Punting and Fronts #2 and #3: The Tazitta Death Cults and the Terrors in the Thursewood

Everyone can probably hardly resist commenting on current events after Saturday and the dishonest response from the regime about it. I’ll refrain—mostly—and just defer to quoting a small portion of the Z-man’s post from this morning.

Sensing that this was not good for their side, the regime rolled the dice and sent Biden out to “address the nation” from the Oval Office. It is the habit of the regime to cry out in agony as they attack, but when that tactic fails, they go for a different version. They attack then call for peace before they think the other side has a chance to respond. For close to a decade they have been calling for the death of Trump and his supporters, but now all of a sudden, they think it is time to put aside our differences and come together as brothers. Note that there was no remorse in Biden’s call for unity over the weekend.

Imagine you are walking down the street, and a guy runs up and smacks you in the head, a thing common in coastal cities. Just as you are about to respond, he starts yelling, “Why can’t we just get along, bro?” Then a crowd forms up demanding that you accept the guy’s offer of peace and reconciliation. It is absurd, but it is how the progressive mind operates. These are people with no scruples and no self-awareness, so they are incapable of remorse.

It is a hollow gesture, and the regime will soon be back to anathematizing Trump and everyone associated with him. When they call Trump an “existential threat to their democracy” they mean it and they are correct. What they mean by “their democracy” is rule by the semi-permanent ruling class of credentialed experts and policy makers who hide behind the democratic process. If the voters back populist candidates like Trump, then the system loses its legitimacy.

It is not that Trump will usher in revolutionary change if elected. It has never been about that for the regime. They could have cut a good deal with him at any time. It is what Trump represents that terrifies them. What these people fear is a system whereby elected officials compete for public support and then have the power to pass laws they think are popular with the public. They hate this idea for the same reason they were scandalized by the overturning of the Chevron deference.

This is one reason why there will be no going back. This is the new normal and will remain so until one side destroys the other side utterly. We have been in a cold civil war, as John Derbyshire has called it, for a long time. The war has gotten hotter over the last decade and it got very hot over the weekend. It may cool down a bit over the next few weeks, but by the time the Democratic convention rolls around, Joe Biden will be threatening drone strikes on your town again.

Of course, demographic reality plays a role. Trump is symbolically the voice of white America right now. Parts of that shrinking heritage America were radicalized when they saw Trump rise like El Cid from the stage floor. It was not so much that the scales fell from their eyes about what is happening, but that they were reminded of the basic truth of what it means to be an American. It is not the Bravo Sierra that comes from creepy weirdos [and fake Americans, - ed.] like Ben Shapiro. What it means to be an American is when the bullets start flying, you run toward the shooter.

That is when the battle is joined. Until now, the cold civil war has been a one-sided affair, because white people did not know there was a war. They told each other that the actions of the regime were for money or power. Now they are starting to sense it is about something else. The “existential threat” is not against “their democracy” but against heritage Americans. If the regime thinks killing Trump is funny, they will have no qualms about killing you and your family.

Assassinations are often triggering events. The most famous was the assassination of Archduke Frans Ferdinand. That kicked off the Great War. The assassination of Kennedy kicked off the cold civil war that still rages today. Perhaps in time the failed assassination of Trump will be seen as the turning point in the cold civil war, the point when the good guys finally figured out that they are under attack and begin to organize a resistance against the gathering darkness.

Anyway, I’m actually punting still and now doing my Front #2 and #3 (because I don’t have a lot of images to go with Front #2.) If Front #1 is meant to embody the entire Hill Country region, fronts #2 and #3 were always meant to embody the two constituent halves of it, Northumbria and Southumbria. Although, as my boundaries shifted and changed during the development of the setting necessary for the front itself to develop, it turned out that the threat is really to Southumbrian regions all along; the northern Southumbrian region of the Copper Hills which are near the Umber River, and therefore (technically) the line between the two regions, and further south where the Thursewood threat would actually threaten very southerly cities like Burham’s Landing, Roanstead, Willow Springs and possibly even Barrowmere itself, or at least the surrounding rural areas.

Front #2, The Tazitta Death Cults refer to a threat arising on the strange hinterland that is nominally claimed by Northumbria, but realistically they have never controlled it at all. The Tazitta Tribes, an ancient leftover population that predates the arrival of the Hillmen, but are just a scanty remnant deep in the badlands and the thickest forests, are attempting to rally their people. The Prophetess is the harbinger of their strange cultic religion, and she’s reluctantly wrangled, harangued or bullied the war drums to beat in the Tazitta lands. Raids against settlements in the Copper Hills region and the more settled part of northern Southumbria between the Umber River, the Copper Hills, the Chokewater Forest and Waychester Bay (sometimes called informally the Northwoodshire) are on the rise, and the countryside is burning. Ampelius Pictor, a sorcerer from Lomar who’s been playing a mild-mannered Zobnan academic by day, but by night is secretly a cultist sympathetic to the Nyxian cults is also involved. Both the Tazitta tribes and the Nyxian element of Lomar’s population are trying to purge the land between Lomar and the Chokewater Forest of Hillmen and Zobnans and establish a new empire. (No word on what they will do about each other once they get to that point. Maybe they’ll get lucky and realize that they’re both being manipulated by the same ancient Heresiarch sorceress who created both of their cults. Heresiarchs being extremely powerful ancient sorcerers much like Glen Cook’s Ten Who Were Taken.) Maybe they'll even travel to her castle in the Shadow Realm... although I most certainly don't recommend it. 

Pictured are the Prophetess and Ampelius Pictor, and Jairan Neferirkare, the Heresiarch. She’s one of the dark but beautiful ones, like Soulcatcher or The Lady herself. 

Front #3 has to do with the Thursewood. Not only is there an old serial killer and sorcerer in the woods, who just raided a caravan in search of the missing pieces of turning himself into a lich before he dies of old age, but the thurses have increased in population under the leadership of their tribal chieftain Gorthos and his shaman Morghox. The raid on the caravan was undertaken mostly by unscrupulous mercenaries; Cesan Dughlass is one. He’s also taken a hostage, the young teenage girl Joan Wilmere, who’s the only child of a prosperous, wealthy landed gentry from the Northwoodshire mentioned above. Pictured below are the sorcerer, Jareth Grym, the mercenary Cesan Dughlas, the damsel in distress, Joan Wilmere, and the two thurses, Gorthos and Morghox.

Also while in the Thursewood, the PCs will likely come across a caravan of orclings moving north. This is meant to be kind of a nuanced moral dilemma. Nobody really likes the orcling crossing their land or settling in their hometowns, but the majority of them are trying to get to Chersky Island in the Darkling Sea, which is becoming a “new” orcling homeland. And although they’re orcs and goblins, there are at least three sympathetic and even admirable NPCs among them, Balogh, Cryn and Heren.

Finally, there are two more challenges in the Thursewood; the witch Eigyr Gwynn, and then the Erlking, an Elf Lord who’s hunting them a la The Predator.

Tweaking the DFX rules and the Cult of Undeath proto-front

As alluded to last post, I went to ENWorld recently. Partly this is because I've been bored with most of my stuff packed away and out of reach, and I have fewer things to occupy my time (I should have pulled out my Hawk & Fisher omnibus books and read them instead, but I guess I wasn't in the mood to read. I haven't been a lot over the last several years, for whatever reason.) Part of it was I was curious about what people were saying about news about the new edition, which they're disingenuously trying to claim isn't a new edition, even though obviously it is.

And mostly I was disappointed that what people were saying sounded like unthinking shillery. I think most people that I'd actually have tastes in common with have long since moved on to other venues, or just aren't talking about D&D online anymore. Although, someone made a comment on ENWorld in a discussion that I was briefly in that made me think; can I say that I even play D&D, or is my participation in the hobby relegated to reading books from time to time and grousing about it on the internet? If I haven't actually played "D&D" since, what, 2010-2012 or so at the most recent, and even then it was 3.5, which went out of print in 2008, am I a D&D player? I'm not even interested in a retroclone, which I’d still consider playing D&D (even if from a nitpicky perspective it isn't.) My "D&D", which I do run on occasion and which I do think about and plan and tinker with a lot, is actually a homebrew gallimaufry of kitbashed elements that I keep tinkering with. Parts of it would seem similar enough to a rules-lite retroclone, but I've added elements that are more similar to Call of Cthulhu, elements from 4e and 5e on occasion. Others bear sharp resemblance to the Microlite minimization, an attempt to wrangle 3.x into a rules lite paradigm while still maintaining compatibility. And then details just keep evolving and changing at a micro-level as it goes on. I'm actually waiting to make another minor update when I find what box my computer is in and can unpack and set it up. But this will be a minor update.

That said, I don't know what my hobby goals are following the relocation. I'd like to get the game going again with the kids online. It's not the same, but it'll do. If I can find gamers that I actually want to hang around with here in my new area, that'd be great, but I'm not expecting that to happen in the immediate term, or maybe not even in the short term. So, what can I do to add to my hobby participation profile? Now that I’m relocated, once I get my computer set up and unpacking more or less finished, it's actually my intention to start writing stories! Yes, I've been saying that for a long time, and haven't done it yet, but my situation has drastically changed. Relocating to the upper South, far enough away from my old friends, my old haunts and habits, and many other things that consumed much of my time leaves me a bit wide open to determine the future of my free time. 

Thinking ahead, however, to the next 5x5 after Shadows Over Garenport, Cult of Undeath is, of course, next up. I've made a few minor changes to what I think the five fronts will actually be, although most of these require significantly more development to actually be useable as anything at all. I'm also starting to think of focusing my attention more on the eastern hinterlands of Timischburg and the western hinterlands of the Hill Country and the area in which they border each other as the core area for this, rather than going all over Timischburg. I like the idea of saving "Timischburg proper" for another front. I might also work another front (besides the "Timischburg proper" front in, so that I have some ecotone, or border regions fronts. Cult of Undeath in this new scheme would now be a border region front, an unnamed and unidentified front would be Timischburg proper and be more vampire focused than Cult of Undeath (most likely) and then maybe Mind-Wizards of the Daemon Wastes would be a border region front too, since much of it could take place in the Boneyard, and maybe even the Western Marches of the Hill Country as much as it does Baal Hamazi. And then, a fifth front would be more Baal Hamazi itself. 

Other potential fronts, which would be less connected to the main "throughline" of these 3-5 fronts could include one that takes place in Lower Kurushat, one that explores lost Hyperborea, and one maybe that even goes to the Nizrekh Islands, which is all that's left of sunken Atlantis. And I'd also like another one that’s more back to roots in the Hill Country; maybe finding a way to involve Renwick Bennett, my prologue crime lord of Barrowmere. 

If I see these as a series of interlinked stories, the main "throughline" would certainly focus on the main four iconic characters: Dominic, Ragnar and Cailin Clevenger, and Kimnor Rugova. The other drop-in 5x5s could be spin-offs featuring just one or two of these characters, or maybe even other characters altogether. Including, maybe, some that I haven't even created yet, or if not, maybe some of the contacts and patrons.

Anyway, slight tangent aside, here are the five fronts, in their most basic form. Although for many of these, that’s all that there is so far:

1. Necromantic cult, responsible for the death of Alpon von Lechfeld and orphaning of Revecca. What do they want and why did they kill him? Not sure yet. TBD. But this will eventually lead to Eltdown and the swamps, where undead shamblers will feature heavily.
2. The swamp snake cult, centered around the blinded medusa who instead of petrifying her victims, she hypnotizes them and gradually starts turning them into snake cultists. She's not truly blind, because all of the snakes have eyes too, but you get my drift. 
3. Ghouls and other "savage" proto-vampires are also coming out of the swamp in the other direction, westwards into the Bitterwood, and are attacking villages, hamlets, and even hunting lodges frequented by wealthy and powerful. This will replace the werewolf and/or swamp witch idea that I had previously, which was loosely based on one of the adventures of the old Carrion Crown adventure path. Y'know, who whole reason Cult of Undeath was originally created. 
4. Vampire threat; I had previously thought this might be in Grozavest, but it needs to be in Mittermarkt instead. And it needs to be relatively unique so as not to steal the thunder of the upcoming more classic vampire "Timischburg proper" front mentioned above.
5. A mundane threat of highwaymen and bandits making travel between the Copper Hills and Mittermarkt (via Eltdown) dangerous; not to mention all of the crap going on in Eltdown mentioned above. Maybe this one can get up into the Sabertooth Mountains itself, and at least have a different environmental theme too.

Swamp shamblers

UPDATE: Because of will probably be several days at least and maybe even a week or two before my computer is set up, here's the two minor tweaks to the game that I'm considering. Thought I better archive them somewhere since my source file is on a hard drive I likely won't see for a while. 

1) This is just cosmetic; kemlings don't have the Darth Maul horns anymore. Or at least not obligatorily, although some kemlings occasionally do have unusual daemon features in addition to their jet black skin, night vision, and yellow eyes. This could include a tail, a forked tongue, scales, or yes, the crown of horns. 

2) I think my death and dying rules might be a little too generous. I think I'll change it. If you are at zero (or below) hit points, you make your death save. If you fail you die instantly. If you pass it, you have two rounds, and then you die instantly. Other players can still stabilize you within those two rounds, but you don't just keep making death saves. Also, if you ever fall to negative ten or lower hit points for any reason, you also die instantly. 

You can still use a Heroism token to turn death into near death. So characters probably won't actually die very often still. But they'll use more Heroism tokens to save their lives. 

Punting and front #1: Chaos in the North

Once again, I found myself spending some time at ENWorld, and once again, I find myself leaving in disgust. There's a lot of the usual pedantic wrangling over stupid trivial stuff—even given that any talking about RPGs is trivial, at least within the context of the hobby there’s trivial and then there’s trivial. But the real problem for me was the hand-wringing over the manufactured controversy over stuff Gary Gygax said in the 70s that isn’t politically correct according to woketardery. One person started a thread to talk about this, and made a comparison to J. K. Rowling. He missed, however, the most interesting and salient point about the hand-wringing about the fact that Rowling is a feminist, recognizes that men pretending to be women are not women, and including them in "the movement" takes away from women. That point being: the boycott over her ideology was a complete and utter failure. Contrast that to the high profile boycott, also over trans ideology but from the other side that was taking place at the same time with Bud Lite, these people should realize something that’s painfully obvious. Namely that:

Inside their bougie bubble, these people have cultivated bizarre boutique beliefs (all that alliteration was not really on purpose) that are cult-like. They treat them as if they’re existential givens and baseline assumptions, but they’re not; they’re strange cult-like beliefs that do not reflect reality, and do not reflect what normal people believe either. Their hand-wringing over J. K. Rowling did not result in any dent that we can tell in the sales of the video game based on her property. Nobody (of consequence or significant number) has boycotted anything Harry Potter because she says trans women are not women, they’re men (or boys) playing pretend, or dealing with literal mental illness. And more to the point, the preference cascade against their ideology is observably "cascading" as we speak. 

On top of that, I pointed out that all of this discussion on Gary Gygax is while I couldn’t find anything at all in their pretty busy "geek pop culture" forum on the currently unfolding serial sexual harassment behavior, if not actual rape, by Neil Gaiman. I guess picking on dead people about fake issues is easier than tackling real disgusting problems with live people that you happen to like and don’t want to confront that their bad behavior is actually real. Utterly disgusting. They’re enablers, as bad as Alice Munro or Marion Zimmer Bradley—the latter of whom is more than just an enabler of her pedophile husband but a co-abuser of her own children.

The same situation with Rowling is true for Gary Gygax. Nobody is really offended by the stuff he said forty years ago, and the people in the bubble who think that his behavior needs to be confronted and dealt with somehow are imaginary crusaders leading a charge against someone who isn’t even there, on an issue that isn’t real, and being followed by nobody. The fact that they are patting themselves on the back for dealing with this says a lot about them, and none of it is flattering. And, it encouraged me to leave once again.

I also didn’t see anything about Mexican orcs, which is what I initially returned hoping to see. As often happens when I do, I get caught up in a few discussions that start off interesting, but I get turned off by the strange woke bubble-people that now exclusively populate ENWorld. I’m not interested in hearing about their revolting transgender animal people characters. I think I just don’t have enough in common with any of them, and just being interested in the same game isn’t enough. Plus, I’m not really interested in the same game. I left D&D "proper" back in 3.5 and have only casually looked in on anything since. I’ve read a few 4e books, mostly settling/lore books, and the same for some 5e stuff (mostly the campaign books.) I haven’t bought, read, or played a single core rulebook for any of those editions, nor do I ever care to.

And I haven’t even read The Curse of Strahd, the purportedly most popular and best campaign book. Because I already read the 3.x version of the same (Expedition to Castle Ravenloft) and didn’t think it likely that reiterating the same adventure in another modern edition would be very interesting.

Given my complete and utter disconnect from the ENWorld crowd, I should stop making occasional forays to the place for good and just give up. Youtube commentary from people like DungeonCraft are better. He’s kinda woke too, but he mostly keeps it to himself, and at least we’re definitely on the same page about the game itself. (Other than his casual use of "safety tools" which is a major trigger for me.)

Anyway, all that aside, here’s the AI images associated with the first front. Guilbert du Vandes, the self-styled "Grand Duke" of Northumbria is one of the main villains. He’s imprisoned his wife in her tower, supposedly for heresy, treason, and witchcraft, but he doesn’t have the heart to kill her. This has been a major political scandal brewing in Garenport. Of course, it’s also a lie. He didn’t have anything to do with Josephine du Vandes being confined to her tower; it’s not her prison, it’s her panic room; she did it herself. And because she actually is a witch and another major villain, she can come and go as necessary as she pleases. Here’s the images of those two.

Marshal Hathaway is the head of the Duchess' Guard. They are, of course, incensed by the official story, which also stripped them of their office. Most of them, having sworn loyalty to the Duchess now call themselves the Queen's Guard, and seek nothing so much as the overthrow of the Grand Duke and the installation of their patroness as his replacement, and even a promotion for her to Queen! Of course, they have no real way to do that, so they're just a rabble of brigands and bandits harassing people in the countryside near Garenport. Hathawaye himself makes daring vigilante forays into the city, but it's not clear what he hopes to accomplish other than petty revenge against the Duke’s men. In Hero Forge I had a number of Queen's Guardsmen, although I got most of them out of the library. In terms of AI images, I just have Marshal himself.

The Duke also has his court of retainers; his seneschal Grigori Nicholas, a dark sorcerer and "real piece of work" as they say, and Lucien Russo, his Captain of the Guard. He's originally from Timischburg, and yes, he’s "secretly" a vampire. He also has a couple of other heavies on retainer; paid mercenaries or bounty hunters, including the exotic Blind Beckett and the pitiless Germund de Bosque. All four pictured below.

Finally, I have images of Morcant Gunderic, an important clue-giver that will help solve the mystery of what’s going on with Guilbert and Josephine, and then the Shadow Assassin, a daemon that Josephine will summon and then be unable to control, to attempt to kill her husband and his Court.

Punting and the Preface

So, I've got two more PCs, but I'm going to leave them aside for the time being and do something else. The preface to the game is that I run a brief encounter with some pregens, and they get killed on a rainy, muddy night in the street. Total TPK. Four is my ideal number of players, although 3-5 all works pretty well. But I only have four pregens, and because they're a tongue in cheek pop culture reference, that's the only number that really works.

Frederick von Johannes, Daphne FitzBlake, Zelda du Velmois, and Gavin Shagford. Here they are.

Here's the "Master of the Pack" who kills them and ends up being the first minor villain for the "real" PCs to face down. Including his pack, some summoned ape daemons.

While involved in this investigation, they'll end up meeting one of Barrowmere's most notorious crime lords, Renwick Bennett.

And upon solving the mystery and thwarting (i. e. killing) the Packmaster, they'll all meet Sir Liamond Wreldane. Even those who don't have him as a contact. He's got work for them! And from there, we'll start the five plot arcs that make up the campaign.

Punting and Iconics 3: Kazar and Faye

Some alternative iconics, just as spares or if I want a larger group for some reason. These are actually players from my game, but my game has been very slow moving and my relocation might well be its death knell.

Kazar: Kazar is basically a criminal. His dad was an important figure in the diaspora orcling population in Barrowmere but Kazar wanted more and fell in with a bad crowd. Whether he can overcome this poor judgement and end up a hero or not is TBD.

If Kimnor is not in the game, then Kazar's contact is Shule. If he is, however, then his contact is Oisin... Who might be just the influence Kazar needs to leave his life of crime behind.

Kazar had an old rivalry with Namzo, an orcling thug of thoroughly disreputable character and a member of the anti-PCs crowd. Namzo fled Barrowmere long ago, but he's been running around providing muscle for the anti-PCs. If these spare characters are used, they'll come more to the forefront. I should probably finish generating images of them... 

Faye Findayne: Faye comes to me as a bit of a cipher... or maybe a fairly blank slate. Pretty, young, orphaned, studious and a little shy, exposed on the streets to some darkness and probably willing to do things that you or I would be squeamish about in real life, but ultimately, she's a good, likeable and pleasant person in spite of the hard times she's already had to endure. Other than vaguely thinking about some secret about her parentage... without being Star Wars level dumb, of course, and some strange abilities and features that gradually manifest (sort of like a dragonmark, actually, but in a world that doesn't have them) and mysterious people (or things) showing up and wanting to take advantage of her. Not that way, though.

If she's replacing Cailin as an iconic, Brythe is her contact. If replacing Kimnor, then Shule can be her contact, and if replacing Ragnar, then Alpon von Lechfeld can be her contact. Or, in any situation, Dean Bannermane could be her contact because their backgrounds are at least somewhat similar and I can see him as a surrogate older brother figure in her life. 

She's also familiar with Bahram and Javaira Khanwar, surtur brother and sister team who are part of the anti-PCs and about as nasty a group of psychopaths as you'll likely ever see. Although not full blown enemies now, they will be.

Punting and Iconics 2: Ragnar and Cailin

Ragnar Clevenger: Dominic's older brother. This foursome usually operates as two pairs. Ragnar was also a Ranger, now freelance, although he wasn't part of the Shadow Division. His current freelance assignments almost always lean that way now, though. Upper twenties in age.

Cailin Clevenger: Ragnar's young wife. She was the intended victim of vampire predation, but Ragnar was able to halt the process and chase away the vampire (sadly, he's still "alive" out there somewhere.) The partial predation has turned her into a dhampyr, a partially "vampirized" human. So, with her father's blessing, she married Ragnar, the dashing hero who saved her and became his freelance hunter partner.

Ragnar's contact is Alpon von Lechfeld. Cailin's is Brythe Aermeld. They see in each other a kindred spirit grappling with tragedy, and both hope to reverse the changes that they've been subjected to. Ragnar's choice (by me) of patron is to facilitate opportunities for further adventure that I foresee. 

Both Ragnar and Cailin share a common enemy, Lysander Draven, the vampire who first preyed on Cailin and turned her into a dhampyr. But he's really more a villain for Cult of Undeath, most likely, or even maybe a bridge between the two campaigns.

I'll also add Revecca von Lechfeld here. She's also not going to come to prominence until Cult of Undeath, but it would be nice to foreshadow that.

Also, Claud and his sister Griselda Lupescu are acquainted with the Clevenger couple. I'm not sure yet how they'll interact, but here they are. 

Claud also has a bit of a Mr. Hyde problem. Here's his alternate form. 

That were originally part of an alternate iconics group, but they are iconoclast rather than iconic and wouldn't make good patrons or contacts, so I haven't decided what to do with them.