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.

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.

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?

Cult of Undeath: Front #1: The Murder of Professor Alpon von Lechfeld

OK, I’ve brainstormed, I’ve modified; let’s see if I have what it takes now to create a fully fledged Front #1: The Murder of Alpon von Lechfeld.

Just a quick aside; you may well remember that in Shadows Over Garenport, von Lechfeld is not only a potential contact, but he also plays a role in the second front, where he’ll need to be consulted most likely as a subject matter expert on the Tazitta cults. While it’s possible that the PCs can skip this entire thing and not meet him, I suspect that getting his expert opinion and knowledge will be so obvious a step that it will be done without much fanfare, which is fun to me, because it sets up some early foreshadowing for Cult of Undeath. The PCs will become friendly, or at least friendly enough with him through actual play to justify what happens in Cult of Undeath. Even if they don’t like each other, I think von Lechfeld will respect their ability to do certain things in the fight against the Shadow, where he is as active a warrior in his own way as the PCs are. It also gives the PCs a chance to meet Revecca. Only Dominic, the iconic character is likely to have her fall for him in a major crush kind of way, but you never know. Maybe one of the actual PCs will end up in the same boat. 

Alpon von Lechfeld

Revecca von Lechfeld

In any case, the PCs start Cult of Undeath in Cockrill’s Hill, which was a location in Shadows Over Garenport, at the von Lechfeld country estate. Alpon has died, and they’ve been called to the funeral to act as pallbearers and minor heirs in his will. I’ll actually give the PCs some minor cool things, but they’ll be minor. One condition, taken from the original adventure written by Paizo (one of the few things from Carrion Crown that’s still been retained) is that they need to stick around for a few weeks making sure that Revecca’s affairs are in order; she’s underage and single, but an uncle who Alpon trusted is on his way to make sure that she’s taken care of long term (Bertram Vogt de Heselholt). The PCs, however, are tasked as part of the will and part of receiving the inheritance that they’ve been promised, with keeping an eye on her until he shows up.

Things start going badly in town almost right away. Ghosts, haunts and other supernatural freaky things start happening. The graveyard is disturbed. The challenge for the PCs will be twofold; who’s running around mucking stuff up, and how to put down the supernatural hauntings. Well… threefold. The townsfolk are getting agitated and have decided that von Lechfeld is some kind of necromancer or vampire or other undead tormenting the town after his death. It turns out that his grave has been despoiled, and Pandallo’s Preternatural Periapt, which was buried with him, has been stolen. I’ve got lots of creepy vignettes to add here, but also, the actual facing down of thugs around town, ghouls prowling the graveyard, and especially the ghosts and haunts is a major part of this part of the campaign. They can also first hear the name Otto von Szell here from some ghost or other, or something like that.

Research into the periapt will start to uncover its properties, although that will most likely involve a trip to Mittermarkt and consultation with sages and scholars there, in particular Werner Otten. While in Mittermarkt, the whole Beast situation will turn up. This is a Frankenstein flesh golem/zombie that is running around killing people. The first deaths happened at little farming hamlets outside of town, like Ebenbach, and it will turn out, of course, that that’s where the beast is hiding. But it’s attacked people on the road into town, and more recently in town itself. The same research into the periapt will also indicate that the undead suppression can work on the Beast. There’s a one-off undead suppression ritual that should cause it to lose its animating energy. It’d otherwise likely be beyond the capabilities of the PCs to defeat.

Otten was killed earlier, and part of his body was used to create this golem. He’s actually been dead for weeks, maybe even months now. But items in its pockets are portions of communications with Lechfeld from previously about the periapt. The remaining portions are found in the Beast’s “lair”. They will point to communications received from a suspicious character in Eltdown, which is where the name Otto von Szell will come up.

Also, while exploring this countryside just out of town, they’ll find evidence of missing persons not related to the Otten-beast. Tarushan gypsies have been kidnapping isolated or helpless people for some time and taking them to Dragos Tihomir in a town even smaller than Ebenbach called Tiganbruck. The gypsy camp, that moves back and forth from Tiganbruck to Mittermarkt, often with new victims in tow, was feeding them to Dragos, a modified wight with some spells and special attacks here and there. Of course, there will be sneaky gypsies to fight as well; in fact, I think the first thing that will happen is that they are ambushed by gypsies, who are adept at separating the PCs from each other and attempting to bring just one or two of them to Dragos.

Dragos

Presuming that the PCs follow the clues to Eltdown, they will find spies and cultists who worked with or for Loriana Stefanescu, maybe even Bartal Roziak and Francor Torsail. Not quite sure yet exactly how I’ll dole out these clues, but they’ll discover that Stefanescu has discovered that the periapt isn’t useable properly by just anyone; it was keyed to Alpon, and his death has made the periapt unreliable. The only solution is someone in his direct bloodline, and the only person that applies to is Revecca. Agents have been dispatched to kidnap her already. It isn’t my intention that the PCs would stop or interrupt this kidnapping, but depending on what they actually manage to do, maybe it could happen, I suppose. Either way, they know that she’s not safe until the threat is blunted. They’ll hear more of von Szell, who hopefully by now they realize is seriously bad news, and they're either motivated by intense dislike or fear of this guy. Eltdown is also a nexus for at least two other fronts in the 5x5, so I don’t need this to be a particularly meaty line, because they’ll be plenty of other things to do by then in the area.

Roziak and Torsail

Eltdown

Stefanescu

Either by rescuing Revecca or preventing her kidnapping entirely, or whatever, the PCs will finally face Stefanescu, her two skilled Tarushan gypsy thugs, and some undead and bad black magic. But the periapt itself has been sent deep into the Fens near Eltdown, where Otto von Szell intends to use it to try and revivify Bokrug the Water-Lizard, some kind of early Atlantean-era (if not earlier—maybe the Atlanteans will be like the people of Sarnath in this case) creature that is best left alone. Not sure exactly what this big showdown will be like, but it’ll be the conclusion of the entire front.

Reanimated Bokrug

Brainstorming: Cult of Undeath Front #1: The Murder of Alpon von Lechfeld

The Cult of Undeath 5x5 front has the five fronts identified at very high level. Let me brainstorm some points about the first front, which is the main Cult of Undeath front.

Alpon von Lechfeld has died, leaving his 17 year old daughter (Revecca) orphaned. The PCs have been called to be pallbearers or something, and eventually start to suspect foul play. This set-up is based on the earliest Carrion Crown set up, although very little after that will resemble that anymore. Although I might want to have some kind of haunted house scenario like Carrion Crown does. In fact, I very specifically do want to, and I want to use the haunts rules, and maybe a ghost or two, which will feel pretty different than anything that happened in Shadows Over Garenport. What’s going on here? What does the cult want and what are they doing? Von Lechfeld in his work is a paranormal researcher has acquired many unusual things, and he was murdered because some thugs from the Cult of Undeath (a better name might be nice, but whatever) came looking for one of them, after tracing it to him through one of his old dealers. These weren’t just brutish thugs, however; he was murdered in such a way that it looked like an accident.

Von Lechfeld right before his murder

These guys are now using this item to stir up spectral activity in Cockrill’s Hill, where von Lechfeld lived. I’ll continue the first half of the first adventure of Carrion Crown and assume that the town is getting riled up. Then there will be some ghosts to put down in the graveyard, or in a haunted area of some kind. Again, this is a very different kind of activity than the PCs will have done in the previous campaign, which makes it nice. 

But let’s now take the old Carrion Crown activity and flip it; instead of talking about what the PCs are “supposed” to do, let’s figure out who the villains are and what they’re doing? Bartal Roziak and Francor Torsail are the thugs, but they have a decent necromancer, Loriana Boztogonash among their number. This necromancer actually killed von Lechfeld’s dealer and friend Werner Otten in Mittermarkt first, and then got the answer for where the object was that he was looking for. What is this object, actually? I don’t know what I’ll call it, but basically it’s a necromancy amplifier, which the cult leader, Konstantin Hmayak from his hideout in the Eltdown Fens is looking for. He wants to use it to call up the dead gods of the Atlanteans, one of which, Bokrug, is a lizard-like beast said to have died in the swamp eons ago when it was wetter, and a much larger lake. Hmayak doesn’t really understand that he’s getting in over his head, but that’s OK. Evil doesn’t have to always be competent to be a threat. Look at our managerial globalist elite, for example. 

Roziak and Torsail

Boztogonash

To understand what’s happening, it will be necessary to follow up with the ghosts that are haunting Cockrill’s Hill, as well as investigate Otten and his murder. However, Otten has had body parts stolen and constructed into a zombie slash flesh golem slash Frankenstein’s monster which is running amok and causing panic in town; you can’t be in Mittermarkt and not be involved in some way. This monster will have to be stopped to find the clues about von Lechfeld’s murder, which will require some exploration of the city and the surrounding countryside, which will be further developed later (this is still a rough skeleton draft.) I have some stuff from my original Cult of Undeath outline that I could think about adapting or updating to make it fit.

Otten as flesh golem 

Another slightly less supernatural threat will be the Tarushan gypsies around Mittermarkt, who have been kidnapping people and feeding them to an undead nightmare among them who is on its way towards trying to become a vampire. I’ll probably treat it like Alys, my wight-witch, by which I mean it’ll be a wight but I’ll add a few spells that he can cast. Unlike Alys, this guy will be more savage and feral, and the day to day threat will be the sneaky no-good gypsies themselves, although it’ll end in a confrontation with the wight.

It turns out that Boztogonash made a mistake in killing von Lechfeld to get his object; he’s attuned it to himself, and nobody else can use it… except for Revecca, his daughter, and only heir of his bloodline. So, she’ll get kidnapped and dragged across the Haunted Forest in a shortcut to Eltdown and the Fens. However, the necromancy amplifier, which has been kinda sorta turned on by Boztogonash but which is out of control not only caused the rash of haunting and ghosts in Cockrill’s Hill, but has riled up the forest, making it more dangerous than ever, and has also caused the spontaneous reanimation of the swamp shamblers, ancient Atlantean bodies buried in the bogs and fens; ancestors of the Wendaks who died during the fall of Atlantis itself. 

Grendling woman

Speaking of, Wendaks in the Haunted Forest! What an obvious line of the front. Their own restless spirits and monsters are disturbed by the passage of Boztogonash and the necromancy amplifier, causing the Grendlings to go a little crazy and violent on their own. Luckily, much of this can be avoided if the PCs fail to pass through the forest, but not entirely; even going around it will get some of the impact of this.

Finally, main villain, Hmayak will attempt to resurrect or reanimate or whatever Bokrug. He’ll be a crazy swampie sorcerer, he’ll be protected somewhat inadvertently by the swamp shamblers and cultists. This could also get pretty hairy, because I have two other fronts on this 5x5 that are also based in the same Eltdown Fens; there might be more villainy going on than the PCs can possibly imagine. But, I like the idea of the Bokrug cult, the Heqet snake cult and the ghouls all interacting with each other in the swamps, and that the PCs can’t really attempt to deal with one of these fronts without getting entangled in the other two. After a very brief foray in the Shadow Realm in the last campaign to find the cure for the ratmen plague and possibly to go visit Jairan Neferirkare, I like the idea that Bokrug himself might need to be slain as a embryonic undead beast in the Shadow Realm too.

Hmayak

Warming up to Cult of Undeath and even beyond

I’m reluctant to make changes to my setting based on what I can convince the AI to illustrate, but I’ve already accommodated one, and I’m considering another. First, I decided that the kemlings don’t have obligatory small Darth Maul or Graz’zt like crown of horns around their head. I had already been irritated by my inability to find surrogate illustrations even before generative AI images were a thing. I’m even more disinclined to make that obligatory now that I can’t get DALL-E 3 to generate images that have them, unless I want them to look specifically like Star Wars characters. AI isn’t really all that. But on the other hand, I do kind of like that particular feature being merely one of many potential old-school (prior to 4e) tiefling features, and most kemlings wouldn’t even sport any of them at all. The second thing that in spite of many attempts I have not been able to get a good image of is the skull-face moon that shines over Grozavest. This isn’t really all that exciting anymore as a feature, since Golarion has a moon like that too, at least in one of the outer planes or something. Plus, moons that look like skulls is an old fashioned and time honored tradition in cover art for murder mystery novels going back decades. What if the moon showing a skull aspect was not the normal state, but instead an omen that’s known to take place from time to time? I could actually make it more interesting when it happens if so. Or, even not make that unique to Grozavest, but rather something that happens across the entire world. Either way, it’s not exactly an impending problem; there’s not going to be any travel to Grozavest in Shadows Over Garenport or Cult of Undeath either one; although the unnamed proposed campaign that would take place between Cult of Undeath and Mind-Wizards of the Daemon Wastes, and would focus on traditional vampire Timischburg stuff almost certainly will take the PCs to Grozavest, and might even have at least an entire front that doesn’t even leave the city completely. (I don’t know yet what other fronts I’ll have. Probably one in Innsborough, my sea-side version of Innsmouth, and one in Inganok and Castle Dracul… and I’d like to have a werewolf themed one. One that’s less supernatural? Maybe something to do with boats coming from Nizrekh. Oo, oo… I can foreshadow the mind-wizards!)

So, there’s an ad hoc quick draft of what themes I want to cover in a third campaign season. Before I start that, I still have to redo Cult of Undeath away from my old Carrion Crown adaptation, how it started. Instead, it will become something that’s evolved in a completely different direction that only has the initial framing device as common from that adventure path; barely enough to qualify as an influence at all.

I doubt that we’ll be done unpacking for weeks, and I’m afraid that my hobby stuff will be among the last stuff that gets found, because our movers mislabeled lots of boxes, and the ones where I suspect that my hobby stuff is (and by “hobby stuff” I mean even stuff as basic as my computer) are buried under all kinds of things in the garage. So, I’ll probably still be dilly-dallying with blog posts that tread water, but once I really get back into my groove, I’ve got a couple of new maps to draw; my “alternate version” of the entire Three Realms setting, a revised take on my old hexographer Nizrekh map (especially if Nizrekh ends up being part of the third season) and even a first draft of a map of Hyperborea.

Also, since Shadows Over Garenport is and has been done (with the exception of playing it) for some time, it’s time to buckle down and get Cult of Undeath actually moving too.

Grozavest

Mind-wizard

Timischburg vampire

Dark Fantasy X Race Deep Dive: Woodwoses

The woodwoses, or 'woses (or simply woses) as they are sometimes called, are an unusual demihuman race in the Dark Fantasy X setting that are the descendants of ancient werewolves. Today, the curse of lycanthropy is very diluted, and isn't really a "curse" per se to most of them; rather, they are simply a race of human-like people that have some unusual characteristics because of the ancestry that they have. This lycanthropic heritage makes them slightly more animalistic; they tend to be somewhat hairy, occasionally bordering on furry, walk with a stoop, but they are strong, have sharp teeth and eyes and ears, a keen sense of smell, and are very adept at the wilderness. In fact, most of them feel uncomfortable spending too much time in urban settings, and they often wander as part of that uncomfortableness.

Woodwoses have no real homelands of their own. By nature, they are unlikely to band together in organizations larger than a modest sized tribe or clan. Maybe of these clans live quiet lives far away from humans or other demihumans in the deep forests that stretch across the Three Realms; the Wolfwood in particular is fairly thick with them, but they also live in the Chokewater Forest, the Garenkarst Woods, and the Bitterwood. Not all of them live in the forests, though—there are tribes in the pinyon/juniper scrublands of the Boneyard. Of course, not all woodwoses live in tribes in the wilderness; the ones that you're actually most likely to encounter are the homesteaders who live in the rural areas, mingled with humanity. The Copper Hills and the Garen Hills in particular have many such woodwose homesteaders, and for the most part they reject the clan life, and are welcomed by their farmer and homesteader neighbors, who value their greater skill in the wilderness when it comes to hunting and providing.

Woodwose homesteader couple

The tribal woodwoses aren't necessarily as friendly, of course. They are rather insulated, by choice, and when they do interact with the outside world, they're often viewed with suspicion or even hostility because of their tendency towards banditry or other hostility towards anyone traveling through their territory. In addition to this, woodwoses are often associated with organized crime in urban areas; there is a long tradition of woodwoses being the "muscle" for cells or pockets of the Chersky Mafia.

This tendency towards wandering and crime means that unknown woodwoses are often looked at askance in communities where they are not known, sometimes most especially by any more settled woodwoses already in the community. They tend to feel that they have worked very hard to integrate themselves into their communities, in spite of being outsiders by race, and don't want anyone coming along and jeopardizing it with bad behavior. However, what many wandering woodwoses do is follow a pretty routine route, and while they may not stay in one place, they are well known by the various communities that they pass through, and their ability to bring news and reports of conditions outside of the community is valued, and their judgement is often trusted.

Deep in the Wolfwood and (allegedly) in the Bitterwood are tribes of woodwoses that have full-blown werewolves as their chiefs or shamans, and they practice strange cults to the Moon and to lycanthropy generally. These are the most feared woodwoses, and some believe that they will kidnap isolated farmers and homesteaders, and those that they don't kill may become infected with werewolfism themselves. Because of this, in Timischburg in particular, and farther to the north, woodwoses are much less likely to be seen positively than in the Hill Country.

Below is a selection of woodwose characters, just to give a better example of what their physical appearance is like

While of course there are many personality types among the woodwoses, there are three stereotypes, and the majority of woodwoses seem to belong to one of these three personalities:

— loners and introverts who have few friends, are quiet and stoic, and prefer to spend their time on isolated homesteads, or even in the wilderness.

— koryos packs, who model their behavior on wolf packs. Somewhat jingoistic and often hostile, these will be drawn to other woodwoses, and see most other people as marks or prey. Many of the urban thugs who work with the Mafia belong to this personality type.

— the final, and most likely to be encountered frequently by hillmen in particular are the loyal seconds; they don't crave leadership, but they crave integration into a community, where they are extraordinarily loyal to the community and strive to be seen as trusted and useful members.

Like all of the demihuman races, woodwoses have a curse that occasionally manifests. In this case, it is a lingering trace of their lycanthropy. During full or nearly full moons, their behavior can occasionally become erratic. They will be at -1 on all d20 checks, except for in combat where they will be a +1. They will also get sick and have further penalties if exposed to (or wounded by) silver. This isn't meant to be a penalty applied universally; in fact, it shouldn't be a factor at all unless you (as GM or player) decide that you want that to be a plot point or conflict to explore; it otherwise happens so infrequently as to not be something that would otherwise need to be defined.

This is maybe a little bit shorter than most of the other Race Deep Dives. In reality, the woodwoses have always lacked the same kind of history as most other races. They aren't a discrete population group, except for some of the tribes deep in the wilderness, but have rather been always drawn out of regular human communities during their origin as werewolves, and even as their werewolf curse started fading, they tended to reintegrate, or remain integrated, as the case might have been, with other human communities. While not always trusted or welcomes, especially in the early days when their association with werewolves made them much more dangerous, they're never had their own homelands, or been completely disassociated with human communities, which means that in many ways there is less to say about them. Even now, their relationship, although maybe not quite as tight as they would like, with the human communities around them defines the woodwoses more than their connection to other woodwoses.

The Reptile Cult

To finish off my work (until I'm actually ready to play) on CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER, I need to draw a new campaign specific map, and make up some character sheets for my pregen pseudo-PCs as well as for the iconics that I'm proposing to go along with that campaign. I haven't done either, but I'm going to set both of those tasks aside for a moment, and talk a little bit about my look ahead to the next campaign, CULT OF UNDEATH. I already came up with some draft columns. I wasn't quite sure exactly what to do with what I had as column #4; "reptile cultists and monsters in the Eltdown Fens." I mean, that's OK, I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with any of the columns right now, but for that one I had a kind of vague idea of it being like one of Lovecraft's better stories, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (here for text, here for audio) except with lizardmen and a swamp instead of fishmen (Deep Ones) and the ocean. A town on the edge of the Fens instead of on the coast works well. I also had the idea that maybe I'd borrow a bit (although not much, because it's not actually thematically or tonally appropriate) from the third Age of Worms adventure, which has lizardmen attacking a fortress. Of course, the lizardmen are misunderstood and need to be rescued from the Kyuss cultists as much as the actual people need to be rescued from the lizardmen. I hate this whole "the monsters are just misunderstood people who are obvious stand-ins for the freaks in our society who pretend like they're oppressed because they freak people out, even though that's the whole point of their attention-whoring pose is to freak people out." Blegh. 

It struck me, of course, that if I'm talking about a reptile cult, maybe I should look at the classic AD&D module N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God. It's got at least as much good info to borrow as the Age of Worms adventure, especially from the first half with the investigation in town. The second half, the "dungeon", I have little interest in, although the idea of the "reptile god" being a reptilian monster with a domination/hypnotization special ability is a pretty good Lovecraftian idea. I don't think a "spirit naga" really quite does the trick, but I can think of something else. Maybe a blinded medusa who—because she's blinded—has the hypnotization/dominate ability instead of the petrification. She can still see, because of all the snake heads which all have eyes on her head, she just has a visual uniqueness and a swapped out special attack, and she'd still be powerful enough to be sufficiently scary for 2nd/3rd level characters.

I should reprint that mini as a new image without the base, and call it "Reptile Goddess" (because the name from the module is not really very cool anymore, I'm afraid) and consider it part of the CULT OF UNDEATH folder. 

Another peculiarity of the Innsmouth populace is the bizarre "Innsmouth look" which is meant to indicate their horrific hybridization and gradual transformation into Deep Ones, the fish people of Lovecraftian infamy. As it happens, I already have a few "snake cultists" among my minis. After making a handful of additional "reptile cultists" I think I'm in pretty good shape to do this for them too. This works in other genres too, of course. Tolkien kept talking about sinister swarthy southerners who looked eerily orc-like, for instance, foreshadowing the Uruk-hai of Saruman.

I don't want to go all out and actually create the column now ahead of schedule, but this is coming together, and I want to document for myself what I've got in mind, so I can review it when it is time to do the actual column, and figure out how to draw the PCs to Eltdown, or whatever little town I end up using as a kind of Orlane stand-in.

As you can see, the "reptile cult" look is mostly just a kind of general sinisterness, a hunched look, lizard eyes, and some greenish tints to their color scheme. Only one of them is advanced enough to look almost like a lizardman, although he really looks more like Reptile from Mortal Kombat at this point.

Thinking ahead to Cult of Undeath

I said recently that I'm getting very close to finishing up the CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER process—with the exception, of course, of finding a group to run it for. I'm not completely over the finish line, but the next steps are both small and few. And I don't intend to leave it hanging while I run off after the newest hot idea in my head, but I do think that as the finale of CIW is approaching, it's not a bad idea to have some early, preliminary thoughts about the next 5x5—CULT OF UNDEATH—already in my head. COU is, of course, the earliest project to adapt an existing campaign or adventure path into my game. I started it thinking that I'd hew relatively closely to the printed campaign and mostly just edit out superfluous or redundant dungeon crawling and overly long side quests. As I went through my first draft of talking about how I'd do it, I found that that wasn't going to be sufficient to give me an outcome that I actually liked. If you use the CULT OF UNDEATH tag, and go back to the beginning, you can see the whole story of how my thinking evolved on that over the course of many months of staggered development, followed by big holes, and then me revisiting the idea years afterwards. Very little is left of the original Carrion Crown adventure path that was originally meant to be the nucleus of the campaign, other than the ideas of 1) a kind of fantasy Transylvania as the setting. 2) the game starts off with a funeral, and the PCs as minor heirs in the will—including a charge to help set-up the deceased's young daughter who is now alone in the world 3) growing suspicions that he may have been murdered by a necromantic cult. 

There's some other good ideas in there too as you go through the modules, at least at a high level, but I never thought that they fit into a coherent plot structure of any kind with the main story, other than the contrivance of a multi-part MacGuffin that has to be chased. There's a poorly conceived idea of a Frankenstein monster put on trial for murder (lolwut) and the PCs becoming his defense attorneys, there's the hunter's lodge in the forest where you're supposed to save the werewolves from... even worse werewolves? And there's the vampire city adventure where you... save the vampires from a vampire serial killer?

At most a portion of the high concept can be taken out of those, but they have to be put into a completely different context in order to work. I do have a much bigger town with an Academy where professors suspiciously get up to things that they should leave alone, where a Frankenstein monster could have been made, but that's not really taking anything from the adventure path that isn't already in the novel of Frankenstein to begin with. A hunter lodge in the forest with werewolf problems is also a great setting, but saving werewolves from worse werewolves is silly beyond reason, as is saving vampires from worse vampires.

Sometimes midwits claim that Star Wars is a remake of The Hidden Fortress, which is ridiculous for the version of the film that was actually filmed. Sure, some early drafts hewed more closely to the plot of Kurosawa's film, but by the time we get to the script that actually got filmed, just about the only things left were the concepts of a princess in peril (which is so generic as to beg the question of why it should be credited to Fortress at all) and the two argumentative peasants who created a kind of framing device for the main story, represented in Artoo and Threepio. I have a funny feeling that when I actually get to the point of running COU that whatever actually came from Carrion Crown will similarly be very little other than the set-up. 

The nice thing about my 5x5 Fronts set-up is that it makes it a little bit easier to incorporate and mix together elements from completely different plot-threads in the same game; something that the adventure paths kind of sort of did, but poorly. So yeah—Professor Alpon von Lechfeld and his unfortunate orphaned daughter will still be the set-up, but the whole chase for MacGuffins to raise a powerful trapped lich Dark Lord will not be. Exactly what these necromancers wanted from von Lechfeld is TBD, but I'm quite tired of the whole "release a trapped Dark Lord" plots already, so I'm going to avoid it. 

Other fronts will be in the forest and deal with werewolves, sure—maybe. And one will be an urban vampire themed front. And I'll even have an analog to Innsmouth, as Carrion Crown does, but it'll be in the swamps rather than the seashore and have to do with reptile cultists rather than deep ones. It'll actually probably be more closely related to the first three adventures of the Age of Worms adventure path than it will with the Wake of the Watcher adventure in Carrion Crown. I doubt I'll borrow anything at all from that module. For the final of the five fronts, it might be nice if I laid off of the supernatural threats and had something to do with a band of highwaymen.

1. Necromantic cult
2. Werewolves at the forest lodge OR swamp witches stalking nobles in a forest lodge... I'm starting to like this second one better the more I think about it.
3. Vampires in a bigger city (Grozavest or Mittermarkt)
4. Reptile cultists and monsters in the Eltdown Fens
5. Highwaymen run rampant

So, sure—those aren't fleshed out even to the extent that I did on my first CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER post, but at least it points me in an actual direction as I start that one up here relatively shortly. 

I've also got my second group of iconics ready to go for this one: Ragnar Clevenger (Stefan's older brother), Cailin Clevenger, his young wife and the victim of a vampire attack that left her a dhampir, desperate to make sure she doesn't slide all the way into vampirism, Dean Bannermane the irascible former burglar, and Fredegar de Vend, who has a complicated backstory where his noble house was caught up in the fall of Audrey Hardwicke (from Stefan's backstory.) Rather than feeling resentful and bitter at the Clevengers for ultimately bringing about this family's fall, he's bitter and resentful at his family for putting themselves in a position where the Clevengers had no choice but to bring them down for the good of the people of the Hill Country. He feels he has a great debt to the Clevengers for rooting out the evil in his family, even if it upended his life of luxury and privilege.

Anyway, just to make this post more graphically interesting, here's a couple of wights followed by a few highwaymen from the fifth column. I'm even considering having those few wights be part of the bandit group, just to mix things up. But if not, they'll fit well with the necromancer cult.

Cult of Undeath 2?

I'm considering doing another adventure path conversion into a playable 5x5 Front, like I'm going to turn my original CULT OF UNDEATH project from the Carrion Crown adventure path into something that only vaguely resembles. For this new project, I'd be pillaging ideas from the Age of Worms, if I can make them work, which is a somewhat longer adventure path than Carrion Crown (12 vs 6 adventures, although the Paizo adventure paths were longer on an individual basis than the Dungeon Magazine ones.)

I'm not very certain that the Age of Worms will actually merit this much trouble, although portions of it will be salvageable. I may also, as I continue with my planned read-through of adventure paths, mix it with stuff from other paths, or just make up my own material to replace stuff from Age of Worms that I won't use. It's not like any of these adventure paths have been super innovative or clever in terms of set-up, premise, or story background, or anything like that. How many times can you run with the "evil cultists want to bring back some ancient elder evil" anyway? (Spoiler alert; apparently indefinitely.)

So I'll create a tag for this project, which I'll call ELDER EVIL, and we'll see where it goes. Nowhere too soon, I'm sure, since I'm tacking on it on the end of a long list of projects. But, since I'm reading the Age of Worms right now, I thought I'd take brief notes on it as I do, and the notes will be the first part of the tag.

A bit more context: I have three 5x5 Front proposals right now, and each one focuses primarily on one of the Three Realms. (The Hill Country, Timischburg, and Baal Hamazi.) Adding a fourth will necessarily duplicate some coverage. I'm going to put this in the northeastern portion of Timischburg, at least to start. Diamond Lake (or whatever I end up calling the town) will be north of Ubyr, upriver near the mountains from Mittermarkt, and very close to the boundary of the great Boneyard desert. When the Age of Worms starts inevitably doing things that will be out of synch with the differences I have from D&D I'll either look for or create material that fits that kind of no-man's land between the Three Realms. This may work out well; to be honest, the Free City, as I remember it, from Age of Worms, would be a better analog for Simashki than for Mittermarkt anyway.

I did actually play through the Age of Worms in it's entirety several years ago when it was still newish. I have both fond and frustrating memories of the experience. But I'm confident that I can distill the parts that I liked out of it and purge the parts that I don't. Anyway, here's my notes from reading the first part (of 12) although because this includes all the supplemental material, which tapered off as time went on, it's also the largest part.

Age of Worms conversion notes

Whispering Cairn

—Alastor Land is a ghost. You put him down like you put down any ghost; salting and burning his bones. You’re not doing a nice Caspar ghost a favor by burying him in the family plot, you’re putting down a monster by exhuming him from the family plot.

—The family plot has been disturbed. This is how you get the clues that some cult is working the area, as in the module, except that you don’t need them so you can rebury them and go back into the dungeon; you just follow them as is.

—As per usual, ignore 95% of any dungeon crawl for wilderness ambushes, and other exciting combat and intrigue activity instead.

Background: The whole Ursula the Sea Witch and her big spider backstory is pretty hoaky. I’ll use one of the Heresiarchs instead, if it actually even matters what the ancient backstory is (hint: it probably doesn't.) Actually, Jairan Neferirkare and Shimut the Flesheater are perfect… except I’ve already used Jairan a little bit. I think I’ll go with either Kefte Taraan, the Mistress of Forgotten Secrets, and a vile necromancer by trade (who could also stand in for Kyuss, come to think of it) or Seggeir Sherihum the Sangremancer, since his history of an early defeat that left him scarred and disfigured works very well. In this case, this isn't a call-back to a separate bit of setting lore; what’s the point of setting up Kyuss as the BBEG if you red herring the Queen of Chaos instead for a while? There’s just one BBEG who gets any mention at all.

I like setting Diamond Lake as a small town upriver from Ebenbach and Mittermarkt, with Mittermarkt standing in as the "Free City." This would be a bit north of Ubyr… I need to figure out what Ubyr’s like if I'm going to do that, I suppose.

Otherwise, the whole Filge business is perfect already, except maybe with less exotic creatures as his experiments. It's more horrible if done to humans, after all. And Diamond Lake is a perfectly serviceable starting town, if maybe a bit gratuitously tawdry and corrupt.

I like the idea of not allowing any players to pick any race other than human until they've encountered that race sometime during the course of the campaign, and need (or want) to replace a character. Let's keep the exoticness low for a time and really focus this first act on being a horror rather than D&D-like exploration mission. That said, the town has loads of non-humans kicking around. I'll probably convert most of them to humans, but maybe keep an orc and something else around just for kicks.

I've also read the supplemental material in the article immediately following the first adventure, as well as the "wormfood" article in Dragon Magazine. There's plenty of stuff to keep an enterprising GM busy in that material, but surprisingly little of it points towards the adventure. The adventure really kind of starts "just because" and without any coherent preamble, you're standing at the entrance to the titular dungeon.

Possible expansion of the Dark Fantasy X setting

Let me give some context. Where did the Dark Fantasy X setting come from, and what are its direct antecedents? This is a brief summary of my history, which I've documented here, if you want a more long-winded version.

Back in 2002 I was already tired (again) of the D&Disms and started experimenting with settings that were obviously sword & sorcery fantasy settings, but not D&D-like settings, with elves, dwarves, dragons, etc. featuring prominently. Bloodlines was the first setting that I worked on that diverged significantly from D&D basic. The setting was a kind of analog to prehistoric Lake Bonneville with Rancholabrean fauna, and the non-human races were the aasimar, tieflings and the four genasi as they were presented in the 3e era of the game. This fairly early moved into a version of Dark•Heritage that was a kind of "steampunk Barsoom" overlay on the same idea. The giant lake disappeared in favor of more desert features, and the genasi and other planetouched races evolved into races that were superficially similar, but had a very different genesis. 

By 2004-5 or so, I'd gotten rid of the desert and resurrected an old floating islands idea that I'd had (which isn't unique; I've seen plenty of other people dabble with this concept) and I abandoned much of the steampunk aesthetic. This was now Dark•Heritage Mk. II. Although I actually ran this version of the setting for a while,  it was Mk. III that had the most development (up to this point) when I ditched the floating islands and went more with a Medieval Tarim Basin geography model. This version of the setting was fairly well developed, and I even had novel outlines for it. I did find, however, that I was a little too prone to moving in to esoteric purity spirals of certain setting elements that really didn't need as much development as I was giving them. In fact, the development was starting to hurt the setting rather than help it.

Meanwhile, I was doing some other stuff outside of the direct line of Dark•Heritage. I toyed with a big ole Jupiter-sized setting  (obviously I didn't develop that much surface area, but that was the idea) that used some ideas I had that probably fit a little better with a more traditional D&D-like setting, rather than the more esoteric desert environment that DH had become. I later reskinned some of these elements and the basic geography for another D&D-like game that I ran called Pirates of the Mezzovian Main, around a fantasy Mediterranean of sorts, but with Golden Age of Piracy like stuff from the Caribbean. And, noticing that I was re-using a lot of setting elements from my Jupiter-sized Leng Calling setting, I created a Modular DND Setting wikispaces.  What were originally meant to be drag and drop modules eventually started to coalesce into a setting that would deliberately be based around them being in more or less fixed geographical areas.

All of these threads combined; using Modular elements hung on a Mezzovian Main geography eventually became DH Mk. IV. I developed this quite a lot too; a lot of that development is still here on this blog, for instance. I drew a big map of the setting on a poster board (which I still have stuck behind my dresser and the bedroom wall; I occasionally pull it out and look at it even now.) Mks. III and IV got a lot of development compared to I and II, but ultimately, they weren't exactly what I wanted. Also, things were changing in the pop culture landscape, as well as my reaction to the pop culture landscape. While in the early 00s I was probably tired of traditional fantasy and experimenting with using another cultural baseline (14th and 15th century Crown of Aragon thalassocracy being a notable influence) and steampunk and whatnot all playing big roles for a time—until I decided that I didn't want to do exotica for its own sake anymore. In addition, I feel that maybe I was inadvertently getting caught up in movements that I didn't agree with; while maybe I was ready to  move on from overly traditional Anglo-Saxon, Norse or Celtic influenced fantasy after having been steeped in it for so many years, the fantasy zeitgeist was doing the same thing, but for different reasons. Not because they were caught up in novelty, like I was, but because they hated Western Civilization and deliberately wanted to avoid it. In other words, the seeds of what would become blatant wokeism were starting to infect the genre, and I guess maybe I was a little bit on the early side of detecting it and getting turned off.

So I started tinkering with stuff that would combine Old Country England and Viking nations (mostly) with either colonial or frontier American geography. These were separate activities from Mk. IV, but I gradually started to believe that I needed to leave behind the Crown of Aragon Mk. IV with its pseudo-Spanish "protagonist" nation and replace it with one that was more in line with the majority of my heritage; British-American. I settled on the protagonist nations being essentially calques of Robin Hood like Anglo-Saxons, except in an American Old West like frontier setting. Then, I jammed some other settings that I'd developed into it, notably the Timischburg "fantasy Transylvania" setting that I'd developed for my CULT OF UNDEATH project, and Mk. V was born.

But Mk. V actually was stuck at a fairly high level without much real development for quite a long time. I had a sketchy map and talked a bit about stuff, but mostly I was still referring to Mk. IV stuff in a new geographical setting. By the time I really buckled down and drew a good map, started updating the rules for the game that it was meant to support, and really doing some unique new setting development, I was on the verge of converting Mk. V to DH5, which quickly evolved into Dark Fantasy X. Dark Fantasy X could therefore be seen as either a second draft of Mk. V, which only got minimalist unique development in its first draft, or possible Mk. VI of Dark•Heritage. But it's instead been rebranded as it's own new thing, Dark Fantasy X. Dark•Heritage, while it remains the name of this blog, is now officially a dead brand otherwise in my mind; the setting has now moved on and turned in to something fairly different than what Dark•Heritage in any iteration had ever been. 

It's still probably kind of weird and esoteric in terms of fantasy, but also it represents a focus on my own heritage coming through instead of being de-valued, and as such, is probably in part a reaction to all of the wokeness in our entertainment. I've decided that I'm now more tired of looking for something that's not "lily white" than I ever was of fantasy that is clearly based on the Northwestern European Medieval baseline that was the foundation of most of the fantasy I read from the 80s and earlier. The experiment with experimentation, if you will, was played out and I found I didn't like it as much as I thought I would when I started it years earlier.

Anyway, the Dark Fantasy X setting is mostly made up of three large constituent areas; not by coincidence, the three campaign 5x5s that I'm proposing are each centered on one of these, giving me the full coverage of all three areas when they're all done. It was my original intention to have a lot of discipline about not going beyond these, and for a long time that's exactly what I did. I'm kinda sorta rethinking that premise... but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet. These three Realms are:

• The Hill Country; the most Anglo-Saxon frontier America part of the setting.
• Timischburg, the Austrian Empire hinterlands that is fantasy Transylvania.
• Baal Hamazi, the most exotic of them, where the kemlings are from. Although it's also heavily based on my love of the geography of the American West.

While I'd made vague references to areas beyond these three realms, I'd never intended to do any real development of them. However, I may want to make some smaller "satellite" mini-settings that are associated with the main setting. These won't receive the same level of detail as the main Three Realms—at least that's not what I'm planning now—but we'll see how much development they do or don't get. These elements include:

• Nizrekh, a kind of island nation that's the stub of ancient, sunken Atlantis, which has a combination Yog-Sothothery snake cult and ancient Egypt vibe to it. The people living there aren't the descendants of Atlanteans; there's already a race for that, but rather some group that arrived and developed in isolation.
• The wreckage of old Hyperborea; a kind of Ice Age glacier and snow-socked analog to Kadath.
• Lower Kurushat, which actually does appear on my map, but which I haven't given much thought to yet.

Of course, I doubt I'll do any of these until I finish my racial deep dives and my 5x5s, because that will lay the seeds for this to be done by really expanding the material on the races and the main three areas before I start haring after the afterthought areas.  This makes some sense; although Nizrekh has been floating around on the periphery of the setting for a long time, Hyperborea was never meant to make any appearance at all until I did the Hyperborean Racial Deep Dive and "discovered" that there was potentially interesting material still lingering in Hyperborea. (It probably doesn't hurt that I got back into SWTOR again and did some stuff wandering around on Hoth, and that I've been very slowly going through a youtube zoom playthrough that some guys did of the Icewind Dale campaign of D&D.)