5x5 Fronts: Chaos in Waychester: Front #3: Subregional Front (Northumbria) (spoilers)

A quick personal note: I had anticipated that I'd be both too stressed and too busy with job-hunting to blog much. That hasn't really been the case. I have been busy, but I've been somewhat less stressed than anticipated. I'd seen other people in prior waves of layoffs struggle for months to land on their feet. I'm now at about two weeks since my last paycheck (although I got another last paycheck for my unused vacation; I haven't even had my severance arrive in my direct deposit yet, and I'm sitting on enough money for some time... although we're obviously being more careful with it than we used to be.) It's just over three weeks since I was told that I was going to be laid off. In the meantime, in the last seven business days—since after Labor Day, I guess—I've had nine interviews; one of which was a second interview, and one of which was a third interview. I've got another first interview tomorrow, I'm traveling on Friday, and I have an in-person second interview on Monday, and two more second interviews scheduled for early next week, even though I'll be out of town. Now, granted, I haven't had any conversions (yet) to an offer, but I'm quite encouraged by what's happened so far. The one I had a third interview with today will likely make an offer, I think, and one of the first interviews I had today told me that if it were only up to her (and she's the one that I'd report to directly) she'd hire me on the spot. I think both of those guys will try to lowball me a bit on salary, but we'll see. I'm also thinking that the in-person second interview I have on Monday will likely convert, unless I blow something badly in person, but I'm experienced enough not to make that likely. The other first interview I had today was also extremely promising, and a job that I'd very much like to have. On top of that, I've got a couple of other guys who've told me outright that they want to schedule an interview, I just haven't done it yet. In any case, my stress is significantly relieved, although I'm busy fielding all of these interview requests and calls from recruiters. I never thought I'd be glad to get a job just so I can finally turn off all of these notifications and phone calls that I don't want.

So, I'm feeling a bit encouraged to blog more than I expected to. Here's the next column in the 5x5 front for CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER, and today's column will focus on the Northumbrian orcling pirate threat. But first, as is my wont, some setting background. I thought it appropriate to talk a bit about the northern Hill Country border region just a bit. I need to draw a specific CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER map, but until then, I'll use my earlier draft, cropped just a bit, to showcase the area; it'll still be close enough.

The northern edge of the Hill Country is partially made up of some other cultural entities. The Wolfwood is a significant barrier (I haven't even bothered to develop what lies beyond it except in the very vaguest of terms), and the Plateau of Leng is, as you can probably imagine, hostile to all human and demihuman life. I think it's worth taking just a second to detail what Lovecraft himself (and a few other writers in his oeuvre) said about Leng

• inhabited by a human corpse-eating cult ("The Hound")
• inhabited by degenerate satyr-like "Men of Leng" as well as The High Priest Not To Be Described and his prehistoric monastery (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)
• possibly the location where the frozen Antarctic city of the Elder Things was located, before being abandoned to shoggoths and weird gigantic blind albino penguins (At the Mountains of Madness)

I've also had the Plateau of Leng in my setting since at least Dark Heritage Mk. IV as well, although there is starts to coincide a bit too much with the source of the Cursed, who became the Hyperboreans. I don't want those two to converge too much. Suffice it for now to say that the Plateau of Leng is some seriously bad medicine, and you don't want to go there. But the malign influence of it does occasionally spread to its closest neighbors, which in this case would be mostly Lomar and Bucknerfeld. 

Bucknerfeld is an interesting place; although adjacent to the Hill Country, and a city of Hillmen, geographically it's just beyond the Hill Country, being sandwiched between the Plateau, the Indash Salt Sea, the Sabertooth Mountains and the lands of Lower Kurushat to the north. Hillman also have significant settlements along the north shore of the Darkling Sea, like Cayminster especially and the more far-flung city of Burlharrow. However, smack in the middle of this is Lomar, which has some hillmen, but is not part of their nation.

Lomar was founded by Hyperboreans fleeing the destruction of their far northern city-state of Zobna some generations ago. Whatever the culture of the Zobnans once was, it's become syncretic now, and the Zobnans have traded with and been influenced by the Hillman for some time, adopting their language, many of their fashions, traditions and even structure of government. Many of them have also converted to the Christian faith of the Hillmen, although Lomar officially has no state religion of any kind.

However, there's another population of Hyperboreans living among the Zobnans of Lomar, and they maintain a significant plurality. Their original homeland of Nyx was also destroyed by the savage Inutos, but their culture seems to have been significantly different than that of the Zobnans, and they have also resisted integration of Hillmen culture of any kind, or even to the Zobnan culture. This tension between the Nyxians and the Zobnan elements of Lomar has been the source of considerable cultural and social conflict in Lomar. The Nyxians still maintain their ancient cults, and are seen as extreme and potentially violent, or at least those political factions that refuse integration. Lomar is almost at the point of open civil war in the streets.

Iconic character Kimnor "Kim" Rugova is a great example of a Zobnan, highly integrated into Hillmen-like lifestyle, who actually left Lomar in disgust over the socio-political situation there, but a great many other Zobnans are much like him, except that they remain in Lomar and refuse to give it over to the Nyxians. The Zobnans originally welcomed the Nyxians as fellow outcasts and brothers, but have gradually lost a great deal of patience with the stubborn hold-outs who refuse to integrate to the Zobnan majority culture of Lomar, and many have now come around to being in favor of forcibly expelling or even simply exterminating the Nyxians if they continue to threaten the peace of the Lomar lifestyle.

I've included a few new Hero Forge Nyxian models. My original plan was to simply take and slightly modify Shadar-kai models out of the library, but I found that I didn't like them as much as I'd thought I would, and that my own creations looked better and more in mind with what I had. The selection below is a bit mixed. I never liked the white dreadlocks and ridiculous piercing look that Wizards of the Coast thought was so cool for the Shadar-kai, for one thing, so the Nyxians have a somewhat more subtle barbarism to them; although many of them are perfectly capable of mingling in high society as well. The violence and savagery of certain castes in their society is more a cultural affectation for those castes than for the entire Nyxian population.

The Tazitta Death Cult second column will have the PCs most likely getting at least a little bit involved with current events in Lomar, as will this orcling pirate one, but in neither case are they expected to really tackle it head-on. Official hillmen rangers, of course, have no authority or jurisdiction whatsoever in Lomar, and while freelance Shadows like Ragnar and Stefan don't actually have any jurisdiction anywhere, they are usually deputized and happily by those who do. The Zobnans, at least, are aware of the reputation of the Rangers, and have even come up with an organization of their own that mimics it to some degree for the countryside around Lomar.

The final area which needs to be discussed, at least a little, is Chersky Island itself. A the name somewhat implies, it was named by the hamazin when their empire stretched its farthest colonies this far, but it has been largely abandoned except by a handful of secretive fisherfolk, hermits, pirates and runaways or criminals who have lived a precarious life on the island. Now, however, as the migrant crisis from Gunaakt has grown, many of the orclings (again; a common term for both morphs of the race; orcs and goblins) have decided not to try and force their presence on people who's way of life would be harmed by their presence, and have sought out Chersky Island as a refuge where they can live in peace and friendly relationships with the other city-states around the Darkling Sea such as Cayminster, Lomar and Waychester. For about ten years now, streams of orcs and goblin settlers have moved to the island and established small ports, fishing villages and farming hamlets. However, this is somewhat threatened by those who arrive and decide that fishing, farming and trading are less effective than piracy. Now the friendly relations with their neighbors are souring, and the piracy problem threatens to become a major international incident between the orclings and the hillmen and the Hyperboreans of Lomar. With that, let's get to the column, which deals, in fact, with exactly this piratical problem.

First, the PCs should be approached in one of the port cities that they are in. It could be Burham's Landing or Benchley, where they are trying to book passage to Waychester, or alternatively it could be in Waychester itself trying to book passage to Cayminster to follow up on the Morcant Gunderic clue. Or, if you've decided to make this a late game front, it could be in Cayminster or Lomar trying to get to Waychester back again, or even just in any one of those towns without the PCs necessarily looking for passage to anywhere. Here they will hear rumors all over the place of the latest ship to limp into port in the last day or two with its cargo stolen and its crew reduced significantly either because they fought or were taken prisoner by the orc pirate captain Taurak. There's another ship anxious to leave with cargo, but worried about the safety of the sea-lanes, who are looking for extra protection (I know, I know, it's a tired RPG trope, but it'll work.) This is especially helpful if the PCs are trying to book passage somewhere; just make sure that your own ship captain Borus is heading to the same place the PCs are headed. Naturally Borus' ship will be attacked by Taurak's, and there's be ship to ship boarding action and swashbuckling combat for the PCs to engage in. I envision that the most likely outcomes are that Taurak is driven off, but as he leaves he swears revenge on the PCs and the captain that thwarted him, or Borus surrenders before he's left with too few crewman to get the ship in to port, and the ship (and the PCs, probably) are robbed by pirates. But if you want to do something more dramatic, or if the dice and the PCs crazy plans head that way, awesome. 

Captain Borus

Captain Taurak

Secondly, it seems likely that the PCs will be irritated at the villain that dared to rob them, but if that's not the way it goes, then the villain could well be irritated at the PCs that thwarted him. Spies from the Chersky settlement, usually corrupt goblins who can blend in easier than most, but possibly some paid humans or demihumans as well if that works better, will be keeping a watch on ships arriving in the various important ports, looking for the PCs arrival. Then, via messenger bird, quick communications will be sent to Chersky Island's pirate haven, Calak, where agents of Taurak or the pirates at large will send waves of thugs or assassins to kill them.

Meanwhile, regardless of what does or doesn't happen to the PCs, Waychester, Lomar and Cayminster and other port authorities are losing patience with the increased piracy and are talking of mounting a military expedition to wipe the orcling settlements off of the island, since they don't realize that the majority of the orclings are simply peaceful farmers and fishers, rather than pirates. There may even be an approach made to the PCs to scout the island before an invasion, but perhaps the PCs just want in on the action because they've been involved already. There are a number of peaceful settlements on the island, all relatively small, such as Wrynn, Edenna, Roclus and Barion. Even a quick and casual reconnoiter mission will demonstrate that only Calak is where the pirates are from, and that the majority of the orclings are very nervous and hesitant about the pirates; they are as much victims as the people of the other port cities, but are in less of a position to do anything about it.

A deeper reconnoiter mission will prove that Calak has an even more sinister side to it than simply piracy, although naturally that's bad enough. A priest of Dagon has started the violent and depraved cult of said daemon among the pirates. While not all pirates are members of this cult, enough of them are to make the pirates a force to be reckoned with because of their occult sorcery and zealot approach, as well as the sacrifices that they make on a regular basis. Those who are part of the cult also take a Deep One on as an officer, and this underwater perspective of the Darkling Sea makes them especially dangerous to the ships that they would target. Taurak and his crew are among the strongest supporters of the priest of Dagon, who's name is Guarg Dreghu.

Fourthly, whether the PCs reconnoiter on the island or not, there will be an eventual invasion; a joint operation coordinated between the Harbor-Master of Waychester, a self-styled "admiral" of privateers, who's the brother of the Lord Mayor of Lomar, and the ships of a consortium of merchants and marines from Cayminster, with a few additional boats or troops from other smaller port-cities all along the Darkling Sea. Without the PCs to direct them to the right targets (Calak and the pirate ships vs the other towns and the fishing and merchant fleet of the orcling civilians, they'll probably mostly just kill innocent civilians, farmers and fishers, while giving the actual pirates and cultists ample time to make their escape (mostly, anyway.) With any luck, the PCs could actually muster a militia of local orclings to assist in the cleansing of the pirate cove of Calak. Regardless, Guarg Dreghu isn't there when they attack, having been given advance warning of the approach by the Deep Ones. Although he wasn't given enough advance notice to evacuate most of the pirates, so he escaped with Captain Taurak's flagship to an even more remote cove with an even more remote temple to Dagon in it where...

Fifth, Guarg will summon a Ketos (or the Ketos, perhaps) to attack Lomar, which is the closest target. After that, if he isn't defeated or otherwise stopped, he'll continue to attack coastal cities, including eventually Waychester itself, until the PCs either do something about it, or Guarg and the cult of Dagon are the undisputed rulers of the Darkling Sea's waters.

As you can see, I've done my best to interweave this column with stuff going on in the two bigger, "major" columns, to reduce the temptation to ignore this one as a smaller threat that deserves to be ignored. It isn't, but I can see the players thinking that if they don't have really immediate reasons to get involved with it directly.

Ragnar and Stefan

In my last post, I said I was considering that one guy as a replacement image for Ragnar Clevenger. My original idea for Ragnar was that he was a bit of a side character; his younger brother Stefan would be the main character, and Ragnar would be a bit like Racer X to Speed Racer. (Because I used to watch that show a lot in the late 70s when I was a little kid.) I've actually, as I've started going through this 5x5 business, decided that I needed more than one protagonist. Like a lot of larger fantasy novels, there's multiple plot threads with multiple characters off doing their own thing rather than a single plot thread with a single main character. Ragnar and his "crew" was the obvious alternative here, so he got elevated to a secondary protagonist, who mostly does his own thing in a different geographical area to Stefan, although their work ties together to tell the full story.

While this is common in really huge Sir Mix-a-lot sized butt fantasy novels, as written by guys like Brandon Sanderson or Robert Jordan, for instance, even Tolkien did it. After Fellowship of the Ring, the Aragorn-led plot and the Frodo-led plots diverged for almost the entire remainder of the narrative, and Aragorn was "promoted" if you will from being a supporting character to being a co-protagonist on a different track.

Anyway, I ended up redoing him in a different outfit, but his head looks pretty much the same. I'm actually redoing a lot of characters, because my early efforts were kind of primitive compared to what I can do now on with the tool. I also decided that Stefan and Ragnar would probably dress similarly. 

I don't like to get into the really weird stuff with Hero Forge; the using extra arms, but posing them so that they are inside the body, and their hands just stick out holding something, or the doubled miniatures so you can have more layers of clothing, etc. Those kinds of minis aren't reposable without too much work, so I prefer to keep to the "basic" steps of just creating a mini and equipping and clothing and painting it to get it to look as good as you can without these glitches and tricks and stuff that the tool obviously wasn't ever meant to do.

Anyway, here's the main protagonists of each of the three groups I might potentially use, with Ragnar and Stefan being the most iconic, and Claud being an alternate for if I need three streams.

I also decided that I don't need so much gear. A cavalry saber in his right hand, a bow in his left, and a dagger at his hip is probably already more than I need. Stefan has a packhorse to carry most of his stuff anyway.

Stefan is a bit broader, while Ragnar is a bit taller. While their hairstyles are different, and their eye colors, they are meant to look quite a bit alike. They even both use the same faded green and dusty leather color schemes.

Two images of my reimagined Claud. The original image I had for him was one that I got from the library, and it was a doubled image to get a few tricks, including a unique hairstyle that combined two models. While this isn't as complicated, I actually think it looks considerably better. And it was hard for me to change the original, because it was a doubled image. That's why I don't like using them.

Claud is also a Tarushan gypsy version of the Jekyll and Hyde archetype, so here's his "Hyde" form.

Here's both forms on the same base so you can see the size difference.

When next I post; the next column of the 5x5! If I remember correctly, the next one should be the Northumbrian orcling pirates in the Darkling Sea based on Chersky Island.

Dark Fantasy X... don't forget the little guy

A few Hero Forge guys I made, or copied, or played around with for whatever reason, that don't really represent PCs or even necessarily important NPCs; maybe just regular Joe Blow farmers and whatnot. But I like them.

A retired soldier showing up to defend his farmstead. His kit might not be completely up-to-date or even complete, but it's effective, and so is he.

A young housewife, or maybe a farmer's daughter of marriageable age.

I copied this image from somewhere. It says Royal Guard, and maybe that's a good use for him; some kind of elite soldier or guard in the Grand Duke's retinue.

Although not High Medieval Le Morte d'Arthur type fantasy, this is what a Dark Fantasy X variation on a questing knight would be; a pretty rough and tumble warrior making camp in the wilderness.

Another guard, although he clearly isn't equipped like the Waychester guards. He's either from Dunsbury, or his from Timischburg somewhere.

This veteran guard of Waychester is a bit suspicious of what he's being asked to do, but he's not necessarily completely by the books; as you can see his armor and equipment isn't 100% standard issue, and he hasn't updated his colors to the latest that's been issued. He's probably on the outs with the leadership of the guard because he actually has integrity.

This self-important chap is pretty typical for a goblin, who styles himself a community leader of his people, or something like that.

I like this image so much that it might actually replace the one I made for Ragnar Clevenger. 

I'm not a huge fan of action grrls, as I've said many times before, because not only are they unrealistic given the physical and psychological differences between men and women, but they also aren't very attractive, because men should be masculine and women should be feminine, not the other way around. However, I'm always willing to entertain an exception or two, and the decadent and outcast Tarushan gypsies are the most likely to buck convention and do something that scandalizes everyone else anyway.

I had an image that I grabbed as a screenshot from some show that I didn't watch to represent Joan Wilmere, but I actually like this for her quite a bit. 

Everybody loves a low status but likeable rascal, right?

I grabbed and modified this image that was originally titled "airship captain." There's no airships in Dark Fantasy X (more's the pity, sometimes, but it's a more grounded fantasy than that... no pun intended) but this could be a normal ship's captain, or more likely a caravan master and traveling adventuresome merchant.

The salt of the earth. A farmer. This is the kind of guy fighting to preserve his family and farm at Roan's Mill, in the Tazitta Death Cult arc.

A typical Tarushan gypsy. Less attractive than his daughter above.

A Timischer of some importance, given his rich accoutrement.

A town crier reading news of the Grand Duke's imprisonment of the Grand Duchess in faraway Southumbria.

The city guards of Waychester are well trained and equipped; this guy represents a smaller town with a smaller budget, although he's still got the goods, and is most likely a veteran of the military.

I make a big deal out of the humano-centrism of Dark Fantasy X compared to other settings, but there's still regular farmers and artisans of other races too, of course. Here's a woodwose couple of homesteaders wondering what those shifty looking PCs are doing at their gate.

Dark Fantasy X novels

I'm probably going to rename CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER, at least for a different purpose. It doesn't sound like a good novel. And I'm feeling motivated to convert this into a novel right now. I've been puttering around with the labor of love novel that I've been unwilling to commit to, and its time to just stop and do it already. Most of my objections aren't valid; I can get a professionally done cover on Fiverr for easily less than $100, and it is just a matter of determining finally to do it and not put it off any more.

With regards to recent posts that I've made, I still haven't found a job, although I'm technically only 8 days out from the official end of my employment. In the meantime, I've had two interviews already, and I have three more scheduled. I'm feeling confident that I'll find new work fairly quickly, hopefully long before my severance money runs out, and I'll actually come out financially ahead from having lost my job. Here's hoping, anyway.

Because of that, my anxiety is significantly reduced, and I have motivation to allow myself some free time here and there to read and think about hobby endeavors after all. I'll feel even better when I convert some of these interviews into offers, and even better when I start working and get settled in. If I have to relocate, I'll be unsettled for months due to that process, but at least I won't be too anxious about the future, and I might actually have more free time in the short term if I have to move out west while my wife stays behind for a few months until she can get out of her work commitments, my daughter's wedding is done. I mean, with her being out of state, what do I have to come home to other than my computer, amirite? And heck; I've got three interviews out in the Rocky Mountain states where I'd love to live, so I'll put aside whatever hassle and anxiety comes from relocating and enjoy being surrounded by the best scenery in the world on a regular basis. (My wife won't be quite as happy about it, but once we're settled in, she'll be happy too. Especially since we'll be a lot closer to our kids and grandkids, and she'll be able to see them much more frequently than we do now.)

Anyway, long rambly prelude aside, I'm feeling motivated to write Dark Fantasy X novels, including ones based on the CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER campaign (which I'll rename to Chaos in the North or something like that; Waychester just isn't a suitably epic name to be in the title), and the CULT OF UNDEATH and the MIND-WIZARDS OF THE DAEMON WASTES. Except, I wonder if these 5x5 as a high level outline actually provide too much content to work with. And the nature of the various columns having little relationship to each other except kinda sorta geographical proximity makes it difficult to imagine a coherent structure that utilizes all of them in a single novel. Each of the campaign 5x5s will probably give me material for two or even three novels, if I go for the punchy 350 or so page 90,000 word novel, not the door-stopper epic fantasy types that are twice or even thrice that. I know that in epic fantasy that's a pretty ideal length given the market these days, but I don't think I can do it. Plus, I don't want to wait until I've got a novel that long to publish. Punchier "standard" length novels still sell well in fantasy too, I believe. Spec fiction, like the D&D novels, for instance, were always that long. This is probably especially true for Kindle stuff. And it's just so much easier to structure that kind of novel well.

I've been messing around with my "iconics" that I really created more for gaming purposes, but which I'll repurpose, I believe, to novel characters. But I've rejiggered how I imagined them as a group of PCs and thought about them more as characters in a novel. And I think for a two-three book Chaos in the North Country "arc" based on Chaos in Waychester, I'd need a main character who's got a sidekick, and a secondary main character who operates separately from him most of the time with his own sidekick, and maybe even a tertiary main character who can operate separately from them even and handle geographically more far-flung plot points. They'll all come together at the end again of the first novel, and advance the storyline. The main character would focus on the eponymous columns, with the Grand Duke and his wife, the secondary main character would focus on the Tazitta Death cult threat, and the tertiary one could run around doing some of the other ones, depending on how I adapt the 5x5 matrix into a novel-like structure. I'm giving up my 4-5 member "PC party" structure to these characters, and thinking that I'd bring in the non-main character of each arc with his sidekick as merely recurring allies and "guest stars" for the most part. 

So, the main character is still Stefan Clevenger, the freelance Shadow, mid-to-late twenties, combination of Robin Hood and Davy Crockett, except he hunts ghosts, vampires and other monsters for a living. His "sidekick" will be Kimnor "Kim" Rugova, a Shadow Sword from Lomar who used to be named Demir, but I decided I liked this name better. His allies will be Oisin Dughall, the woodwose who used to have a weird foreign name, and Shule, the little goblin criminal who I also used to have another name for, but I don't know that they would even make appearances in the first book. He's also associated with Revecca von Lechfeld, but not until we get to the CULT OF UNDEATH arc, and with Alys, but not until near the end of the CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER arc.

The secondary main character will be his older brother, pushing 30, also a freelance Shadow, named Ragnar Clevenger, and his new wife Cailin, who was a damsel in distress. Ragnar saved her, but not 100%; she was still bitten a few times by the vampire Lysander Draven, and although Ragnar was able to break the hold on her, she had a partial transformation, and became a dhampir. Her father sadly decided that it wasn't safe for her to remain on the ranch, so she decided to use her new-found abilities to do what Ragnar had been doing, and tagged along with him. Over a very brief courtship, that started when she was being rescued anyway, they fell in love and got married. He's also associated with Fredegar de Vend and Dean Bannermane, but I don't think they are crucial to the story yet and may not make an appearance for some time.

These two groups, in spite of the fact that they carry the consequences of desperate or poor choices, are the heroes. The tertiary group is a group that aspires to be heroic, but often fall morally short, and is centered around the Lupescus, twin brother and sister Claud and Griselda, and their mentor father Victor. Dominik and Redemption can appear later on. I'm not yet sure which threat I'll have them deal with. The Southumbria threat plays very well in to the Tazitta Death cult threat, but will delay getting to that threat. I think I'll need to maybe shorten it somewhat, and let Ragnar handle the rescuing of Joan Wilmere. Maybe Claud and Co. can deal with the thurses, and maybe I can tie that in to the Chersky Island orc pirates threat too. 

Meanwhile, the Burlharrow smaller threat probably needs to be dealt with as part of the Duke and Duchess storyline, so I'll roll that over to Stefan.

Not sure how I'll get them all back together again, but I'll work on it. It's pretty early to have a settled structure mapped out and plotted already.

Anyway, I've also made a few updates. I had earlier made these sample city watch guys for Waychester, who will be an impediment if not outright Bad Guy to Stefan and his friends. And by made, I mean that I found them in the Library and made some minor modifications to them. I was more worried about the actual look and costume of them than anything else at the time, and I came to realize that they looked really fake, like dummies wearing a costume in a store.

With just some minor reposing of their heads and faces, as well as a dusting of dirt, they look much more realistic now, I think.

Me in Hero Forge

I don't know why it didn't occur to me to do this earlier, but here's me in Hero Forge. Out of shape and fairly sedentary as I unfortunately often am at my age, this is me on vacation. Sitting on the porch in the fall, when the weather is cool enough to merit a jacket, wearing a Cabela's bucket hat because I have bed head, unshaven for a few days, sweat pants and hiking boots (my feet often get cold, so if I'm outside for any length of time, I'll have warm shoes on) Mountain Dew in my hand and at my feet, and books all around. To be more accurate, I probably should have had moccasins, since that's what I wear at home frequently. Warm and comfortable and easy to put on. But let's assume that I took a break from reading recently and took a walk outside. That sounds like the kind of thing I'd do on vacation.

Sadly, I fritter away too much of my free time on the internet rather than reading like I used to do when I was younger, but it's one of the better habits I'm trying to reintegrate now that my regular routine has been thrown for a loop. 

Here we replace the leather jacket with a regular poly-cotton hoodie. Actually, for fall days, as opposed to winter, that's more likely to be what I wear anyway. The Injun moccasins aren't really like the ones that I wear, but it seemed the closest thing in the Hero Forge library, so I swapped the hiking boots for those.

And changed the angle, of course.

Here I am without the hat, and from yet another angle. I've also switched the hoodie to another athletic type jacket (not that I look athletic in it, but I like wearing that kind of stuff.) The Sinbad vest isn't really a great analog for the kind of puffer vest that I sometimes wear, but I didn't see a better option for it either.

Stefan Clevenger

I'm going to take just a moment to cross-post the so-far only iconic character sheet that I've made. When I made this character, I thought his hp total was a bit low, so I actually updated the Dark Fantasy X from 1.1.1 to 1.1.2 and updated a few minor things, including how to do post level 1 hit points. So, the original post is a few hp lower than this version, but yeah. I might yet update 1.1.2 to 1.2 if I decide I want to reevaluate the hp of the monsters.

The Inquisitives

As an aside, I just finished the fourth book of The Inquisitives series, a 4-book series of Eberron novels. Like The War-Torn series which I reviewed here years ago when it was still relatively new, it really isn't a series at all; it's four stand-alone books with completely different characters, all written by different authors. I've had a rough relationship in many ways with D&D fiction. Ten years ago when I was reviewing The Crimson Talisman it was a pretty scathing review, and I even was kind of harsh on The Orb of Xoriat and Claws of the Tiger even though I liked them. (I can't find my review for Blood and Honor. I know that I read it, but maybe I never wrote one for some reason.)

I don't know if this series is better than that one, or if I'm just more mellow in my older age. Ten years sometimes will do that to a guy. But I actually don't much hesitate to recommend these novels, at least to D&D players. Sometimes the specifics of the mechanics show up more than I'd like, or rather; a lot of stuff that's implied about the setting in the rules features prominently. That's probably not actually a complaint, although I complained about in the past; stuff like the magical healing and some of the very specific magic items and spells, etc. I mean, c'mon, every fantasy setting's gotta have some of that, right, and if in Eberron's case that resembles the rules of D&D to a great degree, even in the novels, that really shouldn't be too surprising. I guess my problem is that I don't really love the implied setting of D&D all that much, which is why I guess I was so motivated to "fix" Eberron, or rather, remix it into something else.

I guess maybe my vision of Eberron is just different than the creator's. And that's OK. Check out, for example, this synthwave remix of The Outfield's "Your Love" which I found a few weeks ago. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the original, especially if you're a guy my age who was in middle school when it came out, but this synthwave remix is amazing, because it replaces the original 80s pop with a kind of retro-futuristic view of the 80s that never really existed, but which at the same time distills the tone and feel of the 80s in a way that almost feels more 80s than actual 80s music does. I guess that's how I always felt about Eberron; it was too hampered by being D&D when it was really trying to be a really cool swashbuckling setting in some other system. (Not to hype my own past work, but if you're interested, here's the Eberron Remixed stuff. It requires access to the original 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting book to use.)

Anyway, all of the four Inquisitives novel feature mystery plots that unfold in Eberron. The first one, Bound by Iron was probably the weakest, but the next three are all actually pretty fantastic. Night of Long Shadows, the second one, was my favorite. Curiously, there's a sequel to it, but it's not the next book in this series. I imagine it's because the main character and his side-kick are probably the most likeable characters of all that we're shown, and have the most charisma and chemistry between them, but the characters of Legacy of Wolves and The Darkwood Mask are pretty cool too. The last one, unfortunately, ends on a slightly unresolved cliff-hanger about a bunch of things, and as far as I know, there was never any follow-up to tie that off in a sequel or anything. A little disappointing. 

However, I think any D&D fan would enjoy these novels. I certainly did, more than I expected to. I have certainly mellowed over the years in my criticisms of game fiction, but that may be only because I find regular fiction to be really bad these days, so older game fiction from a decade or two ago is pretty good in comparison. But it's hard to say. I got to a point where I wasn't really reading very much for fun any more for many years, and now that I'm back doing a fair bit of it (sort of) again, I'm finding that the lighter fare is actually pretty fun. 

I don't know if you can even find this stuff any more. I don't think any Eberron novels have been in print for many years, and these were originally published in 2007-8 or so, if I recall. It looks like they're not too hard to pick up on Thriftbooks for about the same price they would have retailed at new, however. I don't think that they're super collectible, just out of print and ultimately meant to be fairly forgettable. But I enjoyed them, and recommend them to you.

Next

Well, it's been a week and a half since layoff day. I know a couple dozen people personally besides myself that were also laid off, but given that the estimated (or reported) numbers were 3,000 white collar jobs, that's only a drop in the bucket. Freakin'... well, anyway. I've been through several waves of both excitement and anxiety and feeling a bit dejected about the whole thing, but y'know; you can't worry too much about how you feel about something when something has to be done about it. So, I rebuild my resume from scratch late last week, I created a new linkedin profile, and did a bit of preliminary spray and pray resume sending. It wasn't really that random; and I did modify each resume to tailor it to the job I was applying for, so it shouldn't be too surprising that I've had a few bites now, and some preliminary interviews on the schedule. It still kinda sucks, of course, but I'm feeling decidedly better about things now than I was a week ago today when I still didn't even have a resume yet or any idea exactly what I was going to do except in very vague terms. 

I've also decided that I can't really just focus all of the time on the job hunt; I still need to give myself evenings and weekends off, at least to more or less the same degree I was doing when I was in a normal routine with a job that I thought was secure. I spent much of the day today in particular grinding through a five hour refresher course on accounting. Blegh. I haven't been able to focus very well since. So I need to do something a little more fun tonight. I think I'll head over to Dark Fantasy X and make a few character sheets for some of the iconics that I've thought up.

I'm going to peg the iconics to level 4; in fact, I'm going to suggest implicitly, at least, that about 4th level is the iconic level of a swashbuckling horror adventurer. Anything lower than that and the iconic is too much of a novice to be considered iconic, and any more than that, and they're already starting to border on world-famous big time hero rather than simply being an iconic adventurer. If I do ever write stories about these characters, which I'm feeling quite motivated about now as soon as my working situation is sorted out, I'll do it with them being at more or less that power level in mind.

Because I didn't want this to just be a boring little wall of text, here's an image I generated using Midjourney, which creates AI art. I haven't really quite figured out how to make it create realistic human figures, but I'm sure it'll happen with more practice. Again; when I my situation yadda yadda I'll subscribe and spend much more time on it. It seems like a good and economical way to get functional yet cheap book covers.

Next for Dark Fantasy X

Well... personal things intrude. I got laid off early this week. My company has gone through many rounds of layoffs over the last few years, and I'd kept my head down and thought I was under the radar. Due to my extensive travel this summer, I wasn't really paying as much attention as normal to scuttlebutt around the office, plus I suppose I'd gotten kind of numb to rumors of more rounds of layoffs. And I'd thought that my position was more secure than most. Turns out I was wrong; and I know quite a few people who are in my same boat. Four people just in my small suburban church congregation alone, plus some in neighboring suburban congregations. Sadly, prior waves have hit many people that I know or knew well too. It's hard not to think of these corporations as sociopathic when they lay thousands of people off at a time, tell them that it's not personal, but then top management treats themselves to a nice bonus because of their cost cutting. But realistically, is there any large, bureaucratic organization that isn't sociopathic? Especially when the Cloud People who run our corporations have gone all in on the woke cult? 

I'm too young to retire, but too old to super easily pivot my career, so I need to find another job. Because we've had so many layoffs locally over the last few years, there's a decent chance that I'll have to relocate as well. Hopefully I can put my house on the market while housing values are still fairly high and houses are moving quickly. The first big round of layoffs I endured was in 2008-9, and people were really screwed on their houses back then. We had actually just bought ours at a high point in pricing, and watched it spend 7-8 years underwater in value before it climbed out too. Ugh.

Anyway, in one sense, I have much more free time. I'm not working! On the other hand, I have much more productive things than blogging about fantasy games, settings or stories that I need to be working on, such as rebuilding my resume which I hadn't looked at in quite some time, building up a LinkedIn profile, which I also hadn't spent any time on previously, but which seems to be the new way people do a fair bit of their recruiting and vetting, and applying to all of the jobs that I qualify for that I can. This will leave relatively less time to turn to hobbies, although maybe I'll need to make time every so often. Getting laid off is a stressful and anxious thing to go through, and I can't wallow in the stress and anxiety all the time without breaking, I suppose. And some of that stuff is coming along fairly well; I've got all of the severance paperwork just about done, I've got my revised baseline resume about done, just needing minor tweaks for the specific jobs I'm sending it to, and I'll be writing a baseline cover letter too. And then it's off to the races with applying.

Me in the near future rolling in dough again, hopefully.

Being optimistic and assuming that I find a job before running out of money (and my severance package is relatively good)—and I hope that that's not hard; my son recently changed jobs and seemed to have little trouble rounding up interviews and offers, although being more or less entry level is different than having close to 30 years of actual career-level experience—I'll be pretty busy. Interviewing, processing and onboarding for a new job, especially one that I'll likely have to relocate for, is going to be complicated and take a lot of time. Relocating itself is a big deal. Selling my house, which is kind of a mess right now because we'd gotten a bit too comfortable with it, is going to be a big deal. I don't want to dump all of the job of cleaning everything up, throwing out all of the junk, and arranging to get little things fixed so the house can be shown to my wife, but I might have to mostly do exactly that. (To be fair, a lot of that junk is because she has been reluctant to throw stuff out that I've wanted to toss. I think this shook her up out of that mindset, at least..) That will leave little time for blog posts, and little mental acuity left over for hobbies, probably for a few months.

Of course, being pessimistic, that impacts my hobby prospects differently. I'll probably have more free time if the job search is difficult or protracted, but less motivation because the anxiety of being out of work will be higher. In a pinch, I might have to take on some gig work to pay the bills while searching for a full time position, which means much less time and more stress and anxiety. (Unless I find that the gig work is more pleasant and the financial set-back isn't unbearable after all. Who knows? I know of one guy who got laid off in an earlier wave, and he's still here doing Door Dash and stuff like that while his wife teaches Zumba. He might have been old enough to start his pension under early retirement rules, though. I'm not.)

Me in the near future living in the gutter because I can't find a job. Not really; I have places to go if it really gets that bad. But it would be pretty sucky to fall back on living in my in-laws' basement.

Either way, I expect that blogging will become less of a priority for me, at least in the short and medium term. Blogging as a hobby for me is more about exploring thoughts on pop culture and hobbies, and sometimes other topics, when I'm comfortable, and have free time to kill, and want to do something with it other than zone out in front of the screen. I've already found that even just a few days being shocked out of my comfort zone has engendered in me some better habits, and that I've also lost some of my habits that weren't so good, because I've had literally no motivation to indulge them. And it's only been a few days!

The only way I see extensive potential blogging happening is if I find a job fairly quickly, relocate (maybe to somewhere out West, where I've always really wanted to live anyway) but have to leave my wife behind to finish stuff up with the house and my daughter's wedding plans for a few months. If the new job is relatively smooth and onboarding goes well, I'll come home to an empty rental with nothing to do, so maybe then I'll start blogging? Anyway, all of this is speculation. I don't know how things are going to go. Just a heads-up, though—if my posts become fewer and farther between, that's why. And I know that with all of the travel I did over the summer, you'd probably think; how does it get fewer than it has been? That's a fair point.

I will, however, try to allocate some "me time" to doing a few things. Over on my sister Dark Fantasy X blog, I'll be slowly building up iconic character sheets for the iconic characters, of which I now have way more than I really need. And when I have time and need to just get away from my worries, I may sit down and write up some setting material here and there, or another 5x5 column. I'd love to say that I'll start finally writing my novels, but realistically that won't happen until things settle down, at best. And things were settled for me for quite some time without me doing jack squat there, so don't hold your breath. Although if I die without having at the very least taken a decent stab at it, I'll be very disappointed in myself.

Anyway, I exported the blank character sheet spreadsheet to jpg, and here it is. I hadn't ever done that before and wasn't sure it could be done. Nice to see that it turned out great. Because Dark Fantasy X is a fairly rules-lite game, the character sheet is pretty clean and uncomplicated. Just the way I like it. One of the ways in which I'm old fashioned but not old school is that I dislike character sheets that I can't write up on a single sheet of notebook paper, preferably on just one side even, just like we used to do in our junior high games over lunch and study hour.

5x5 Fronts: Chaos in Waychester: Front #2: The Regional Front (spoilers)

Tazitta bokor Witch Doctor

Background: For today's background, I'll talk a bit about the settlement patterns that made the Hill Country what it is. I'll also bold and red any references to places that aren't currently labeled on my map, so I can add them to my campaign map when I draw it. The map deliberately doesn't label coach houses and the small hamlets that support them, or ranches that employ many people and have small villages or hamlets of their own, and all kinds of other small settlements, but I'll need to refer to them at this stage, so I'll have to make a bunch of them up as I plan. Anyway, on to the background about the Hill Country and its settlement:

The Hill Country is the most recently settled of the lands of the Three Realms. For many years, it was essentially depopulated and empty; a little bit too far away to get attention from the Empires in the west—Baal Hamazi, Kurushat, and Tarush Noptii, although ancient petty kingdoms ethnically related to the Tarushans had once lived here. Little is known of the oldest of these other than their names; even their geographical boundaries are vague: Permia, Pezhek, Halych, Leszek, and Vuronezh—although the romance of this unknown Kin Twilight, as its called, means that elements of those names sometimes pop up as people want to recall them by association. All of these were united in a larger kingdom near the end of this era that encompassed the western portion of the Hill Country from the shores of the Darkling Sea in the east to the Sabertooth Mountains in the West, and from the Plateau of Leng in the North to the eaves of the Thursewood and the Chatterwash River, where it bordered with its ethnically similar cousins in Tarush Noptii.  This large kingdom was Kinzassal, and while little is known about it directly, it is referenced in records from Tarush Noptii frequently. It collapsed before waves of Hamazin, Kurushans, and the Colonists from the east passed over the area; lightly in the case of the first of those two. The Kinzassians disappeared as a people, although its believed that many of them fled as refugees to merge with the people of Tarush Noptii, and some few of them reduced to tiny hamlets of farmers, hunters and nomads still wandered the empty lands in tiny bands. The majority of the genetic descent of the Tazitta people probably comes from ancient Kinzassal.

The Kurushans explored this territory, but never settled here. The Hamazin did establish some small settlements, and even had a few significant colonies, although they all failed long before the Baal Hamazi empire itself collapsed; wars in the Boneyard with Kurushat either cut off access to the colonies, or pulled manpower away from them. The evil and jagged ruins of ancient Hamazin castles and towers can still be found, often not far from ancient standing stones, henges and menhirs left by the Kinzassians or even the kingdoms that came before, or even ancient Atlanteans that belong to the non-human peoples that predated humanity. The territory went for centuries, or even millennia as mostly empty wilderness until the coming of the Colonists from the east. 

The first wave to pass through were the proto-Timischers, who came from the land of Carlovingia far to the east. Few of them stayed in the Hill Country, as they set up their own new kingdom of Timischburg among the ruins of what used to be Tarush Noptii. However, Carlovingian peoples continue even now to pass through the territory; mostly homesteaders and new colonists, leaving their homes forever to join their far-flung cadet group in Timischburg. Some of them don't make it all the way to Timischburg, as they find that the current version of the Hill Country is to their liking, and they settle there instead and assimilate with the locals. 

The next wave is the one that truly established the Hill Country as it's own. They also came from eastern kingdoms; especially Culmerland. The language and culture of the Culmers is the baseline that all others have assimilated to, although certain pockets still retain customs, cuisine or clothing from other eastern kingdoms. The Culmers are relatively well organized and peaceful; while capable in warfare, and willing to do it for many reasons, their natural tendency is to establish peaceful farming and ranching settlements and to get along well with their co-cultural neighbors. Those who came from Brynach, on the other hand, are a bit more fractious. While the Culmers are already pretty anti-authoritarian, the Brynachans are much more independent yet. In Brynach itself, they are less prone to peaceful homesteading, and often make up clans and tribes where low-grade raiding and warfare are common. Today, those who identify as more Brynachan as opposed to Culmerish are less likely to settle in the cities, and more likely to be on the frontier and the ranches where they can live a more active and adventurous lifestyle, and have fewer people trying to tell them what to do. (Editor's note: The peoples of the Hill Country are meant to evoke real-life European peoples, or diaspora Europeans like the Americans. Carlovingia is clearly supposed to be similar to the Carolingian Empire of the early Middle Ages, and the modern Timischers are similar to Austrians or Germans. The Culmers are Anglo-Saxons and the the Brynach are the Celtic peoples of Britain, especially the Scots. The last two, which I'll cover shortly, are obviously Vikings and Normans, respectively.) 

After its initial founding, many more people from Culmerland and Brynach have come to the Hill Country, but that's only because it's been many centuries. The flow of Colonists is a bare trickle. It's not just a question of an overland journey, however; there's only one route from the lands of the east to the Hill Country, and it is both difficult and dangerous. Those who come do so in small numbers, and come permanently.

However, a few other peoples have come from the east as well, in smaller numbers. Physically and culturally, they aren't terribly different from the mixed Culmerish and Brynachan and Carlovingian Hillmen, so they usually assimilate fairly well; although there are still small towns or neighborhoods where a non-Hillman ethnic identity is at least partially preserved. One of these two groups are the people of Skeldale, who were famous as Reavers, but after their conversion to Christianity, they have become less of a threat and have embarked on more commercial enterprises.  In fact, more of them are coming from the east than any other people today, although the absolute number of emigrants from the East is and always has been fairly small. By far the vast majority of people here are Hillmen, and have been here for many generations, and no longer identify with their ancestral stocks, but rather with their current situation. Another people who have a complicated history with most of the other nations of the East are the Normaunds. Militaristic and aristocratic, they find that their social position in the Hill Country has meant very little. Most of the Normaunds who have come to the Hill Country were third or fourth sons, or daughters who disliked arranged marriages, etc. so they assimilate better than you'd think, since their social position was not tenable in Normaund itself anyway.

Front #2: The Hill Country This threat is a regional specific threat that will cause a great deal of problems for entire area that's west and south of the Darkling Sea. This means that it doesn't really impact the whole Grand Duke and Grand Duchess scenario that I described in front #1, on purpose. I've thought it over a bit since I wrote my initial summary of all of the fronts, and made some minor changes to this one, as you'll see below.

First, the Damsel In Distress from the Southumbria scenario is, as I said earlier, the daughter of, if not a Lord exactly, then certainly a landed gentleman, with estates in the very southernmost part of Northumbria, just across the Umber River from Rabb's Hill and a little north of the town of Waller's Grove. His lands, and the villages that have grown up around them are not on the map, but would be a bit north of Waller's Grove, but not all the way up to Cockrill's Hill. They're nestled in the fairly wide lands between the Chokewater Forest and the Waychester Bay. There's an inland village of tenant farmers and freeholders who provide food for the whole area called Rettersville, and near the shores of the bay itself is the small port town of Benchley. This isn't a major center of trade; it's on the top of a cliff that goes down to the water's surface, for one thing. There isn't a good place to land large loads of goods for miles, but the townsfolk have built a trail of switchbacks that goes down to a broad pier, and mules or donkeys bring smaller loads down to the water, or up to the town. Small numbers of passengers make this run too, because it allows easier access to the interior towns north of the Chokewater Forest, Chokewater Ridge, and the Copper Hills than wagon trains from the Dunsbury or the rest of Southumbria.

Joan Wilmere

I like this step because it kills two birds with one stone. It's directly tied to step one of the Southumbria front too, since rescuing the D.I.D. there is, voila! the same girl we have here; one Joan Wilmere. She's fairly young; hopefully the PCs don't think that a 16 year old girl should be traveling across the Hill Country on her own, especially as she's been a fairly sheltered and naïve 16-yo at that. But if for the some reason the PCs rescue her and just stuff her on a boat, then there's more hints here; she says that before her own kidnapping people had been going missing  in Rettersville and Benchley, and that gossip of strange disappearances were coming down the road from Cockrill's Hill and Pineytop even. They can also hear more gossip from sailors or traders at Burham's Landing, or on the ship before it stops briefly at the Benchley docks. Obviously something is threatening the good people of this area.

Which maybe needs a collective name: I like Brinchshire. This is the portion of Northumbria that's west of the Darkling Sea and north of the forests, not counting Bucknerfeld. Bucknerfeld is a Hillmen city, but it's technically geographically outside of the Hill Country proper, being on the shores of the Indash Salt Sea.

Anyway, this first box isn't usually how I do things. Rather than describing what villains are doing, it is just kind of a set-up and scenario for this particular column of the 5x5, and how the PCs would hear about it.

Secondly, Tazitta tribesmen have been targeting the narrow strip of land from the Copper Hills to the mouth of the Umber River; the majority of Brinchshire. This has so far been small raids on isolated farmsteads and homesteads, so only a single family or small group have been vulnerable. But there's an escalation underway. The village of Roan's Mill which is between Rettersville and Cockrill's Hill, has been attacked by a much larger raiding party, but given that Roan's Mill has some several score people living there and a low stone wall around the settlement, as well as—more by luck than by design—a more defensible situation, they've managed to hole up and hold out, and are under a minor siege. This isn't  going to last forever, but they can hold out for a day or two, and if—as I think is likely—the PCs have come to Rettersville or Benchley to return Joan to her father, or because of the rumors of trouble that they've heard, they can be right there when a desperate rider from Roan's Mill shows up looking for help.

Professor Alpon von Lechfeld

But, again, this happens whether or not the PCs come to Brinchshire, although naturally if they don't come, then Roan's Mill will be in a more serious situation, and will likely suffer many more losses; both deaths in the attack and kidnapped victims who are dragged into the woods for sacrifices. A more curious detail, which again, I'll have to figure out how to have the PCs find this out if they aren't here for the attack, but find out they will is that the Tazitta attackers have created little effigies of the PCs out of bones, feathers, a bit of cloth, etc, and hanged them (by the neck) with small cords from the branches of the trees on the eaves of the forest where they entered with their captives. Once in the forest, their trail is lost as they walked over rocks and through a stream to throw off pursuers. A man from Roan's Mill will know of a famous scholar who lives in nearby Cockrill's Hill after leaving a post at the prestigious Academy of Mittermarkt to retire to to the countryside. He supposedly knows more about the forest Tazitta than anyone, having spent many hours interviewing captives or quislings over the years specifically to gain this knowledge. This will, of course, be Alpon von Lechfeld himself, unless the players have already played CULT OF UNDEATH, in which case obviously he'll be dead, since that's the whole premise of CULT OF UNDEATH; that it starts with the death of von Lechfeld under suspicious circumstances. I love that tie! Of course, it's entirely possible that the PCs don't go to Roan's Mill or Cockrill's Hill. But the effigies are still there nonetheless. If the PCs ignore that for too long, they'll find that the Tazitta hoodoo witch doctors have some kind of voodoo doll like effect on the PCs, and they'll start to notice that things are happening to them because of this. 

Why do the Tazitta hoodoo witch doctors have these, and why the PCs? I'm not sure yet. Plenty of time to figure something out there, though.

In any case, what I think is most likely to happen is that the PCs will be in the area, will consult with von Lechfeld, and he will tell them that a Tazitta quisling a few years ago gave him a crude yet accurate and useful hand-drawn map of Tazitta sites in the Haunted Forest, including a few clearings with henges or menhirs, and a village deep in the woods almost against the mountains. There is the Mother of All Henges in a clearing in the forest. The sacrificial victims won't be sacrificed right away, although the PCs won't know that, so there'll be an element of trying to get there before it's too late. But they're waiting on a Nyxian sorcerer to perform the sacrifices, so if the PCs are in the area, they could get there before they're actually done. If they're not, then obviously they won't, and the sacrifices will be worse. In fact, they'll power the voodoo dolls against the PCs, and they'll start working almost immediately.

Ampelius Pictor

This Nyxian is from Lomar and he is even known as a researcher to Professor von Lechfeld, although he's not known as a cult-sorcerer; that's news to him. His name is Ampelius Pictor. I may, in fact, have a picture of him too! (see right)

If the PCs stop the sacrifices and kill or incapacitate Pictor, the threat from the forest Tazitta clans will be blunted. Honestly, they're not really into that whole Death Cult thing, and they were wary of the Prophetess all along. They'd love an excuse to give the whole thing up and slink back into the woods.

If they don't, they will still be unreliable and surly about their involvement, but they will remain a threat to Brinchshire nonetheless. Pictor is an ambassador from the Cult, sent to shore up their support with these sacrifices and a show of witchcraft meant to intimidate and frighten the people of the Haunted Forest.

Oh, by the way, the Haunted Forest, as its name implies, can be a source of all kinds of other bad news if more is needed.

The third stage is to figure out what the devil is going on with the Tazitta and why do they have a Nyxian sorcerer working with them; one who's actually well-enough known that people in the area can even give the PCs his exact address in Lomar! If the PCs are not around addressing this stuff, then this stage can be skipped, or if they decide that they'd rather tackle the greater Tazitta cult-lands head-on, they can also skip it. At least for now, although that will leave the greater Nyxian conspiracy (see below) unresolved. This involves going to Lomar, investigating Pictor's home and or office (Lomar also has a University on par with that of Mittermarkt, and Pictor was a scholar there professionally.) Lomar has problems right now; the Nyxians are getting a little restless and unruly, and while the Zobnans are sympathetic to their cousins' situation, being a mirror of their own in many ways, they also have established a new life here in Lomar, and become relatively friendly with the locals; they trade extensively with the Hillmen, and other peoples further west, for instance. And even before settling in Lomar, both the Zobnans and the Nyxians had a very different and mutually exclusive view on what it meant to be Hyperborean. The Zobnans have no desire to take on the Nyxians' strange dark cults and culture, and are starting to get impatient at their lack of assimilation. Pictor was heavily involved in sedition and treason against the government of Lomar, and his people have no desire to see the PCs or anyone else poking around in his affairs. One of the reasons that this particular box in the chart works well for me is because not only does it give an opportunity to explore a new area and new people, but it also has a different vibe than the rest of the arc, with intrigue and skullduggery being a major theme.

Pictor's death, if it happened, will set the Death Cults back a bit, but the potential fourth and fifth boxes, if  the PCs "trip" them and cause them to happen are related to this conspiracy. The Tazitta death cults have had their grip on Tazitta society slip in recent generations, and their witch doctors were on the lookout for a way to re-cement their role. The Nyxians, on the other hand, have been increasingly frustrated with the Zobnans in Lomar being unwilling to embrace what—to them—were clearly the "pure" form of Hyperborean culture and cultic religion. The Tazitta witch doctors and the Nyxian death priests, who were forced underground by Lomarian law, entered into a pact to enable each other, brokered by the true master of both cults. The Tazitta wanted to rid all of the Hill Country, or at least Brinchshire and the surrounding area, of Hillmen and return to their traditional way of life while the Nyxians needed a place to establish their own new city and settlements. The deal that the Death Cult of the Tazittans made with the Death Cult of the Nyxians requires that the Tazitta clans unite under the leadership of the Prophetess and the Nyxian death priests to drive the Hillmen out of the area.

The driving force behind both cults, in spite of their fairly different appearance among two very different ethnic and cultural groups, is one of the feared Heresiarchy of the Twelve, specifically Jairan Neferkare the Soulless. She hides Outside of the world, in a realm all of shadow and darkness. It may well be beyond the PCs to storm her fortress in the Shadowlands and kill her; in fact, I very much suspect that it is unless they are willing to muster an army of Hillmen to support them and still make it a Pyrrhic victory, if victory can indeed be achieved. If you've ever read Glen Cook, imagine a group of scrubby Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay characters taking on one of the Ten Who Were Taken. But still; players are clever. They'll probably figure something out.

Jairan Neferkare the Soulless