Dragos and Bokrug

I had used some lingering nosferatu in a swamp images for Dragos for yesterday's post, picking ones that were particularly undead looking. I generated some specifically for him, though, so this should supercede that. Ironically, getting Bing's AI to make my wights and ghouls and stuff usually involves describing "nosferatu with withered and scarred skin". It also likes to add a beard for some reason, but for wights and ghouls that's ok. Dragos is kind of an advanced wight anyway, so he should look a little unique. And given that he's amassed a small cult of Tarushan gypsies with him, he can wear some gypsy stuff sometimes too to give him a unusual costume, if nothing else.

I'm also going to stop calling Bokrug the Water-Lizard. He's just going to be some kind of primeval horror in vaguely humanoid form called Bokrug. Some people will get the reference, but if they don't, they'll get to experience the Lovecraftian stuff all for the first time. In spite of the name, I imagine this playing out more like the Inspector Legrasse section of "Call of Cthulhu" than I do like "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" .

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

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

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

Alpon von Lechfeld

Revecca von Lechfeld

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

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

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

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

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

Dragos

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

Roziak and Torsail

Eltdown

Stefanescu

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

Reanimated Bokrug

Other updates on review

So, a few other possible changes after reviewing my old Cult of Undeath material:

I created a secondary necromancer who isn't the main bad guy, Loriana Boztogonash. But I already had and had forgotten about Gregoru Stefanescu. I have images of a gypsy witch necromancer, but I'll save the Boztogonash name for later and rechristen her as Loriana Stefanescu.

I haven't decided on eyepatch or not, so here's a variant without.

I don't love the name Vyrko Lodge. Although I created it specifically for the earlier Cult of Undeath project, I'm either going to both rename and somewhat relocate it, or have a different one that's on the eastern edge of the Bitterwood called Preszov Lodge. This is part of my general shifting eastward of the whole Cult of Undeath. While ironically Timischburg was created specifically for Cult of Undeath, the new version of the campaign is taking place (mostly) in a kind of "culturo-tone" between Timischburg and the Hill Country. Anyway, here's the lodge, on a sunny day. The real action will probably be on cloudy nights, but I've images for that too... 

A cache of silver "ghostbusting" weapons is still the reward there and maybe even the incentive to go in the first place. 

In my old Cult of Undeath, von Lechfeld himself had created the flesh golem, but I'm not going to readopt that idea. Rather, he created the wards that could contain or even destroy one. Because he doesn't go to Mittermarkt much anymore, he's not going to be implicated. I'm not sure if I even need Ebenbach at all anymore. I'll need to noodle with this just a bit more.

The necromancy artifact that the cult murdered von Lechfeld in the first place is Pandallo's Preternatural Periapt. It can also suppress necromancy, which is what von Lechfeld used it for.

As soon as I find my art supplies, I intend to not only draw a second version of the whole setting in the red and black "Tolkien" style, but also draft the locations, more or less, for the campaign map, which will be slightly "distorted" from the setting map as it exists now. I can't do the whole final thing until I get the five fronts done. But this first one is starting to come together, sorta. And a working draft sketchy map wouldn't be a bad idea. 

Speaking of locations, here's Mittermarkt.

Otto von Szell

I went back over the last couple of days and reread my old Cult of Undeath project from back when it was an attempt to synthesize and utilize Paizo's Carrion Crown adventure path. I discovered that I had had some pretty good ideas that I'd forgotten about, as well as having some good names. I came up with the name Konstantin Hmayak anew, but Otto von Szell was already the name I had in mind over many years, and I'm going to go back to it. Rather than being a somewhat hapless swampie voodoo witch doctor, he's an aristocratic Timischer modeled a bit more on the old Warhammer setting's infamous necromancer Heinrich Kemmler. He can still be hapless, to a point. But I'm officially scratching the Hmayak name and readopting von Szell into that role.

Here's a few sample images, before I decide what he most looks like. Most of them are pretty similar anyway. 

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

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

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

Von Lechfeld right before his murder

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

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

Roziak and Torsail

Boztogonash

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

Otten as flesh golem 

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

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

Grendling woman

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

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

Hmayak

Punting on the iconic character fronts

The absolute final punting exercise, and then I’ll be done and be able to pivot to developing Cult of Undeath, is the stuff that I developed for my characters. As a quick reminder, the way that this works is that I prefer to develop what the NPCs will do, especially the villains, antagonists and hopefully eventually nemeses of the PCs. Exactly what THEY do about the actions of these villains is not something that I develop; at best, I will tend to make an extremely handwavey assumption about what the PCs are most likely to do, but nothing about my plan will depend on it, really, because you just never know what PCs will do, and I’m very averse to trying to force them into my paradigm of what I think that they should do. All of my preparation is on the other end, and honestly, it isn’t tons of preparation, because such preparation would be somewhat wasted when the PCs interact with my plans anyway. Best to keep everything pretty vague, high level, and a few bullet points about direction. What is useful preparation is NPC names, images, what their goals are, what the setting looks like, i.e. locations and problems that such locations have, interactions and relationships between NPCs so that when the PCs meet them they end up getting pulled into mafioso-like webs of intrigue and politics that they may not even have anticipated at all.

So, my “fronts” are five separate challenges with their own flavor, sub-theme under the campaign’s greater theme, and NPCS/villains, along with their goals and plans and relationships with each other. Within a campaign, I like to have a mixture of horror/supernatural themed challenges and more “mundane” skullduggery/intrigue themed challenges, but of course, that’s in a broad sense. It’s a dark fantasy setting, so both of those themes are kind of always present to some degree, at least.

Anyway, each of the fronts has a region associated with it too, as a starting point. The biggest “main” front deals with the entire Hill Country region, and has elements of it taking place across the entire region. I also have two reasonably large ones associated with the two biggest subdivisions in the Hill Country; Northumbria and Southumbria. Not only are they politically distinct, but they also are divided by the Umber River, hence the names. The first big front is associated with the soi-dissant nobility of Garenport and their plots, intrigues and troubles, and is pretty supernatural heavy. Northumbria is a more mundane threat; a militant cult is raiding in the region and attempting to throw the hillmen out. (Ironically, as the setting continued to evolve, rather than Northumbria, it ended up being that cult staged itself out of Northumbria but was raiding northern Southumbria. Oh, well.) While not exactly the “orc raids are increasing” type of threat, it does bear some clear parallels to that kind of semi-mundane type of thing. Southumbria a mixed one in terms of themes; thurses (not unlike Warhammer beastmen in many respects)in the Thursewood are on the rise, and war drums are beating under the trees. Part of this is that they’re riled up by a sorcerer making a play for turning himself into a lich by gathering the necessary forbidden books, rituals, etc. necessary, and part of this is the orcling migration through the forest in migrant caravans. Honestly, the various rows of this front only relate to each other by geography in many cases. The final two normal fronts are a seafaring and pirate themed front on the Darkling Sea, featuring orcling pirates and a harrowing shaman who is a favored of Dagon. This could end in a potential Clash of the Titans “release the kraken” type of scenario. The final is the far-flung North Marches stuff up in Burlharrow which involves intrigue, mystery, murder, manufactured plagues, foul ratmen and undead ghouls, with a brief foray (probably) into a Shadow Realm, a separate plane of existence altogether.

But that’s all the stuff that’s prepared regardless of who the PCs are. I also like to create fronts related to the PCs. Of course, in preparing this for the blog, I had to use surrogates, so I have my iconic PCs instead of real ones. I do now have real ones, but given that we’ve only played one session, I haven’t yet developed anything of note for them, only vague ideas.

The villains of my iconic PC fronts are Audley Hardwicke, a disgraced fallen ranger who’s now angry and eager for revenge, and now that his perfidy and corruption was outed, he’s lost any notion of trying to hide it. His sometime girlfriend is the kemling witch Merra Kuzalash, who I don’t intend to play a major role in this campaign, but I’d like to foreshadow her appearance in a future campaign by having her at least pop up. He’s the nemesis of Dominic Clevenger, and to a lesser extent his brother too.

Bethan Argavad is the former fiancé of Kimnor, another iconic PC. She fell victim to the grisling curse, and was supposedly put to death. But… somehow she was not put to death, and was transformed into a dhampir. She’s a real monster, but Kimnor has been broken and grieving in many ways over her for years, so finding out what actually happened to her is probably going to be more traumatic than what he thought happened to her.

Ragnar and his young wife Ciarin, on the other hand, were also attacked a year or so ago by a vampire, Lysander Draven. However, they were always meant to feature more in the Cult of Undeath campaign. My original intention was that the four-man iconic group for the first campaign would have Dominic, Kimnor, Shule and Oisin Dughall. Shule’s character specific thing would have been his hunt for his brother, who was press-ganged by pirates long ago. He now is thriving and serving as first mate on a sloop associated with Captain Taurak’s pirate horde. Oisin Dughall has connections to the Cherskii Mafia, and Vaspar Oksandros is the crime lord who blames him for the death of his brother. Although formerly not located in the Hill country, he’s now actually come this way. I just pictured Kemish and his pirate crew, so below is just Lysander and Vaspar. 

When I post next, I’m going to start filling out my Cult of Undeath skeleton.

Punting #5: Burlharrow and the North Marches

What is going on? Once again, there’s news that’s so big that everyone will have to make a Will save to not comment on it. I guess I kind of failed since here I am mentioning it obliquely. However, given the chaotic and confused nature of what’s happening in current events, I’m not going to attempt to predict anything except the following:

Also, this link amuses me.  https://www.livescience.com/animals/birds/nearly-half-a-million-invasive-owls-including-their-hybrid-offspring-to-be-killed-by-us

The US government is going to kill half a million owls, including hybrid owls, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. If you replace these owls, which come from another territory within the US, with migrant caravans of invasive people, or chain migration from Third Worlders who are here under dubious “legal” auspices, then for whatever reason the logic is completely turned on its head. If to protect the native population, the invasive population needs to be extirpated, well… y’know.

Let’s do our final Shadows Over Garenport punting post (well, penultimate. I guess I need to do the character specific fronts too before I’m done done.) This is the Burlharrow front, where the PCs go to the North Marches (or East Marches, as I’ve sometimes called them) which is nominally part of Northumbria, but which is also kind of new settlement, and its homesteaders and settlers are dubious about the government in Garenport, and would mostly prefer to be independent.) I’ve got a few characters; Gothbert Erhard, the lieutenant mayor and champion of the Sovereign political faction, which stressed independence from Garenport. Murchad Gibson is the Dockmaster, and champion of the Loyalist faction, which wants greater unity with Garenport. Berold Geissfalk is another figure here, a mercenary recruit from the south.

Next, we have the ratmen. I’ve included a few samples, including the scientist who’s developed the plague which is killed people in Burlharrow.

Next, we have the ghouls. I have a slightly different batch of “ancient” ghouls that are more relevant for Cult of Undeath stuff coming up; these are the “northern” ghouls associated with Burlharrow.

And finally, here’s Morcant Gunderic. I may have already posted him, because although he doesn’t actually belong to this front, he does belong to this area, and looking for him is probably the catalyst that would bring them to the North Marches in the first place.