Terror in Timischburg; first pass at expansion

Cutting and pasting my original Terror in Timischburg outline, and I'll add some more thoughts on how to expand.

1) The "white whale"—some kind of large, nasty sea monster that's been threatening the coast and shipping. It needs to be found and hunted. 

I never meant, of course, for the "white whale" to literally be a white whale. I'm actually leaning towards something like Scylla right now. Not sure how to do this, though, so it's more interesting that just "sail around for a while and then fight a monster in the ocean." The Leviathan chapter of Elder Evils might have some ideas that I need to look at again. I'm also thinking that it requires special equipment. Maybe special equipment made out of star-metal, which conveniently will be crashing on an island as part of another front below. So, there's this whole end times cult that's used some kind of ritual to call a meteor down to crash on an island as a test; a bigger and more deadly attack later. 

Not 100% sure how to tie this in to the sea monster other than that creating ballista heads of skymetal, and skymetal swords, or whatever, is necessary to slay the monster. But I'd like to think of an even tighter relationship.

2) The city-state of Rozovka has often born the brunt of vampiric slave raids, clandestinely. Joining up with Inganok, another victim, they are hoping to discourage them militarily. Although not capable of fighting them, they're looking to commission privateers via letters of marque against Timischburg's clandestine vampire raids. It's worth noting that the idea that vampires clandestinely rule Timischbrg is secret(ish), hidden behind plausible deniability, and many people don't believe in vampires.

I'm not sure what this looks like either. It sounds like sailing around hunting vampire (or at least vampire representative) pirates and attacking them, but that's not a very structured approach either. I think that I might be able to adapt some of the Freeport material, maybe particularly the one actual sailing ship combat module, "A Storm of Sails". I'm sure that there are more sailing modules out there, but I don't know them off-hand. There's a whole 5e campaign (3pp) called Call of the Deep I think, plus the Saltmarsh 5e collection, all of which I should probably read too. They're both on my radar, but not in the short term. I might consider pulling them ahead to read.

Either that, of course, or I don't finish this particular one until I get to those points in my reading. Which is fine. I'll probably leapfrog Curse of the Corsair Coast at least ahead of this, at least when I get to the final supercut.

3) Pirates have been hiding out in remote coves on the Nizrekh Islands and even hiding their treasure haul there. Of course, the locals are unfriendly, hostile, and xenophobic. And snake cultists, and cannibals. Seriously bad news. Probably undead too, some of them. And, well, Nizrekh is what's left of Atlantis, so there's even more bad news there too. 

This is where I'm thinking of adapting part 2 of Second Darkness, "Children of the Void." It's going to be a bit more bulked up, and I'll have a look at some of the jungle exploration modules that I've read earlier from Savage Tide, or maybe "Souls for the Smuggler's Shiv" adventure from Serpent's Skull. 

4) The seal mentioned elsewhere at Grozavest that keeps Tarush, the undead godling trapped underground, is weakening, and nastier, more primal and feral ghouls/vampires are slipping through. Not only in the wilds of Timischburg, but also in Nizrekh, and in the jungles to the east of the corsair cities can the PCs find out how to tighten up the seals and keep the already horrifying enough "secret" vampire aristocracy of Timischburg from being replaced by a ravening horde of daemons and undead.

This is a major change from the ship-based stuff otherwise going on. In some ways, this may be the closest to a dungeon-crawl that I've come up with; but primarily I need to focus on the PCs finding a way to strengthen or re-do the seal. Maybe the skymetal above on Nizrekh is important here, or the fellshard ore in Garskarfells. But ultimately, having Tarush somehow breaking his seal is the worst case scenario, so it needs to be prevented at all costs. 

5) The Godfather in Port Liure. A patron sends the PCs to disrupt dangerous drug and occult trade in the city of thieves which is wreaking havoc on more innocent Timischer people, and they get caught up in a gang war, among other problems.

Port Liure is already going to be the setting for Curse of the Corsair Coast, so I probably want to involve a different one of the Corsair City-states like Razina or St. Haspar or something. There are some Freeport modules that I can easily adapt to this; I need to go double check on them and see which ones best fit.

(Bonus) Innsburough in the Orlok Marches is deliberately meant to evoke Innsmouth of Lovecraft fame. Cults of Dagon threaten the entire coast, centered on this horrible town. Sea devils and deep ones and cultists. Can they be disrupted without it being fatal?

The final one, a bonus one, is just "Shadow Over Innsmouth" at least as its currently described. Again, I'm going to have a look at some existing modules for this one too. 

I think mostly my plan is pretty solid, but it's still a little light for many of these, and what I'd like to do is adapt existing material rather than make it up myself.  This post gives it a little more flesh, but it's still not enough to go on. But it's enough that I can go back and do some research with existing modules that I have, and then come back and do each of these six fronts as a separate, more detailed post.

EDIT: The current banner is probably the busiest that I've ever made for this site, but... I kinda like it. I'm sure I'll get restless with it in the future and change it again, but for now, I quite like it. I'll post it here just because at some point in the future it may not be the one that's on the header.

5x5 Listing

Because I just got a few new fonts, and am having fun creating new banners, here's a complete listing of my 5x5s that I've either partly (or completely, in one case) planned, or am thinking about doing in the next... I dunno, months or couple of years tops or so. I want to have more options than just the three I started with, especially as I've had more regions added to the orbit of The Three Realms since I came up with my original list. A few of them have slight renaming issues, or other things; Shadow Over Garenport sounds too much like The Shadow of Old Night, and it isn't really accurate that it's super focused on Garenport anyway. 

Cult of Undeath is literally the original campaign that I've worked on. It started as my attempt to adapt the Carrion Crown adventure path by Paizo into something that I could use; taking some of the better elements from it and putting them into a different framework that didn't focus on so many fetchit macguffin quests, railroads, dungeon-crawls and other D&D nonsense. By the time I finished it (for generous definitions of finished) it resembled Carrion Crown very little, and only one or two story beats are even passingly familiar. Although of course all Old Night campaigns are going to be horror-like, this one is based on really classic Gothic horror, with vampires, ghosts, and stuff like that featuring prominently.

Curse of the Corsair Coast is what I'm going to call my Freeport-inspired adaptation. I don't know how much of Freeport modules that I intend to liberally raid for fun elements and ideas will still be left over when I'm done, but it should at least have a similar feel, and that's my starting point.

Originally developed under the title Chaos in Waychester, and later renamed Shadows Over Garenport, Darkness in the Hill Country is the final name of this campaign, and the first that was finished under the new 5x5 Front methodology. It's a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, lacking perhaps the super-strong theming of most of the others, and just being focused on the relatively familiar Hill Country area of the setting. I consider this the most iconic campaign of Old Night.

I haven't yet given a lot of thought to this, but as I added more references to Hyperborea to the setting as I worked on it, I developed a strong desire to have a 5x5 Front (or maybe a smaller 3x5 or something; we'll see) set there, with a focus on Lovecraftian horrors and icy wilderness. A kind of fantasy At the Mountains of Madness if you will. I presume that it may well start in Lower Kurushat, and involve some stuff there too before taking off across the Wolfwood to reach Hyperborea.

My main inspiration for this is, believe it or not, The Hangover. The idea is that the PCs start this campaign by waking up in the desert a day or two journey from Simashki, surrounded by dead bodies and charred and broken wagons; what looks like the remains of a massacred caravan. But, they have no idea who any of these bodies are, why they themselves are here, or—and they notice this soon enough—how and why at least two weeks have passed since the last thing that any of them can remember.  Trying to unravel the mystery will have them galivant across the blasted, daemon-haunted deserts of the Daemon Wastes, naturally. Slightly more light-hearted than the other ones, as I intend to put as many awkward moments in based on stuff that happened that the PCs can't remember as I can. But it's still an Old Night campaign; it'll be dark and horror-themed, of course.

As Cult of Undeath started to migrate a little bit to the east, and now straddles the Hill Country and Timischburg, I thought I needed another campaign in the West. This started out as my first stab at a Corsair Coast 5x5, but it ends up spending time on the Timischburg coastline a lot, and even makes a stop at exotic Nizrekh. Just a high level outline for now, but what I have, I'll want to focus a little less on the Corsair Coast (since I now have a whole new campaign for that) and more on the Timischburg coastline.

Terror in Timischburg 5x5

I really should focus on finishing my Cult of Undeath 5x5, but instead, I made some high level notes for a another 5x5 Front that features the Corsair Coast at least a little. Better transfer them from my portable little journal to online! I say "Corsair Coast" but it really mostly takes place on the Timischburg coast to the north and even the southernmost port of Baal Hamazi to the north even of that, as well as at least a stopover on Nizrekh.

1) The "white whale"—some kind of large, nasty sea monster that's been threatening the coast and shipping. It needs to be found and hunted. 

2) The city-state of Rozovka has often born the brunt of vampiric slave raids, clandestinely. Joining up with Inganok, another victim, they are hoping to discourage them militarily. Although not capable of fighting them, they're looking to commission privateers via letters of marque against Timischburg's clandestine vampire raids. It's worth noting that the idea that vampires clandestinely rule Timischbrg is secret(ish), hidden behind plausible deniability, and many people don't believe in vampires.

3) Pirates have been hiding out in remote coves on the Nizrekh Islands and even hiding their treasure haul there. Of course, the locals are unfriendly, hostile, and xenophobic. And snake cultists, and cannibals. Seriously bad news. Probably undead too, some of them. And, well, Nizrekh is what's left of Atlantis, so there's even more bad news there too. (Second adventure of Second Darkness can be adapted here??)

4) The seal mentioned elsewhere at Grozavest that keeps Tarush, the undead godling trapped underground, is weakening, and nastier, more primal and feral ghouls/vampires are slipping through. Not only in the wilds of Timischburg, but also in Nizrekh, and in the jungles to the east of the corsair cities can the PCs find out how to tighten up the seals and keep the already horrifying enough "secret" vampire aristocracy of Timischburg from being replaced by a ravening horde of daemons and undead.

5) The Godfather in Port Liure. A patron sends the PCs to disrupt dangerous drug and occult trade in the city of thieves which is wreaking havoc on more innocent Timischer people, and they get caught up in a gang war, among other problems.

(Bonus) Innsburough in the Orlok Marches is deliberately meant to evoke Innsmouth of Lovecraft fame. Cults of Dagon threaten the entire coast, centered on this horrible town. Sea devils and deep ones and cultists. Can they be disrupted without it being fatal?