rampaging yet cunning monster. (I already have this in Front #1! But that's OK; this is the one I'm going to replace with my X-files front.)

A mundane threat of highwaymen and bandits making travel between the Copper Hills and Mittermarkt (via Eltdown) dangerous; not to mention all of the crap going on in Eltdown mentioned above. Maybe this one can get up into the Sabertooth Mountains itself, and at least have a different environmental theme too.

Feral vampire

This front is probably best "started" by assuming that the PCs need something to handle the problems from the other fronts. If there is a monster that needs magical assistance to defeat (and there are, in plenty of the above) then Gaskarfells is the obvious place to go. Maybe even to stop the Werner Otten Beast outside of Mittrmarkt, which I alluded to earlier is generally not very vulnerable to regular combat. I may need to have a look at the fronts I've already done; I feel like Front #1 has half of the original plan embedded in it. I may be a bit too scatterbrained to be doing these fronts in a logical sense, and I need to go back and rewrite them once I get them more done. That said, so the PCs go to Gaskarfells, looking for some magic items that will help them handle the Otten-beast. While in Gaskarfells, they will find that the town is in a bit of trouble, and is somewhat under siege. Ghouls and even proto-vampires are assailing anyone coming or going from the city. Even the farmers are struggling, and most are now living inside city limits. The pseudomage necromancers of Gaskarfells have redirected some of the undead workers to work on the farms so that the city isn't starved out by these attacks, but that, of course, impacts the production of magic items, which is Gaskarfells main economic activity.

What exactly is going on, and what's driving these attacks? Well, there are ghouls, of course. Where else does a proto-vampire come from? These ghouls are mostly coming from the western edge of the Eltdown Fens, and have "seeped" into the Bitterwood both because they're drawn by more plentiful prey, and are drawn by the corruption of the fellshard ore, although this is subconscious. The leader of the ghouls is not just a proto-vampire, he's now advanced to becoming an actual vampire, but because he's a feral one, he's completely outside of the hierarchy of Timischburg's vampire population. This individual, the feral vampire, is Velgar Tzarnik and he has a small hierarchy of proto-vampire lieutenants; Rask, Kroven, Morvak, and Volach.

However, there is a minor noble vampire in Gaskarfells already, and he's not amused at the rise of this feral vampire attempting to destroy Gaskarfells, which is an important strategic resource for the vampires and the human nobles alike (remember, that the vampires operate kind of like a Deep State. Most of the nobility at least suspect their existence, if not actually know it, but they don't really interact directly with it. Plenty of people in Timischburg think that the idea that a cabal of vampire deep state agents actually run the country is a wild conspiracy theory. It just happens to be true.) This vampire is Dietmar von Hohenstahl and he could actually be a patron of sorts for the PCs, since he needs some help ending the threat of Tzarnik's attacks on shipments out of the town.

Of course, the head of the pseudomage/necromancer/artificer's guild is actually less happy about an overbearing vampire noble (who's being coy about being a vampire, but this guy knows) in "his" town attempting to run things his way when Gaskarfells was running smoothly without him before than he is about the feral vampire attacking from the countryside. This is Roderich von Szarad, and he's a powerful mover and shaker in his own right, without being a vampire (in fact, he's researching turning himself into a lich instead!) Although none of these three is a "good guy"; but what's best for the regular folks in town? That's up to the PCs to decide, I suppose. Probably letting von Szarad get back to running things the way he used to. But maybe taking him out so a successor who isn't so obviously crazy that he wants to become a lich is the way to go? This three way power struggle means that either of the two in town could be seeking to have the PCs as agents against not only the feral vampire and his ghouls, who have increased in numbers tremendously in the last few weeks (or so it seems).

Potential sites of interest: A) a camp or lair or something in the woods on the swamp boundary where Tzarnik and his ghouls are.  B) von Hohenstahl's lair in a manor in town, or at least near town. C) the necromancer guild house, where von Szarad is trying to turn himself into a lich. D) deep lairs under the city where Orridathis, the Watcher Beneath the Clay, made somewhat self-aware or at least awake by the corruption of the fellshard ore. The undead are being drawn subconsciously by this Elder Evil wanting to essentially birth itself into "undead fullness", which is the real threat lurking behind the feral vampires and the cultured one both, as well as part of what drove von Szarad to undead related madness.

Anyway, this entire front's write-up needs to be seen as a draft that's subject to even more revision than my last one when I do the supercut consolidated post on it.

Gaskarfells pseudomage necromancer

Improved the Hero Forge image a bit and took some more shots of it. Thank goodness for the flexibility that body customizer and kitbashing allows. I'm not a great Hero Forge artist by any means, but I can still get cool results.

Gaskarfells

Every once in a while, I need to step back and take stock of where I am. Quick context aside:

• When 4e was new, WotC announced the book Open Grave focused on Undead. (I still haven't read it, but I believe I have a pdf. I think.) In the product announcement, they talked about the idea of a kingdom ruled by vampires. Without knowing anything at all on how they would develop this idea, me and an online colleague tinkered with the idea, bantered about some concepts, and I ended up with my own creation, Tarush Noptii, my vampire kingdom.
• When I did the Cult of Undeath project, adapting Paizo's Carrion Crown adventure path to something I could use, I ended up coming up with an abbreviated alternative to Ustalav, the fantasy HorrorLand part of the Golarion theme park that had obvious call-backs to a romanticized Transylvania. This became, after a few trial names that didn't work, Timischburg.
• Because Tarush Noptii had more high concept and Timischburg had more details, I decided to combine the two. Tarush Noptii became the prior name of the place, when the Tarushans ran it. After the Coming of the Timischers, it was renamed, and most of the aristocracy are now Timischers, who resemble Hapsburg Austrians. The Tarushans resemble fantasy Romanians and/or Hungarians and/or Balkan Slavs.
• Now that Cult of Undeath is getting reworked again, I'm doing significantly different things with it, but I retain my desire to utilize the Timischburg and Tarush Noptii "assets", and I'm changing somewhat what the "plot points" are of the campaign, as well as some of the geography. I'd originally had a whole column of the 5x5 take place in Vyrko Lodge, which was based on one of the old Carrion Crown adventures. This has changed significantly, but I still need the concept of a town in the forest surrounded by foresty threats and dangers. After casting around for names, I ended up—just today, in fact—with Gaskarfells.

But I don't want Gaskarfells to be just a lodge in the forest. I want it to be a unique and unusual and flavorful town. So I turned to some other older material to see if they had some concepts or ideas that I could adapt. I picked up a book that I haven't read in over twenty years, Hollowfaust: City of Necromancers and while it has a lot of ideas that I won't be using because they're way too D&Dish, or way to embedded with the Scarred Lands setting in which they take place, the kernel of the idea is right there. Eberron seems to have borrowed this same idea as pragmatic, not-necessarily-evil necromancers as a key element of their Karrnath kingdom too, although they, again, did it quite differently. 

When Tarush, the "Dark God" (who created the Primeval Vampires of Tarush Noptii out of the very champions who journeyed to where he fell from the sky to seal him away in what is now the capital city of Grozavest) fell to the earth, he brought with him a trail of cosmic detritus. One of the things that fell to the earth was a meteorite of some cosmic ore, a green, glowing rock that brings with it an affinity towards sorcerous power and ruin (as all sorcery eventually does.) This rock, superheated by its landing in the Bitterwood, created a large crater, knocked down trees for miles (like Tunguska) and lay upon the ground in vast pools and bubbling fragments in a molten state. As such, it seeped into the existing bedrock, and fused with the rock, forming the material called fellshard ore. This isn't unique; it has fallen from other meteorites and fused with other rocks in various places throughout the Three Realms and more, but the Bitterwood was the place where the largest concentration of it fell, so far known, anyway, and the quantity here is both quite potent and relatively plentiful. Over the years, the forest regrew around the crater, although flash-petrified fallen trees still linger on the ground, with newer growth—now centuries old—coming up around them. The sorcerous corruption of the purer meteoric material is the source of the name Bitterwood; causing mutations, pollution and more in the forest... but once it fused and merged with the bedrock, the corruption was stabilized and no longer had a deleterious effect on the environment. Mostly over the centuries, the corruption has been replaced with cleaner, newer growth. But not entirely...

Gaskarfells was founded on the site, later, mostly so that the fellshard could be mined. Because of it's magical nature, veiled due to its matrixed mixing with native rock, the fellshard is safe (mostly) to handle and very useful for the creation of magical items. A guild of magical artificers effectively runs Gaskarfells, although few of them are actual sorcerers and warlocks; Gaskarfells is the foremost place in the Three Realms for the propagation of pseudomagery. Although the town has gradually grown to a modest yet successful size, due to lack of resources (and personnel) in the early days of its founding as well as early concerns about the safety of handling the fellshard ore, the Guildmasters took up some limited necromancy to create both workers and security for the town. This has remained in place even to this day, and skeleton and zombie workers and guards are a common sight in the streets of Gaskarfells. Most of the citizens of the town are quite used to them, and don't much notice them anymore, but visitors often find the grotesque and morbid sight of the walking dead accompanying Guildmembers about town, patrolling the wall, after curfew openly marching through the streets to be quite disturbing. In the mines themselves, they do most of the work. Although not "high powered" sapient or free-willed undead, like vampires or wights, there are probably several hundred skeletons and zombies. And, since it's Timischburg, there are probably some vampires somewhere in the power structure of the town. Although, as elsewhere in Timischburg, the vampires keep a low enough profile to maintain plausible deniability, and while most people believe in the "secret" vampire deep state, there are plenty of people with credible reasons for not believing that they exist too.

All citizens are issued numbered tokens that they wear on their clothing. This identifies them to the undead watch patrols, especially after curfew, as citizens and therefore they are left alone. Visitors must register at the gate when entering Gaskarfells, and they are issued temporary tokens for the duration of their stay as well. The Guildmembers are automatically exempt from being harassed by the undead, and the monsters will automatically obey Guildmembers. They wear, without exception when in public, a dark uniform of leather and dyed canvas, reinforced with dark iron, that is conducive to their magical crafting profession. They are also issued a leather overcoat, brimmed hat, and they usually keep their face partially covered. Over time, their exposure to low grade magical energy leaking from the fellshard ore will turn their skin slightly darker and leathery, as well as give them "Gaskarfells eyes"; the whites turn jet black, the irises shining silver-chrome, and the pupils change over time to resemble magical runes or symbols. While one can disguise oneself as a Guildmember, their real badge of office is their staff, with a glowing lump of fellshard ore fashioned into a knob at the top. 

In the center of town, which is in the center of the remains of the crater, is the Guildhouse, which in reality isn't a house at all, but rather an entire campus with living quarters for the Guildmembers and their most trusted retainers, workshops for the crafting to magical items utilizing fellshard ore, and research laboratories... as well as rich furnishings for the Guildmasters, conference rooms, and more. The security of the Guildhouse is famous, and few who are not members of the guild, or their pre-approved retainers, have ever been invited past its gates. The Guildhouse is rumored to extend deep beneath the surface, taking up space in what were once fellshard mines that are played out. Once they're finished, they are extended and turned into additional space for laboratories, offices, storage or secret experiments and more. Most of the rest of the town is in the rest of the crater, and the outer walls are around the crater rim. As the town has grown, some neighborhoods have started to sprout outside the walls, but this is a relatively new development.

While I do have some reasons for the PCs to travel to Gaskarfells during the Cult of Undeath campaign fronts, it is also a reasonable destination for those looking to get magical items direct from the source, especially if any of the characters are interested in pseudomagery. Alpon von Lechfeld had traveled their many times (although he isn't really a pseudomage) and after the Cult of Undeath campaign, Revecca uses her father's contacts and her fortune that she inherited from him to pursue the path of a pseudomage herself.