5x5 Fronts: Chaos in Waychester: Front #5: Far Flung Front (Burlharrow)

Yesterday while in a waiting room, I busted out one of the many notebooks and journals that I try to remember to carry around with me exactly for this reason and jotted down some ideas for the final official x5 column of the CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER 5x5. I should point out that this doesn't mean, of course, that I'm ready to run after this post is finished. This 5x5 structure is pretty bare bones, high level—more of a treatment than an actual screenplay to use a Hollywood analogy. For some purposes, this is OK and in fact desirable. The whole point in doing it this way as opposed to writing a traditional campaign module or adventure path is to give the PCs freedom to focus more on the threats that they find more interesting and less attention to what they do not; plus, some of the down-column entries do make a few assumptions about what PCs will do or will have already done that may or may not turn out to actually be true. It's more of a vague guide of what I expect that can't be finalized until the rubber hits the road. Or the PCs hit the gaming table, to be more precise. To quote Ray Winninger's classic "DungeonCraft" series, "Never force yourself to create more than you must." You don't need much to start. A high level outline like this, with a few details for the first few sessions is sufficient to get going. Not only that, I might have better ideas as the campaign rolls along, probably sparked by the players themselves and things that they do, so having the freedom to rewrite down-column entries is nice.

But the very earliest up-column entries will be encountered within the first session or two, and in order to actually be useable, they do need some definition and detail. But that can wait until I've finished creating the 5x5 matrix. I'll also want to create some potential encounters and finds for random things that happen to them while traveling. I'm officially integrating my appendix travel rules in to the main ruleset as "Appendix II." Longtime readers (ha! as if!) may recall that earlier versions of the rules did have encounter tables in the appendix that were heavily influenced in their format by the travel stuff in the Expert set of the B/X series, but I removed them deliberately. This new travel system more closely resembles this system described here in a blog post. It doesn't require the same preparation, but it does require some preparation, and I haven't yet done so for the setting, so I'll put something together before I start playing. I'll need some other things too; my old Dark•Heritage homemade GM screen (I just printed some WAR images on cardstock for the front panels, and created my own stuff in Word and Excel for the back side, laminated them and attached them with clear packaging tape. It worked, but wasn't beautiful.) I had stuff like name lists so I could name NPCs on the fly if they encountered someone I didn't expect, and other stuff like that which, given the way I run, I need to have to be as successful as I want to be. So there's some work involved in actually preparing this to get out of the gate, even though getting the 5x5s done is the major thing that needed doing. 

Anyway, before I do this, I should stick with my custom and offer some background setting material that's relevant to either this 5x5, or at least this column of the 5x5. I thought about some detail on the very northern part of the Hill Country region, which I haven't really talked about much because I've been more focused on south and central Hill Country areas. When I next come back with a 5x5, after all, I'll be in Timischburg doing the CULT OF UNDEATH 5x5!

(Well... actually, I'm going to use my Dark Fantasy X Iconic Group 1 as an example and show you how I'd do a 5x5-like structure that is character specific. This is just for show, though. If I run this, I'll actually have PCs that my players have made, not iconics that I've made. In any case, I can do some more setting background as I do those too.)

I've long suggested that much of the Dark Fantasy X setting is meant to be an analog to the American West, my true home (even though I live in the northeastern Midwest in real life, that's not my home. That's just where I live because of work. My heart belongs in the Rocky Mountains and southwestern deserts.) The spine of the Sabertooth Mountains could be seen in some ways as an analog to the Rockies. That doesn't mean that it's meant to be too exact of an analog—for one thing, I tend to assume that the climate is more mild, with warmer winters and cooler summers than you get in, say, Wyoming, where both can be pretty brutal. And this applies much more to the Hill Country specifically than it does to the stuff even further to the west; Timischburg and Baal Hamazi are hardly supposed to be similar to California and the PNW, even though geographically maybe you'd expect that. While the CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER game would take place entirely to the east of the Sabertooths, the Hill Country—sorta—does spill across the range, especially up in the north. I've long said that the Hill Country can be divided into two halves; Northumbria which is dominated politically, culturally and socially by Waychester, and Southumbria which is dominated politically, culturally and socially by Dunsbury, and the two are rivals sometimes for what the vision of the Hill Country should be. In spite of this, both halves are made up of the same people, with the same ethnic origins and whatnot.

In reality, there's a "third half" that doesn't really look for guidance to either, and is too far flung from either to be dependent on them anyway. This is the region up in the far northwest, near Bucknerfeld, the largest town of this region. Being on the shores of the Indash Salt Sea, and nestled in between non-Hillmen settled areas, the Hillmen here aren't necessarily quite as dominant, and have to share the territory with some others who are also here; plus the climate isn't quite as forgiving. From Bucknerfeld, Hillman hamlets and settlements continue along the road until the crossroads in the Vajol Downs, at which point you're more likely to run into traffic and settlement related to Lower Kurushat, or even leftover from the days when Kurushan power was ascendant along the shores of a much larger Indash Sea and the Great Northern Road was heavily trafficked. In those older days, the Hillmen hadn't even expanded beyond the Sabertooths at all, and the Kurushans were only vaguely familiar with their existence.

Although not shown on the map, with the exception of the Rackgrove's Folly, smaller Hillmen settlements, towns, hamlets, homesteads and ranches range all through the Cactus Balds, the western foothills of the Sabertooth Mountains. Because the mountains themselves and the Boneyard desert farther to the west are very lightly inhabited by anyone or anything at all, the Hillmen who spread into this zone encountered no resistance or complaints at their setting up their homes other than environmental; the western lands are considerably drier than the eastern lands until you hit the Onyx Peaks and the Black River, at which point you are leaving the Boneyard and crossing in to the northern marches of Timischburg. These small communities rarely if ever have any trafficking of any kind with either Dunsbury or Waychester, and have evolved in isolation from the concerns of either. Their only guidance, if you want to call it that, from a more major metropolitan center comes from Bucknerfeld, and Bucknerfeld is strange for a Hillman town, being independent, but also in sheltering a larger plurality of non-hillman, and being much more focused on caravan traffic across the Great Northern Road. This traffic has started to pick up again in recent years after decades of isolation and what really should be considered a short dark age enveloped the northern lands of Lower Kurushat and Baal Hamazi. As these northern lands started to rebuild themselves as smaller, autonomous city-states in the wake of the collapse of strong Imperial power from either of their mother regions, they looked more to having friendly commercial and political relationships with their neighbors, and the relatively newly arrived Hillmen were an important component there. Bucknerfeld is the only place where jann, kemlings and Hillmen cross paths on a regular basis, and the Hillmen provide an important link between the western kemling and jann countries and Lomar and the Hyperboreans further east.

A prosperous Jann trader who regularly passes through Bucknerfeld on his runs between Lomar and Simashki

The northern shore of the Darkling Sea is also disconnected from the rest of the Hill Country; although you can travel by land to this area, you will pass through the separate polity of Lomar to do so (discussed in the past), and most people arrive from Waychester or elsewhere by ship. Cayminster is the largest town here, and while it has strong commercial, political and cultural ties to Waychester, the hinterlands beyond is much more independent and has, at best, a kind of resentful dependency for some things from the bigger cities. They prefer to be left alone and not get involved in anything from the cities; from commercialism, to politics to even fashion, where they are stubbornly and in fact defiantly rustic. 

There are, again, many smaller communities which the map does not show, but Burlharrow is the largest of those that does show up on the current iteration of the map. (By large, I mean a few thousand people, though. Burlharrow in size should be comparable to some of the classic D&D and Pathfinder small starting towns like Hommlet, Sandpoint or Saltmarsh, etc.)

North of the Darkling Sea, the land is mostly clear of trees, except for relatively small stands, copses, or riparian stretches of forest. It mostly looks like shrub savanna with rolling hills, occasional lakes, streams or other waterways where thicker vegetation and trees grow, and small buttes, mesas and other rock formations that pop up too. The ground slopes steadily yet slowly upwards too, and once you hit high enough elevation, you get to the southern eaves of the Wolfwood, the great boreal forest that separates the Three Realms from whatever lies to the north (Old Hyperborea, Kurushat proper, etc.)

Burlharrow also specifically lies in the floor of a shallow valley, and small lakes and marshes surround the town, but make for good irrigation for farming and the watering of herds; it's much drier in the rolling hills around town. The lieutenant-mayor of Burlharrow, one Gothbert Erhard, is determined to make Burlharrow independent. The mayor himself (Gunne Woodrow) is weak, indecisive and self-indulgent, and has become moreso over the years, so his advisors and other powerful people in town have taken to ignoring him and attempting to enact their own agendas, for good or ill. As rumors of the nonsense happening in Waychester that makes up the first column of the 5x5 reaches his town, Erhard is even more committed than ever to this independence-minded course of action for the good of the region. However, other relatively wealthy and powerful players in town make a lot of their money with trade through Cayminster, much of it ultimately destined for or coming from Waychester. As this difference in opinion becomes more rancorous over time, the two factions have even acquired labels: the Loyalists, who favor closer ties with the cities to the south and west, and the Sovereigns who see Burlharrow as culturally but not politically allied with any of the greater powers with their intrigues and ambitions on the entire Hill Country region. In this, they are more similar to the Southumbrians, who also resist Waychester dominance and the Grand Duke's ambition to turn the Hill Country into the Hill Kingdom with himself as the first king, but Southumbria is far away and has its own local concerns rather than ambitions on bringing Burlharrow into its orbit. That said, Lieutenant-Mayor Erhard looks to Dunsbury as a model for how to create an independent political axis as long as you have enough geography between yourself and Waychester, and has even recruited a few Southumbrian advisors and others to support him; the militia captain of Burlharrow (Berold Geissfalk) was a successful soldier in his youth in the Rabb's Hill campaign in the south, and then retired from the Rangers. Erhard has also started an aggressive plan to lure homesteaders to the countryside around Burlharrow. There is plenty of open and empty (well.. empty-ish. You know how it goes) land to the south, along the eastern edge of the Darkling Sea. This is still an initiative in its infancy. Of course, the Loyalists, led by Dockmaster Murchad Gibson is alarmed by the attempt to grow his opposition by migration of people who have every reason to be Sovereigns and oppose the Loyalist agenda. 

Gothbert Erhard

Berold Geissfalk

Murchad Gibson

Anyway, this is the context in which the Burlharrow column of the 5x5 will be set. First, assuming that the PCs are playing along and biting on the hooks that I've set up for them, the first column would have them going to Burlharrow anyway to look for Morcant, the Duchess' former huntsman, who's got important clues about the whole "who's actually got a canopic talisman and who doesn't" affair. If they don't, however, someone they trust, like a Ranger, or someone else can set more hooks that there's urgent trouble up there that needs some attention right away. In reality, the town is beset with a plague, but it's not a natural plague, and the townspeople suspect that it isn't. Rats are all over the town, staring at people unnaturally, showing little timidity, and generally being creepy. Reports of rats the size of dogs attacking people are starting to make their way around town. This is true. The plague is man-made. Or... well, ratman-made. And the rats are the delivery vehicle for it. Why is some ratman trying to depopulate Burlharrow? Actually, the ratmen don't really care about Burlharrow at all; it's just a dry run of a new plague that they've developed. Of course, ultimately, they want to depopulate much of the rest of the Hill Country and spread from their home on Leng in the lands where humans once lived. (Wow, this could be a whole 'nother column by itself. But I'm not developing it for now.)

Secondly, the rats need to be stopped before they can spread more of the plague. While they've gotten bold enough to wander the streets by day, they can be traced to a nest outside of town which they normally enter through the sewer systems. Here the PCs will not find the absolute source of the plague, but they will discover lots of swarms of rats, some giant rats, and a handful of ratmen and maybe even a rat brute (see monster list.) This confirms that the plague wasn't natural. They'll find some clues here, though, that with a little effort and investigation will lead them back in to town (maybe not right away; other problems will also be pressing on them; see below) where they will discover that the mayor himself had something to do with the ratmen; they have his signet right in their possession among the detritus of the nest.

Ratmen from the rat nest

Thirdly, because so many of the townsfolk died so quickly, the graveyard outside of town hasn't really been properly tended to; many of the townsfolk have been buried hurriedly in shallow graves. As sometimes happens when graveyards are poorly tended, necromancy seems to coalesce almost of its own will, as if a malignant force with its own sentience, and ghouls are starting to plague the town; also stealing victims, eating them, or otherwise turning them into ghouls in their own right. While fighting off ghouls who have also become too emboldened to be left alone (I imagine, possibly an attack on the inn at night; which I'll conveniently locate kind of on the edge of town near the graveyard.) Curiously, through much of this trouble, the mayor has been seen very infrequently.

They'll find that there are quite a few more ghouls and bodies than they would expect from the townsfolk, and through a series of clues which I haven't yet invented, they could eventually be able to discover that many of the recently arrived settlers and homesteaders who have set off to establish and build homes in the hinterlands have been murdered and brought here. This is a major black eye on Erhard's plan to grow the region into an independent place that doesn't need Waychester, but even more so because it turns out that Geissfalk has been murdering them. He's brought in a number of mercenaries to stiffen the militia, who are actually little more than brigands, pirates and other murderers and criminals, and he did it because he was paid off by the mayor himself to blunt Erhard's plans, in spite of the fact that he showed up (publicly) at Erhard's request in the first place!

Of course, I imagine that everyone will want to confront the mayor when they discover this, but if they attempt to, they will find that the mayor has been dead for two weeks, and he's been Weekend at Bernie's-ified around town while mostly being holed up in the mayor's mansion. There are more ratmen there, as well as the ratmen mad scientist who created the plague, and rat brutes eating the flesh of the mayor's dead household and servants. The PCs can eventually discover two important things at the mayor's place: 1) the mayor was actually murdered and had nothing to do with the plague; it was Gibson who murdered the mayor, offered Burlharrow to the rats for their experiment, and paid off Geissfalk to murder the settlers and homesteaders, and 2) there is a horrible black book made of dried and withered human skin with the remnants of a face on the front cover. It will take the PCs some time to decipher and read this book, and it will have many of the same problems as a magical tome or grimoire, save with a study time in days instead of weeks and its not really about spells (although if any PCs are in to that, they could find a couple); it does have a cure for the plague detailed in it, though. In a pinch, the dried leather human face on the cover could even whisper the hints to the PCs.

I imagine that many sanity checks could be made as a result of what's found in the mayor's mansion. I love it.

Fourthly, hopefully the PCs are willing to bite on that hook all its own, but while they're perusing the book, the plague's real diabolical nature starts to make itself manifest; some of the townsfolk who survived contracting the plague are now turning into plague-zombies on their way towards becoming ghouls as a secondary set of symptoms, and have to be put down, probably. The situation is now quite dire, as they can probably deduce that the experiment has been going on longer than they thought and that's the source of the ghouls in the graveyard that they faced earlier.

Unfortunately, and fifthly, the cure isn't exactly easy to get. It involves, in fact, finding a rotted fairy ring in the woods nearby (referenced or whispered by the Book) and traveling to the Shadow Realm, a parallel realm similar to the Plane of Shadow or the Upside-down, to use two references that most will probably get. I'm a little hazy on what exactly they'll need to do here, and maybe I can play it by ear as I get closer. I'm thinking that they need to find one of the shadow rosebushes with black roses and bring back enough of the flowers to brew a cure, but fighting off undead and minor daemons, and avoiding daemons that are probably over their heads to defeat, like a nosoi daemon might be involved. 

I also like the idea that having traveled to this Shadow Realm and partaken of a black rose draught, that they will be marked going forward in some subtle way that will be plot hooky in the future, although again; need to determine exactly how that will play out as I get closer to it actually happening. I'm thinking of giving them a benefit/cost; something that's a cool thing to have, but also there's a cost to it. Shadowy animal companion for the group, and an improved resistance to any disease or poison, but their shadows now occasionally move independently of them. It takes them a while to realize out of the corners of their eyes, and they start to suspect that they've brought back something with them that they can't identify and confront, but which was not invited...

——( † )——

Anyway, that concludes the main body of the 5x5. As you can see, it's not really meant to be "runnable" in the sense that a module is. But it's also meant to be fluid and flexible. If I need to develop details—and I will—then I'm only going to need to invent details a session or two in advance at most, and other than that, the 5x5 is more for me to keep track of what the major NPCs and antagonists are plotting rather than what the PCs will be doing. The players will decide that, not me. All I can do is come up with hooks that I hope will be interesting enough for my fish to bite on, and then pay attention at the table to see what they're really taking an interest in and what they seem to be more apathetic or indifferent to, and trying to make sure that they get more of the former and less of the latter.

If large chunks, or even entire columns get ignored the PCs, that's OK. There's no requirement that they investigate every last lead on every last hook in this game. I can decide what (if anything) happens with hooks that they ignore. Some of them will mean that the villains advanced their plots with a free hand because the PCs weren't around to stop them, and will result in negative repercussions that the PCs will start to see in the setting as the game goes on. Others will... well, if the PCs aren't interested in them, maybe I don't need to be either. I won't feel too committed to them, because I didn't do too much development in advance, just a bare treatment that can have details hung on it when and as needed.

Pseudomages

A couple of house-keeping items:

I'm waning in my interest with The Old Republic at the moment (don't worry; it'll come back in a couple of months or so) but waxing in my interest in Dark Fantasy X, RPG craft projects like adding another level of polish to my dice tray and possibly making a home-made wooden GM screen, etc. 

As part of that, I imagine that I'll also do a thorough re-edit and revision of the game file itself, although more to catch any lingering errors than to make any major changes. I may bring down the hit points of a lot of the monsters, though—and I'd like to add a few fey type creatures, since I've now added a sinister Erlking or Oberon figure to the 4th column of my CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER 5x5. When this is done, I'd actually like to get some copies printed from Lulu or something like that, which will motivate me to not keep messing with it anymore. So it really needs to be in top form.

If I do that, though—actually whether I do it or not—I'll be adding a disclaimer at the front of the monster section that the hit points are a recommendation only, and meant to be an entire group of PCs fighting one or at most two or three of the creatures if they're relatively minor threats. If you add more creatures, you should adjust the hit points down to 75% or even 50% or so of the listed total, depending on how many you add. This is less about adjusting combat lethality, and more about making it not become long and tedious. And frankly, some room-reading is critical here when playing; if the result of a comabt is starting to become obvious or interest in the combat is starting to wane even a little bit, it's best to flex the hit points down and wrap it up rather than let it go on any longer. (I may have some PTSD because of higher level encounters in our Age of Wyrms 3.5 game that took the better part of 4-5 hours to play through.)

Another minor change I'm considering, although I'm not actually sure that any change needs to be put in the rulebook, since it really only affects the setting, is one that I'm borrowing from some of my own past work. I was re-reading some of my EBERRON REMIXED stuff and was reminded that I thought the relatively common low-level magical items that provide daily convenience, like magical street lights and stuff like that, not to mention expensive (but not really for PCs) conveniences like magical telegrams, notarization, train-like travel, etc. were part and parcel of the setting. Even though I'm using a Dark Fantasy X rules-system to model my Eberron Remixed, I needed to find some way to accommodate those things existing. I decided to make dragonmarks and dragonshards the somewhat hand-wavey explanation for why they exist, but suggest that they weren't really magic per se, but rather a more engineering-like thaumaturgical discipline, so it is tolerated by the governments and the church. So while a school of wizardry had to be remixed right out, (because it would be akin to saying a school of witchcraft, cannibalism and human sacrifice in the real world), artificers could still exist, and that might be a way to get magic-like spell effects without actually having to use magic; i.e., you trade most of the risk associated with spell-casting for really expensive items like rings, wands, staves, pendants, and whatnot that were limited in what they could do (i.e., they'd run out and need to be replaced or recharged at great expense) but still give players that wanted it a way to do magic without it being out of synch with the setting assumptions that informed the rules. Few people in the setting know the difference between magic and engineering-thaumaturgy, so if you're blasting off spells out of a ring, you still face getting lynched as a witch, and if you need to spend thousands of gold after blowing around 15-20 "spells" max, then you could almost end up like a strung-out, broke character who's addicted to something that he can't afford like a drug, or who has gambling debts to the mafia, or something like that. Not only does it give "magic-user" characters an out to exist in a Lovecraftian magic system, but it also becomes a great plot device, because these guys will always be a little too hungry for power that is expended too quickly and easily, and their creditors are probably always knocking. 

I'm sure I got the idea from the MYTH Adventures books, specifically the second one Myth Conceptions, when we first meet Massha, who Aahz sneeringly derides as a "mechanic" as opposed to a mage, i.e., she can appear to be a mage to the uninformed by using a few magical rings, pendants and other gear that she bought at great expense and difficulty at the Bazaar on Deva. in Dark Fantasy X, pseudomages can only exist in very limited supply, because the only people who can become pseudomages have to 1) have a source for something that's seriously frowned upon by society; it's equivalent to being strung out on meth or crack, 2) have more money than they know what to do with, and 3) be much more reckless than normal, even by PC standards. But it's still a compelling idea, I think.

It's been rattling around in the back of my mind ever since that time (March 2021 or so—a good year and a half) until I finally think I'm ready to admit that the concept would have merit in the Dark Fantasy X setting too. But if it does, then one of my iconics needs to utilize this pseudomage archetype. Although I've mostly talked about my iconics (so far) on my other fantasy blog, where I do more of that kind of mechanical stuff, I'll eventually get to them as part of the 5x5s, because I need some samples to fit in there after the 5th of the columns is done to show how I'd make some character specific "extra" 5x5 columns to get the characters themselves more grounded into the game rather than merely passing through it as interchangeable widget protagonists. The problem is that my numero uno PC group doesn't really have room for them, which is the one I'm using specifically for CHAOS. This is Stefan Clevenger's group, and he's a pretty typical Shadow Ranger fighter type. Kimnor, his blood-brother and adventuring partner; his Fafhrd to the Gray Mouser, his Bob Hope to Bing Crosby, is a shadow-sword Hyperborean and therefore already has a role, complete with its own supernatural elements. Shule the goblin thief-type and Oisin, the big bruiser woodwose round out the group. I also thought of having Alys as a "GM PC" or on-again off-again character that a player who's attendance isn't super regular could play. She's a darker concept, though—the idea is that while she appears to be a young, attractive sorceress, which is already a problem in this setting if she isn't really discrete, the reality is that she's a lich, and she was placed with the party by an even more powerful entity after they were offered a deal that they couldn't refuse while wrapping up some of the stuff in Waychester that's part of the first column. 

The second group, led by Stefan's brother Ragnar also doesn't have any magic-user types in it, but I thought that's OK given that my whole concept of the magic system is that it is rare, dangerous and dark, and not every PC group should be expected to have one. Plus, they've got their own problems since Ragnar's young wife was attacked by a vampire and has been kinda sorta "half-turned" into a dhampir.

The third iconic group is a group of much more scoundrel-like characters who don't do quite as well with the moral dilemmas as the first two groups do. They've already got a sorceress that they're trying to keep from going off the rails morally, a Jekyll & Hyde afflicted guy, and a freakin' succubus that they've been attached to and can't quite get rid of because she's technically married to Jekyll. Ouch. No room for a pseudomage there, either. And the final group is the anti-PCs, who are actual bad guys. While more con men, thieves, murderers and bandits than mage-types, there is an outright blatant sorceress in the group already. While they could use more magical support, maybe, it's already a 5-member group, and everyone's got a role already that I'm happy with. While I admit that the other girl in the group could potentially go this route without changing her character much, the character that I immediately thought of is actually one who's more of an NPC, but one that I thought could potentially be allied with and occasionally adventure with the first group. This is Revecca von Lechfeld.

She only would make a cameo appearance in CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER, assuming the PCs deal with her father Alpon von Lechfeld here and there and meet her. However, because CULT OF UNDEATH, when I do that one next, started off life loosely based on the Carrion Crown Adventure Path, it starts with Alpon von Lechfeld's funeral, and poor 17 year old orphan Revecca really kind of needing some guidance and looking after still. My thought is that if she isn't already starting to lean this way before the CULT campaign even starts, after being rescued a couple of times from certain death and worse, she falls hard for Stefan, who cuts a mysterious, heroic and handsome figure, and who's still in his twenties after all. But rather than become a full-time adventurer with him, she becomes more of an ally and background support, while she gradually starts acquiring the gear to be a pseudomage who has rings on each finger, several wands and staves on her, enough magical pendants and necklaces to rival Mr. T, and who knows what else. The only way she can afford to do so, even with the inheritance from her father, is because his research gave him access to some of this stuff already, and because since she's not a full time troublemaker, she doesn't need to replace it nearly as quickly as those who are.

Here's an image of her in this mold, which could be her near the end of CULT OF UNDEATH or better yet, in another campaign altogether. 

Although I should point out that this assumes that I have one group of PCs that goes through all three of these 5x5s. While that seems reasonable from an actual play perspective, maybe, it's not my intention to treat these 5x5 projects that way. Each one will have a different party associated with it, so I can show the PC-specific extra 5x5 columns off without them being repetitive.

GM Kit

It's been a few years since I've GMed in person. Actually, it's been just as long since I've GMed at all, although I suspect that an online Zoom or Google Meet or something like that game is more likely than an in person one in the nearish future. That said, hope always springs eternal. My soon-to-be son-in-law is a gaming geek, and is actually running a game for my daughter and some of her co-workers, somewhat to my daughter's bemusement. My son and his wife's brothers are talking about D&D, etc. I've got potential, I just need to get off my butt and do it.

But, assuming that like I'd ideally like to do, I'd run in person, what would I take with me? Actually, in an ideal world, some things that I don't actually have yet. Let's make a list. I love lists.

First, the rulebook. My game doesn't have an actual rulebook, just a pdf, so I'd need to print it and get it bound somehow. Lulu is the original at this, as far as I know, and they still look like they offer one of the better deals for me. I'd love, in theory, to print about half a dozen copies of the rules + appendix, and have at least one with me, plus some spares. The players can deal with pdfs and print them and stuck them in a binder if they want.

Actually, in pinch, it'd be nice to have a printed binder copy myself, so it'll lay open and flat. Although I've got to admit; I'm really surprised at how cheap those kinds of binders aren't. The actual hardcover book through Lulu would be cheaper. Cray-zee.

Along with this are a few blank character sheets for my players to use, including (if possible) up to date spare copies of their character sheets that I can use in case they forget their copy.

Second, a GM screen. These aren't strictly speaking necessary, but I like to engender feelings of mysteriousness in my players by hunching behind one and rolling dice mysteriously from time to time; plus, it's a good way for me to put some campaign specific stuff right where I can see it when I need it, like name generators, a map, etc. I've got several GM screens for several games, but none of them that really do what I want them to. I'd like to get crafty and make my own, and it shouldn't be terribly difficult.

Third, a dice tray. In the past, I wasn't a fan of these, but now that I have several sets of metal dice, I think it's a must to protect the furniture that I'm rolling on. I've made a handmade one that I'm actually quite fond of, but because I had to make-do on a few tools that I don't have, my styrofoam and pleather tray bottom doesn't fit perfect, and looks just a little messy. I've mostly covered that up by putting a couple of extra layers of pleather on it, but it's still not perfect. That said... I doubt I'll remake it any time soon. I like rolling in it because it's quieter, like I said, it protects the furniture, and it also makes it nearly impossible to have stray dice roll off the table and have to get on the ground looking to fetch them.

If I have a wooden dice tray that's about Letter sized, and I make a an even bigger wooden GM screen, I'll need a nice vintage-style canvas or leather rucksack to carry all of this stuff around in (my old college backpacks were used by my kids in school; we either don't have them anymore, or they're too beat to be used. So fourth, I'll need to order one up. I may not be able to fit all of the big stuff in it, but if I can put everything other than the GM screen or in a pinch the GM screen and the dice tray, that'll still be worth it. Plus, I like these old vintage rucksacks.

Fifth, I've got a bunch of dice. Seriously; I've got about thirty sets, and there are more still that I'd like to order. I obviously don't need that many, but I like to have plenty of spares, so I'll bring at least half a dozen from one of my themed dice bags—i.e, I'll bring the bag of metal dice, or the bag of Q-Workshop fancy dice, etc. And I might bring my backup bag of simple Chessex-style dice in case players need to borrow a set for whatever reason. I also have a bag of metal fantasy coins, which I'll bring to use as tokens. Seriously; I just keep them in a spare dice bag anyway. This means that for any given game I've got at least three and maybe a few more dice bags in my rucksack, but there should be plenty of room. 

Sixth, while I do have a pretty nice wooden dice cup to use to hold the dice for tossing in the dice tray, I'd also like to get a set of leather dice cups that I've seen. Either way, a dice cup or two will go in the bag too.

Seventh, any good campaign needs notes, especially if you're the GM. I have a number of rather nice leather-bound journals, including two copies of the official D&D journal which you can still buy online from Spirit Halloween, I believe. If not, there are plenty of good options on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and elsewhere. Ideally, I'd also like to order some smaller A6 or so sized journals for the players so everyone's got a place to keep their notes too; I've picked up two different two-packs from Amazon already, and I think that they're pretty nifty. Obviously, to keep notes in a journal I need a nice pen and pencil and probably a few spares while I'm at it just in case.

Eighth, while I do have a portable bluetooth speaker, it's not really very small. I'd like to get one of those cheaper ones that's about the size of a Coke can that I can throw in my bag. Then I'd load some of my RPG-appropriate music on my phone and play it quietly in the background while we're playing. I could go really crazy and get some battery powered lanterns or candles for more ambiance, but that's really more appropriate if we're at my house where I can set up and not carry a bunch of stuff like that around.

 ——~ † ~—— 

Note what I don't need or want; my laptop, any apps on my phone other than a music player which I'll probably just set up at the beginning of the session anyway and then let run without messing with it (I think it's too much trouble and too fiddly to try and find mood music specific to each scene your PCs are going through; a more generic mood for the campaign or at least the session overall, and then play it softly so it's not all that distracting anyway—that's the way to go.) No additional books. No battle mat, or minis, or initiative cards, or anything else fancy and distracting. Just old school practical effects GMing with a few luxuries, because by golly, I'm fifty years old, I can afford them, and I like them. See how old I am? I even say by golly sometimes.

Dark Fantasy X Race Deep Dive: Orcs and Goblins

You've probably heard the old chestnut, first propagated in the 90s with the earliest wave of genome sequencing, that human and chimpanzee DNA is 98% the same. It turns out that this is not actually true at all; the actual number is south of 85%. (1)(2) But that only greatly exacerbates a bigger problem for the theory of a relatively recent last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans; a overly generous calculation of the amount of generations (and therefore time) needed for the mutations that separate chimpanzees and humans to become fixed shows that the absolute unrealistic best case scenario is that the 30 million mutations necessary to have a 98% difference between them would require that the last common ancestor between chimp and human would have to have lived over 180 billion years ago, not 3-25 million as paleontologists tell us to expect. In other words, long before the universe is supposed to have existed, these ancestors would have had to already have split. And that's with an assumed 98% similarity. If we increase that difference by a factor of 7-8 times to 84-5% (or possibly even less), then we are clearly so far deep into a model that doesn't work that anyone without a vested interest in lying to us should acknowledge that we need a new model. Evolutionary biologists tend to react to this with dismissal, as well as failing to even understand the nature of the problem, because most scientists are not statisticians, don't really understand statistics, and therefore don't actually understand that a relatively easily calculated rate of change estimate—even one that gives them every benefit of the doubt to lower the number—still requires many orders of magnitude more time than they have to generate the results that they claim that their model should produce. (3)

What this means is that the evolutionary model mathematically doesn't work and most evolutionary biologists haven't yet grasped that fact. It's a dead theory walking, and is in dire need of replacement, but because nobody's career can be furthered by questioning the orthodoxy, to the best of my knowledge there is no viable alternative theory in the works by anyone anywhere. Although as with Einsteinian physics, there is a new generation of scientists coming up who have the proper contempt, if you will, of Establishment theories, they're not in a position to offer any alternatives yet. But they are at least officially starting to point out the gaping holes in the dogma. There's a lot of social and political capitol involved in the Establishment theories, though—much more so now than we are led to believe Galileo and Darwin had to face in their era—so don't expect to see your kids' textbooks changing anytime soon.

Young Earth Creationism isn't a viable alternative, because it's not really a theory nor is it testable. In any case, although I am a Christian, I don't believe Young Earth Creationism is the answer; I suspect something much more complicated. I do think that if we jettisoned the obviously flawed theory of evolution, our scientific method could eventually find a model that better fits the evidence without needing Divine Intervention to tell us how it was done, but... it is possible that we simply don't have and won't ever find the evidential pieces that we need to put together the puzzle and therefore won't be able to.

Anyway, all that's really neither here nor there, other than to point out that even we don't really know much about speciation and the autosomal differences between species, even though we know much more than we did when "we" confidently and hubristically declared that the evolutionary similarity between chimps and humans was discovered in the 90s. The people of Dark Fantasy X don't even use the word autosomal and have no concept of the theory of evolution or DNA; although being a more down to earth agricultural people who practice a great deal of animal husbandry first hand, they probably have a much better intuitive grasp of how breeding and cross-breeding works than our ivory tower academics who are much more separated from it except in a theoretical sense. It is therefore difficult to discuss orcs and goblins; their relationship to people is somewhat mysterious.

In this, they are unique among the player character races of Dark Fantasy X. Woodwoses, kemlings, jann, Hyperboreans, seraphim and even Atlanteans are all human races that have been changed by some event that can be pointed to in the historical record; a curse, a cross-breeding event with some supernatural creature like a werewolf, daemon or ifrit, etc. They are all demihumans, but the orcs and goblins are the only playable races that are just straight up non-human. Although, to be fair, human-like in many ways. Academics in Mittermarkt, Waychester, Dunsbury, Simashki and elsewhere have debated what this means for some time, without any conclusive consensus emerging. Are they highly aberrant humans? Are they something else entirely? Do they even have souls? Many hope so, since many orcs and goblins, especially in the Three Realms are practicing Christians. 

A related question is what exactly is the difference between an orc and a goblin? They have always been associated together as far back as recorded history can manage to determine, yet they are very obviously physically different. Although it happens very rarely, and there may not even be an example of it anywhere in the Three Realms, both orcs and goblins assure us that in Gunaakt, their homeland, it's well-known that orcs and goblins can marry and produce viable offspring with each other, although that offspring is always goblin, never orc, and there are very few hybrid traits that are other than cosmetic. Although their history is more or less the same, it's not even clear that orcs and goblins are really the same species at all, or if they are merely closely related ones like horses and donkeys. In spite of that, the label orclings is often used to refer to both groups together.

Orcs are the most human-like. They tend to look similar to exceptionally robust humans, with thicker and larger bones and muscles, that average about human height; a bit more than Tarushans, but just a bit less than hillman and Timischers, on average. Their features are also "bigger" and almost Neanderthal like; thick skulls with brow-ridges and heavy jaws. They do have enlarged teeth compared to people, although they do not protrude from the mouth when closed as in other fantasy settings. They are neither more nor less hairy than people. Their skin color is a grayish olive drab that varies from a dark almost pine green to a light gray or khaki color with only a slight greenish cast.

While their reputation is that they are slow-witted and primitive in addition to being strong, making them seen occasionally by people in the Three Realms as best utilized as heavy manual labor, the reality is that they aren't much less intelligent than people. They are notable for lacking in impulse control and forethought; possibly as a result of uncountable generations living in a tropical and semi-tropical environment where food is readily available year round without the need for harvesting, planning, storing, etc. and their culture is seen by humans of any culture of the Three Realms as "vibrant" which is a polite way of saying occasionally fun and exciting while also being primitive and dysfunctional by human standards, and unable to produce "high civilizations" on its own. However, exposure to human civilization has allowed the so-called "talented tenth" to integrate more successfully when needed, or at least borrow elements from human civilization to improve their own lives to a more human-civilization standard. That said, most behavior is genetic rather than taught, so its only the relatively exceptional individuals that leave behind their inherent "orckish" behavior.

Here's a few examples of some orcs depicted via Hero Forge.

An orc champion dressed in a traditional Gunaakt fashion, but accommodating the cooler climate of the Three Realms.

As the 5x5 suggests, orc piracy on the Darkling Sea is becoming a problem. Here's an example of one such.

An orc that has managed to integrate fairly well into the society of the Three Realms and become prosperous. He was probably born here.

An orc that still maintains the Gunaakt lifestyle.

As noted, many orcs integrate reasonably well as blue-collar manual laborers, especially in mining in the Copper Hills and as stevedores in various port cities.

Unfortunately, many orcs also get involved in crime when in the Three Realms. Most of them are little more than thugs if they do, but some excel, like the lad here.

An orc who probably serves as part of a mercenary company; another line of work where they tend to do well.

One of my four iconic groups is made up of villains; they're kind of an anti-PC group, if you will. Namzo, noted here, is a member of that; a more successful thug than most orc thugs... but ultimately still just an orc thug.

An orc who behaves as civilized—if not more so—than most humans. A real hero and, as they say, a "credit to his race."

An orc pirate captain; actually a named character from the 5x5

Some orc girls. 

An orc shaman who worships the daemon-lord Dagon and whips up the pirates into zealotry.

As an editorial aside, I'm trying to straddle a line between orcs as they're often traditionally portrayed in fantasy, but making it clear that it's not obligatory for orcs to be that way. They're a bit more complex if they are more humanized rather than written off and dismissed as "bad guy goons" that can be killed with impunity because they have no redeeming features. Not only that, they are playable, as noted. If you need expendable goons, then thurses better fit that role. Curiously, exactly what their relationship to humanity or orclings either one is is another intriguing question without a good answer...

Goblins are much smaller than orcs; standing 3½ to 4 feet tall, with very exceptional individuals standing maybe 4½ feet tall. They also have green skin, usually have wider faces and sharper (although smaller) teeth than orcs, but like orcs, they don't have lots of non-human-like features like floppy or pointed ears, or faces that are too radically divergent from human-faces.

Being significantly smaller, they're obviously not as strong as an orc or a human either, for that matter; although they do have a wiry strength and endurance that's more than one would expect at first glance. Rather, they tend to be sneakier and faster. If the orcs are more likely to be the violent warriors in their society, the goblins have an almost parallel "underfoot" society as laborers, and all-too-often criminals and purveyors of other shady professions. Because they've been this way for generations, they haven't adapted or integrated well into Three Realms society, reverting all too easily to a more scavenger slash criminal lifestyle, and living underfoot in slums and ghettos. The better of them trend more towards being the scavengers and tinkerers, while the worst are just out-and-out pickpockets and criminals, but the reality is that it's a spectrum for most individuals, not binary end-points.

In Gunaakt itself, there are few large cities, and goblins often become consummate hunter-gatherers in the wilderness. Here's a very traditional one.

This goblin has probably been in the Three Realms for generations now, probably in a more lawless place like Simashki, where he's joined one of the infamous leagues of goblin cat burglars and assassins.

This goblin con artist is selling "traditional Gunaakt medicine" which probably does very little for you that's good for you.

A fairly respectable, if not wealthy, city goblin from the streets of Waychester. Many of these types are resentful of the bad image that the criminal goblins cause for them. Then again, they may well be part-time informers for orc and goblin pirate crews on the Darkling Sea and not see any contradiction in that.

While not as large or strong as orcs, that doesn't mean that goblins aren't capable combatants when needed. Many of them, such as this "goblin viking" serve on pirate crews, or as guards for orcling migrants.

Many goblins fail to adapt well to the urban life in the Three Realms, and become essentially homeless hermits living in caves outside of town, or abandoned buildings, or even in the sewer systems under the streets.

A respectable representative of the goblin community in a larger city, capable of dealing with officials of the city when needed.

Another goblin of the old Gunaakt variety in his dress. This one is a pit fighter or gladiator, for which there is little legal market in the Three Realms. Not that it doesn't exist in spite of its legality, of course...

A couple of pretty traditional goblins from the urban underfoot variety. While they're not necessarily dishonest, it's usually best to keep an eye on them when around them, especially if you're in their neighborhood.

This goblin matron demonstrates a role that many goblins have parlayed to reasonably good effect in several cities; setting up courier businesses that run messages across the city at a pretty rapid pace and for a decent price. 

Shule, a goblin part-time member of Stefan Clevenger's party of PCs. Reasonably good-hearted if not exactly always honest.

For goblins, I wanted to straddle that same line between "not exactly bad guys, but be careful around them" that I did for the orcs, except give them the sneak-thief archetype rather that barbarian warrior archetype. 

From a setting perspective, I'd suggest that orcs and goblins are rare in the Three Realms, but not so rare that a PC would be an object of wide-eyed exotica. They are often looked down upon by the people of the Three Realms, but not really because they're seen as inferior, rather because it's debatable—by both humans and orclings—whether they can really integrate peacefully together very well, or if they'd do better having their own separate places to live where they can live as their natures and cultures allow without messing with each other. This is unfortunately coming to a head, because as mentioned in the Waychester 5x5, conditions in Gunaakt are worse than normal right now, and a larger number than ever before are migrating northward to join those who've been in the area already. Within the cities and homelands of humanity, this is viewed with some trepidation, as there's a notable drop in quality of life being around too many orclings; crime increases, noise increases, maintenance of homes, streets or farms in the neighborhood decreases, services are poorer, etc. While most humans in the Three Realms are nice enough to not have a problem with relatively small numbers of orclings living among them, what is starting to look more and more like a significant migration is not what they asked for. 

However, some of the more canny and civilized of the orcling leaders have managed to negotiate a settlement with many of the leaders of the Three Realms, and the territory of Chersky Island, which had multiple claims on it but which nobody was actually using, was more or less ceded to the migrating orclings, and they were told that they could settle and homestead and fish and trade and do whatever they wanted to with that as their own autonomous community and they'd be left alone; almost like an Indian Reservation. 

However, the rise in piracy on the Darkling Sea by orcling crews is threatening that deal. Anyway, see the 5x5 for more details.

Also, as normal, this expanded material supersedes the descriptive text of the original Dark Fantasy X if there are any conflicts in detail, but here that is for reference.

Orc: +2 to STR. Orcs are similar to humans, but with an olive drab to gray skin, prominent tusks, and a more robust, muscular build; orcs are famously stereotyped (correctly, to be fair) as savage and barbaric and not particularly intelligent. They are sometimes prized as neighbors for their ability to outdo others in manual labor, however. While they mostly come from and still live in their own homeland of Gunaakt (outside of the scope of the setting), some few have spread to other lands.

Goblin: Small, often perceived of by others as ugly and untrustworthy, goblins are a different phenotype or subspecies related to the orcs, and share the same homeland as they do. They usually have a greenish or brownish leathery skin, pointed ears and teeth, and average 3-4 feet tall. They are rangy and wiry most of the time. +1 DEX and a +2 to the Subterfuge skill.

5x5 Fronts: Chaos in Waychester: Front #4: Subregional Front (Southumbria) spoilers

After much delay, let's pick up the 5x5s again. I've been reading Dungeon Magazine submissions from my old Dungeon Magazine collection. I've actually decided to embark on the probably monumentally quixotic task of reading as many of the Adventure Paths as I can before I run out of copies that I own, or patience with the whole thing. Rather than starting with Rise of the Runelords, however, I decided to go back even further to when Paizo invented them in their current form before going solo; when they were the contracted company that published Dungeon and Dragon Magazines. They published three adventure paths in Dungeon Magazine before Wizards of the Coast took the magazines back in to support their 4e launch, and Paizo brought out their own book or magazine (not sure exactly what you'd call it) subscription services with their own setting, and eventually their own game which took up the mantle of the "Third Era" by releasing what many consider to be equivalent to a "3.75e" in the form of the Pathfinder game. Whew.

Curiously, I don't necessarily expect to like this project very much. I've read a number of these before; I've even played Age of Worms start to finish, and I've read in its entirety Rise of the Runelords, Carrion Crown, and The Serpent's Skull, as well as about half of the Curse of the Crimson Throne and Strange Aeons, and parts here and there of at least a dozen more of them. In all cases, they are kind of hard to read; they may have some interesting set-up and ideas, but then they ruin them by barely breezing over those good ideas and instead focusing on tedious room by room exploration of absurd "complexes" of monsters, traps and hostile NPCs sitting around waiting for PCs to stumble across them. There isn't a single adventure path, I don't think, that I would really enjoy reading much less playing. What I usually end up doing is having my eyes glaze over during the site-based majority of each, and skimming them for whatever nuggets I can find. But the reason to do it is that the nuggets really are there. The ore to dross ratio isn't great, but there are pretty good ideas in all of them if you have the patience to find them.

Of course, by the time the first Adventure Path, Shackled City, started, 3e was about to roll over to 3.5e. It had been around for a long enough time that the writers and editors decided that the way to make it interesting was to populate it with all kinds of weird stuff. The main BBEGs are demodands, a somewhat esoteric variation on a demon that D&D had come up with way back in the original Monster Manual II or Fiend Folio or some such book, but which never really caught on as an iconic element. The first villain we're treated to is a half duergar half troll weirdo, and we're increasingly given stranger and stranger concepts. In the second one, for instance, we fight a gnoll cleric huecuva and a were-baboon. 

Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with these concepts. It's just very obvious that at this point, the culture of the creative caste of D&D was really into using as much weird esoterica as they could, and they'd wearied or moved on from "normal" stuff that had always been the bedrock of D&D. This got me to thinking, of course, about my own journey with regards to fantasy. I started way back in the 70s and early 80s on stuff that was pretty classic: Lloyd Alexander and Tolkien being my original template for what fantasy was supposed to look like. By the mid-80s, I'd supplemented this with a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard and Fritz Lieber and pastiches of that kind of stuff. By the later 80s, I'd supplemented that with Eddings and Feist. I've sometimes been—in the many years since—disparaging of Eddings and Feist, but I've finally gained enough wisdom to come back to seeing why I liked them in the 80s and 90s and admitting that I honestly still do. I don't necessarily think that they're mimic-worthy, but I'm not suggesting that they need to be mimicked either, merely that the fact that they were rather plain and conventional by our standards today wasn't a weakness after all.

Dark Fantasy X has moments of rejecting that conventionalism too, of course. No elves, dwarves, halflings, wizards, etc. exist in Dark Fantasy X. But then again, that's just as conventional and old-school as including them. Just because I grew up in a period when that kind of fantasy was ascendant doesn't mean that the older Weird Tales and sword & sorcery stuff was really all that unusual still. 

About this, let's talk just a bit about thurses. Thurses are not an iconic element of fantasy fiction although there's not a good reason for that. The word is very old. It's actually a Middle English word, based on an Old English word þyrs, which is in turn based on the proto-Germanic word *þursaz or *þurisaz. Which is, in turn based on an even more ancient Proto-Indo-European word, *tur- or *twer-, although when we go back that far the meaning changes. All of the Germanic languages have a cognate to thurse that refers to some kind of monster or giant; German Turse, Danish tosse, Norwegian tusse, Icelandic þurs, which is more like the Old Norse þursar, which was another word used to refer to the jotuns. The Old Norse especially used thurse as part of compound words, such as hrímþursar ("rime-thurse") and vindþursar ("wind-thurse"). This seems to be how the Old English used it too; it's attested in Beowulf as orc-þyrs, which Tolkien himself referred to in answer to a question on the origin of the concept of orcs. Thurse even became one of the letters of the Elder Futhark (Þ) and you'll notice that I'm using the lower-case version of liberally in this paragraph. It's pronounced as the voiceless th, although as English developed, the distinction between voiced and voiceless became less pronounced and ð was often pronounced voicelessly too, until they both disappeared and became th indiscriminately. The letter itself, to the Norse, became associated with dark magic, but then again, so did the thurse-beings themselves. Jotun and thurse is often translated into English from Old Norse as giant, but being gigantic in size was not necessarily a defining characteristic of them, and many jotuns are depicted as normal-sized. I mean, Loki himself was one, fer cryin' out loud. The relationship between the Aesir and the Jotuns is complicated, and the Jotuns are probably best seen as analogs and peers to the Aesir that the Norse nevertheless did not worship, who were more likely to (although not at all obligatorily so) be hostile, and therefore often monstrous. 

Thurses in Dark Fantasy X, of course, are more explicitly monstrous and down to earth. Much as orcs have become a hostile and savage race in fantasy, I'm attempting in a small way to do the same with the old word and concept of thurse. Thurses are on the monster list, and feature prominently in the Southumbria section that I'll be developing below, which after all exists on the eaves of the Thursewood. I also explicitly say in the thurse entry in the monster section that their stats could be used to represent an ogre, gnoph-keh or sasquatch. I also see them as useable for a troll (of the old folkloric kind, not the new-fangled D&D-tainted variety), a bugbear (I used them as such briefly in EBERRON REMIXED) or Warhammer style beastmen. In fact, the latter concept is probably what I originally envisioned them as years ago when I first decided to use the concept. 

I've got Hero Forge images of thurses that are both more beastmen-like and more ogre or bugbear like. I also like the idea of having them be more like tribal sasquatches or yetis, although sometimes those are portrayed as even more monstrous and little more than beasts. The Warhammer beastmen paradigm, or the Iron Kingdoms Tharns is a better idea of the concept as I see it. Or maybe like an older, less bowdlerized and more Tolkien-like take on the orcs, just with a more forest-dwelling savage vibe to them rather than semi-industrialized underground dwellers. 

You may notice that I don't actually describe which of these models best represents the thurses of Thursewood. On top of that, I took a break from writing this post to make this new version of the thurse, in two lighting conditions, just to offer a third option.

And for that matter, although I picked up this Bog Beast mini from the Hero Forge user library, it's pretty much just a thurse who lives in the swampy parts of the forest as a more lone wolf predator rather than a band of savages.

I actually think that may have somehow started out as an attempt to make a fantasy Chewbacca. I really see the thurse stat-line, at least, as a pretty flexible tool. What exactly a thurse is may be a little vague, but then again, so is the mythological prototype on which they're based. Tolkien actually took the vague concept of the orc and made it into something that wasn't vague anymore. I haven't quite managed to do that with the thurse yet, but I see them more as a kind like Bigfoot before he became so rare that people doubted his existence. (I'm just kidding. I don't believe in Bigfoot.) Give them a culture not unlike the Chaos Beastmen of 7th and 8th edition, and the look of Bigfoot or much meaner and murderous wookies, and you've got my thurses, more or less, at least the thurses of the Thursewood. They might be different elsewhere.

Anyway, while admittedly a bit less formal and more boring than what I've done in the past, I'm going to call that portion of the post the majority of the "background" section and transition from this point on in to the actual 5x5 by at least addressing very briefly the geography of the area here.

Southumbria, as the name implies, is the southernmost half of the Hill Country. The Waychester 5x5 itself is not in Southumbria for the most part, the iconic action of this takes place in Northumbria. But this is exactly why I'm trying to involve Southumbria more in some of the other 5x5s; the Hill Country #2 front is split between Northumbria and Southumbria, for instance. The #5 Burlharrow 5x5 almost represents a place so far-flung that it stands alone from the rest of the Hill Country (although it's obviously closer to Northumbria and interacts more with Waychester and the Darkling Sea ports than with the Southerners.)

I haven't actually drawn the Umbrian River on the map yet, but I envision that it waters the Goldenwolds and runs kinda right through the middle of them. Therefore, all of the territory on both sides of that great forest belt that includes the Haunted Forest and the Chokewater Forest are part of Southumbria. I see it as having a lot of cues borrowed from the old American South, although much less the plantation Deep South and more the backwoodsy Dukes of Hazzard south, combined with some Rocky Mountain homesteaders and cowboy West in its northern portions. (That shouldn't be surprising. I grew up in Texas at some point before Texas ceased to be anything more than a geographical expression. My dad is an ethnic southerner who's immediate ancestors lived in Hazelhurst, Georgia, which could be the prototype for Hazzard. And my mom is a pretty iconic descendent of western Rocky Mountain small time farmers.)

One of the key points of this front is a noble's daughter, but strictly speaking the Hill Country doesn't have a nobility, and in Southumbria (as opposed to Northumbria) this is even more pronounced. That doesn't mean that there aren't elitist, old money and power families that pass their wealth down for generations and tend to run a lot of things in the setting, but they aren't titled nobility, just wealthy people who have managed not to lose their fortunes or land-holdings over the generations. Landed gentry like Mr Darcy or Mr Knightley from Jane Austen, with tenant farmers and big country estates best describes them. However, unlike the situation in England during the Regency, there is plenty of opportunity for those who don't want to be tenant farmers in the Hill Country. Not only do the cities and towns and even many of the villages offer opportunities to would-be craftsmen, artisans and specialists, but the frontier nature of much of the Hill Country means that people can just pick up and establish a homestead somewhere out there if that's what they'd rather do. Because the Hill Country population was self-selected from out of the Old Country for adventuresome personalities, whether a person decides to take a more risk averse tenant farmer position under a gentleman's protection or take a more "nobody's telling me what to do" position out on the frontier is a personal decision, but gentlemen need to be careful to practice some noblesse oblige or their tenants will all pick up and leave for greener pastures. 

On the other hand, the second and third sons who didn't inherit in the Old Country and came to the Hill Country in an attempt to make a fortune of their own tend to have more of an old-fashioned attitude towards their pseudo-noble status, but these people tend to congregate much more in Northumbria than Southumbria, and they also tend to prefer the urban pseudo-court of the Grand Duke (a self-styled title that is on the verge of become real over years of pushing for it.) In general, the Northumbrians, especially the elites of the northwest Darkling Sea Coast, especially Waychester, are the ones pushing to make their elitism official by re-establishing noble titles styled after those in the Old Country from which their ancestors came. This is becoming one of the main cultural dividers between the North and South.

Anyway, enough with rambly background stuff. What does this 5x5 look like?

First off, recall that the original, core 5x5 has the PCs starting in the largest city and de facto capital of Southumbria: Dunsbury, and from there they have to get to Waychester, where the majority of the 5x5 takes place. There really aren't a lot of options to get there, and the most obvious is to take the road directly east to the southernmost shore of the Darkling Sea and Burham's Landing. This will take them through the territory near Rabb's Hill. If, for some reason, they don't go near Rabb's Hill, which seems unlikely because it's by far the most obvious way to make the trip, the encounter can still be relocated to somewhere in the wilderness near Dunsbury. Even if they're going directly north, or something else bizarre like that.

They'll encounter a caravan that's been recently raided (within a day or two tops) and robbed; there are dead guards and other members of the caravan that are still being buried, etc. A gentleman's daughter, probably Joan Wilmere, who I also made use of in 5x5 #2, is missing, as is a number of important parts of the cargo. One of them is a chest that Professor Alpon von Lechfeld was shipping to a correspondent in Roanstead (notice the attempt to reuse elements and tie these 5x5s together to each other?) One of the survivors of the raid, who is too injured to immediately move, is nearly apoplectic with anxiety about this missing shipment; he admits if pressed that it included an incomplete copy of Unaussprechlichen Kulten being sent for protection, because von Lechfeld, even though he should have destroyed the thing, couldn't bring himself to get rid any source of knowledge, even one so balefully evil and obviously illegal. Von Lechfeld is actually a recognized expert on the occult, and is consulted semi-regularly by government agents, including the Shadow Rangers, so he has a bit of an indulgence against being arrested for holding illegal and blasphemous tomes of witchcraft and sorcery like that. This wounded caravaner (Eoman Gast) strongly suspects that the raid on the caravan wasn't about any petty robbery or kidnapping in a mundane sense, but rather that was the cover for the theft of the book. He also is very anxious about Joan Wilmere, suspecting that she's the chosen sacrifice for some horrible ritual from the grimoire. This conjecture is actually wrong; Joan was taken for a completely different reason that has nothing to do with the theft of the book (see below), but it makes sense, at least.

The robbery was carried out by bandits, but Eoman and others from the caravan note that several members of the caravan, who had been standoffish, seem to have disappeared at the same time; they are not among the bodies. Although this isn't conclusive, he's right in assuming that they were agents of evil the entire time, and arranged the ambush to run off with the grimoire. Their patron is a hermit witch-lord in the forest who seeks to "upgrade" his situation before he dies of old age into becoming a lich. This is Jareth Grym, and he was an infamous necromancer, heretic and murderer in Dunsbury a generation ago when he was younger. Presumed dead, he was merely lying low all these years instead. In reality, although he's certainly a terrible person and a force for evil, he's not been terribly concerned with the doings of Southumbria or anyone else for that matter since he prompted the thurses to attack Rabb's Hill some time ago and burn it to the ground. The ritual he needs from the book doesn't require any sacrifices or damsels in distress, although it will eventually mean that daemonic and undead forces will congregate in the Thursewood around his tower. This will directly threaten Southumbria eventually, but it indirectly threatens them more immediately, as the thurse population has rebounded significantly since the purge of the forest after the Massacre at Rabb's Hill, and will be stirred up by the comings and goings of Grym and his undead.

Secondly, as I just mentioned, the thurse's are gathering in great numbers, and a powerful war-chief and his cannibal-shaman are whipping up the thurses into a frenzy deep in the forest. So far they've clashed with daemonic and undead servitors of Jareth Grym, but they don't recognize the source of them, but they've been raiding southwards into Gunaakt, and have hit the migrant route through the forest towards Chersky Island a number of times. They're tired of the incursions of the orclings into their territory and want to strike hard against both the orcs and the Southumbrians (who they imagine are inviting and harboring them; in truth, the Southumbrians aren't very happy to see migrant orclings either and encourage to keep moving.) They will continue to cause loads of problems for anyone in and around the Thursewood—which will include the bandits hired by Jareth Grym, and the PCs themselves, until the chieftain Gorthos and his cannibal shaman Morghox are both killed. That's easier said than done, given the vast number of thurse savages gathered to their human-skin banner.

Gorthos

Morghox

Jareth Grym

Thirdly, as noted, the corridor of migrating orclings comes right through the forest. Gunaakt is suffering a prolonged drought over much of its farmland, ironically and flooding through much of its jungles, a population bloom of not only the orclings themselves, but also dangerous wildlife which preys on them when they're alone in the wild and upon their livestock otherwise, as well as political and social chaos as warlords and self-styled bandit kings have replaced a strong government. There's been a fairly steady stream of orclings heading for the new colonies on Chersky Island for some time. The journey isn't very safe, though—traveling to the Gunaakt border accounts for many deaths, and the territory south of the Thursewood isn't any picnic either. Passing through the Hill Country, they're not particularly welcome unless in small bands who behave themselves well and move on quickly, but the Thursewood itself has become the most dangerous part of the journey because of the thurses. 

It's entirely possible that the PCs won't care about the plight of orcs, goblins and their families. They are somewhat unlovely, and prone to violence and poor impulse control, and they're less intelligent and have less foresight than the people of the Hill Country. They're not really capable of integration except in very small numbers, and they don't make particularly good neighbors. (Ironically, my orcs who are quite a bit different than D&D orcs are making the D&D designer's ridiculous assertions about orcs and race in D&D come true in my not-D&D game. That wasn't an intentional correspondence, though—just something that developed organically.) But even if they don't take some compassion on the poor orcs and agree that allowing them to escape their basket case Third World hellhole of Gunaakt to try again on Chersky Island is a good idea, the orcs are at least more sympathetic than the thurses, who have no redeeming qualities whatsoever and are truly just monsters in a human(ish) form. To make it a little more appealing that the PCs might help a migrating caravan make it safely out of the forest, and maybe even establish a secure route that they can use for some time, I'll give the orcs and goblins a little bit of a friendlier face in the form of Balogh, a charismatic and even handsome orc soldier who's much more intelligent and civilized than the majority of them, as well as the orc sisters Cryn and Heren who are friendly and appreciative rather than entitled and demanding, hopefully making them a bit more likable and sympathetic too.

Of course, I want to challenge the character of the PCs; so there will be plenty of unlikable orcs and goblins in the group too. Are the PCs heroes, or just mercenaries, or even villains? This third column of the 5x5 will be a bit of a test for them; what will they do about this stranded caravan struggling quixotically against a forest that's a bit too tough for them to chew on their own?

Balogh

Cryn and Heren

I also like the idea that Joan was stolen by a hired mercenary who was supposed to just grab the book for Grym, but became infatuated with her and thought he could win her over by taking her along too. This hasn't panned out. He's a narcissistic and ridiculous man, not to mention amoral and inordinately self-absorbed. Evil in a very modern entitled leftist toxic beta male kind of way. Frankly, he would have long ago raped her despite her protests, believing himself entitled to her, but as luck would have it, they fell in with the orc caravan, when he left Grym's tower. The orcs sensed that this mercenary Cesan Dughlas was shady and that Joan might be in some kind of trouble; Balogh has made sure that she stayed with them. Cesan has not been willing to run for it just yet, although he's very frustrated by the situation, but as the trip with the orclings becomes more dangerous, neither of them will be very willing to leave until they get out of the forest at best. 

Fourthly, speaking of mercenary pursuits, before the raid on the caravan that sparks this entire episode of columns, Eoman Gast was also tasked, if he could manage it, with sending any information about a golden idol buried in a lost villa in the forest back to his professor patron. The villa and idol go back to ancient times when the kingdom of Vuronezh stretched under the northern eaves of the forest. But Eamon has clues gleaned from von Lechfeld's research that makes him believe that he could find it. Sadly, in his injured state he can't, and frankly, the situation was more dangerous than he believed or even still believes. The villa is not unoccupied. I know this sounds kind of trite, but I'm not going to turn it into a sad dungeon crawl imitation. There is a hag named Eigyr Gwynn who lives there even though the villa has turned into a forested swamp and is very difficult to reach safely. Like all hags, she's not a good neighbor; she loves to eat children and all that jazz, but they rarely find their way in to her neck of the woods, and her forays abroad for human flesh are rare. But honestly, she's mostly just minding her own business when this opportunity to grab a solid gold Raiders of the Lost Ark head from the ancient house that she's squatting in comes the PCs way.

Fifth, the last column may be one that the PCs don't choose. I like the idea of some kind of Predator-like monster deciding that it wants to hunt people in the forest, the more dangerous the better. Plus, the Erlking will be my first foray into what elves in Dark Fantasy X could actually be like; maybe dangerous enough not to rate a routine monster line, but treated more like a unique monster of considerably more stature. The PCs might at first assume that finding the bodies of thurses or even orcs isn't a terrible thing; when they discover that the elf who's killing them wants to make a trophy out of their heads, and that he's much more dangerous than most other unique encounters that they'll have in the forest, they'll probably change their tune. Riding at the head of his Wild Hunt, the Erlking will be especially perilous, so I'll need to give some thought to exactly how to deal implement him.