I've Been to that Place, Too

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... 
-Roy Batty, Bladerunner

Jim Flame Princess sent out an update for his recent campaign (the hardcover LOTFP referee book) to showcase a new piece of art.  The hardcover of the rules book came out extremely well, so I backed the referee book campaign as well.  Here's the latest piece of art:

Art from the new LOTFP referee book

I've been to that place!  Well, not me personally, since I'm usually the referee, but it feels like I'm there with the players, as I create the scene through words and gestures and the action unfolds in our shared imaginations.

I appreciate that modules are valuable for creating shared experiences.  Reminiscing with your friends about exploits from the campaign is great fun, but published adventures allow us to share those reminiscences with other enthusiasts in the hobby who weren't at the same table.  "I remember hearing about how your group defeated Strahd von Zarovitch… now when we got trapped in Castle Ravenloft, here's how it went down…"

Like anything, the ability to relate a tale briefly and well is paramount.  I don't mean to encourage the long-winded, "Let me tell you about my character…" monologues.

I'm usually not a meme person, but it would be interesting to hear brief recollections from various published modules in a form similar to that Bladerunner quote above.  It could be something recent (an OSR publication) or one of the classics from the hobby.  We can have some fun trying to identify from where these oblique references originated.  Feel free to drop your "Roy Batty" style memories in the comments.  I'll get a few started:

• I've seen the endless dead pour off Death Mountain and sweep aside the human villages below like a hungry tsunami.
• I watched with morbid curiosity as a pair of foolhardy dwarves failed to outrun a giant rolling boulder, while humming the Indiana Jones theme.
• I've sat to dinner with the ghostly inhabitants of a mist-shrouded castle and tasted food brought by spirits - and watched as some of my friends joined those spectral revelers, forever.

Before I forget, does anyone else recognize the picture?  In other words - Who else has stood beneath the ozone sky and watched the evolved Neanderthals twist in their bio-capsules?

New at D&D Classics

Some new titles have been added to the OBS D&D classics section - Cook Expert rules and B10 Night's Dark Terror!  Queued for immediately download.  I reference the Expert rules quite a bit, it's fantastic to have a bookmarked, searchable version.  I'm really happy with the scan of B10 - they did an excellent job converting it to a nice looking, useable PDF.  The original had many oversized maps and double-sized maps, making it problematic on previous scans.  I didn't look for a definitive list of new items, but I don’t remember seeing T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil last time; that looks new as well.

B10 Night's Dark Terror is a phenomenal adventure; if you missed it back in the day, now's your chance.  I'll pen a brief review later, after the nerd-buzz calms down.  I'd still love to see the Creature Crucible series added; the Mystaran Gazetteers; 2E Ravenloft and some of the Ravenloft adventures; and 1E Gamma World added to the catalog, but now I'm glad to wait.

Adventure 20 - Incident at a Tavern

Finishing off my September of short adventures...

PLACEMENT
This is a short scene that can take place in any tavern; it's especially apt in an area where evil is being hunted by the authorities.

SETTING THE SCENE
While the characters are in the tavern enjoying a meal or having a drink, there's the sound of heavy horses coming to a stop outside, and then many booted feet clomping up to the front door; the front door is thrown open, and heavily armored soldiers clomp into the tavern followed by an inquisitor.

"One of you here is really a monster in human form.  No one leaves the tavern until we've found the monster or have a confession".

WHAT'S GOING ON
D&D is full of evil monsters that lend the game a sense of black and white and moral certainty; unfortunately, that misses the point that some of the worst monsters can be other people.  Power corrupts, and there's nothing greater than the power of life or death over other people.  The most frightening situation is when absolute power is in the hands of a fanatic.

The inquisitor is insane.  While there are others in his line of work who wield their power fairly to combat true evils, this man has lost all judgment and sees enemies where none exist.  His cadre of storm troopers fear his authority.  He holds a powerful place in the hierarchy and has been above reproach.

He'll work his way around the room interrogating the various guests in the tavern, making accusations about heinous crimes and demanding to know who is the murderous imposter.  Things will quickly escalate and get out of hand as the inquisitor moves towards physical coercion.

RESOLUTIONS
The point here isn't to play out a snuff scene for the players, but definitely put them in an uncomfortable social situation with a powerful and psychotic figure.  Although they're outnumbered by the guards, competent adventurers can easily win a physical confrontation with a bunch of zero-level guards, no matter how heavily armed and armored.  But can they handle the social consequences of defying (or killing) the inquisitor?  Or will they stand by and allow innocents to suffer?

Players are clever and resourceful and should definitely be able to turn the tables on the inquisitor, whether it's in a physical confrontation at the tavern, or at a social one later, and maneuver him to demonstrate his insanity and fanaticism publicly.  Stripped of his position, he'll become a long term enemy of the players.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locale:  a tavern
NPCs:  various tavern guests
Monsters:  the inquisitor
Artifacts:  na

Horror Adventure 19 - The Innkeepers

PLACEMENT
In the poorer sections of the city, it's hard to find a good place to stay - especially one with home cooked meals.  Good thing the greasy urchin is willing to point out a place to find cheap rooms for rent!

WHAT'S GOING ON
I'm switching the order here, because the situation warrants a closer look than the plot hooks.

At the same time I'm putting together this series of short adventures, I'm mulling what a D&D game might look like in the post-Renaissance; I'm assuming it's a world where magic is rarer, and folks in the settled lands don't think about monsters like their brethren on the frontiers.  It raises the question: which monsters, that prey on humanity, would thrive in an early modern, urban setting?  I've got a good list, so maybe I'll put together a near-future post just on urban predators - but today's spotlight is on the Ogre Mage (Oni).

The Oni is an ogre-like demon with magic powers to trick and deceive people, making it easier for the ogre to find victims to devour.  The AD&D interpretation of the Oni, named Ogre Mage, doesn't disappoint - it has all these abilities at-hand:  Fly, Invisible, Cause Darkness, Polymorph (to Human form), Charm Person, Sleep, Gaseous Form, Ray of Cold (those last 4 are once per day).  These guys are ready to move into the big city and wreak some havoc!

This adventure features a pair of Ogre Magi that run an inn in the poor part of the city; since they can polymorph at will into humanoid form, they appear as a corpulent innkeeper and his meaty, overbearing wife.  Their inn accepts all kinds of wayward, lonely travelers - if you're poor, down on your luck, and alone, there's a good chance there's a space for you at the inn.  They'll even serve you a hot meal.

The innkeeper and his wife prefer to nab meals directly off the street, sometimes invisibly following loners out of the inn to ambush them in a nearby alley or dark street; they'll abduct people directly out of the inn when the hunger becomes too much, clamping ogre strength hands on a victim's mouth to stifle any cries, or crushing a neck with an ogre-fueled snap, then bearing the victim invisibly away for their grisly meal.

A hidden room in the cellar connects with the sewer tunnels that drain into the harbor.  The monsters have a small lair down there where they gnaw bones at their leisure.  For a monster, this is the good life.

SETTING THE SCENE
The whole strategy of a monster living amongst us is for the monster to stay undetected, to avoid notice and prey on those who won't be missed.  A poor inn, run as a charity in the poorer section of the city, seems like a good cover.  Many of those that arrive in the city are immigrants from across the ocean, much like the ogre magi themselves.  As such, it should be hard to discover them under normal circumstances.

Here's a story I might use that puts the PC's right on the path:  a powerful family has a coming of age tradition where a youth needs to find their way in the world for a period of time, perhaps learning a trade, before returning home to take their place in the family business.

The family has powerful enemies in a rival merchant house, and the PC's are hired to keep loose tabs on the family's eldest child who is heading out into the world for their 6-month sojourn; they're also given the identities of agents in the rival merchant house.  While they're busy tailing the merchant's scion, they're also running interference against the agents of the rival house trying to do the same.  It's somewhat of a red herring meant to keep the PC's focused on something tangential to a worse problem.  As you can imagine, somewhere along the way, our penniless scion finds his or her way to the ogre magi inn, and doesn't come back out.

Another lead might be the greasy street urchin, who often directs people to stay at the inn - what he calls the 'charity house'.  At a minimum, he'll confess under duress about the baubles he's sometimes given by the innkeeper and his wife for driving traffic to the charity house.  What's that - he's got possession of the scion's signet ring?  Good thing the characters caught up to him before he made it to his fence.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locale:  the poor part of the city
NPCs:  the greasy street urchin; scion of a powerful merchant house
Monsters:  A pair of Ogre Magi
Artifacts:  na

Adventure 18 - Children of the Wood God

Continuing the series of September Short Adventures (horror themed)... doesn't look like I'll get 25 done in September, but 20 seems achievable.

PLACEMENT
Squatters and woods folk are disappearing in the Old wood.   A forester seeks help to accompany him deep into the Old Wood looking for clues; in the heart of the forest is a hill with a bad reputation, shunned for as long as can be remembered.

SETTING THE SCENE
Identify the appropriate enforcer of the lord's forest-related laws - stopping poachers, chasing out squatters, and collecting taxes - it could be a Warden, or a Sheriff, for instance, that is familiar with the layout of the woods and the various illegal settlements within.

Rumors have reached some of the villages beyond the woods that deep woods squatters, bandits, smugglers, and other dislikable folk have begun disappearing - smugglers miss their pickups, for instance.

Normally the forester would be glad to hear his normal targets are disappearing from the woods - saves him the trouble of keeping tabs on them - but the widespread rumors have him concerned something frightening is actually happening in the depths of the Old Wood.  He's authorized to hire escorts in the name of the local Baron and will offer the job to tough but trustworthy adventurers (hopefully the PC's fit that description!)

The forester first sets out for a specific shanty town he knows about near one of the larger muddy rivers that traverses the Old Wood.  Over the course of the journey deeper into the woods, one ramshackle settlement after another has been ransacked, everyone gone.  It will take a few days walking to reach the heart of the forest.  A huge beaten path leads deeper into the woods, making the attacking (humanoids) very easy to follow.

Gibberlings!

WHAT'S GOING ON
In the center of the woods is Haystack Mountain, the hill with the bad reputation; it juts above the trees and resembles a cone.  The hill is like a gigantic ant cone, hollow within, and boiling out of the nest each night like angry ants is a horde consisting of hundreds of subterranean carnivores.  I'd suggest something implacable like the Gibberlings from the Fiend Folio.

Every few decades, the nest awakens and for a period of days, the nest of Gibberlings rampages for miles around, stripping the land of animal life and carrying off captives.  It's unlikely characters will have time to conduct research before heading out with the forester, but old timers outside the woods might remember the scouring that took place 30 years ago; for a suitably creepy moment, the forester himself is in his 40's, and one night around the campfire retells a story from his childhood about something similar happening.

Folks had once tried to clear sections of the forest and build watchtowers and the like; make sure the group crosses a ruined tower from olden times before reaching Haystack Mountain; you might drop a hint how it could be somewhat defensible, or a good place to camp.

RESOLUTIONS
A small group of the Gibberlings (10 or so) got cut off from the horde and are cowering in a nearby shady copse, hiding from the sun.  The horses smell them, and are freaked out.  If characters investigate, they'll be attacked, and it should be an easy fight. They'll be able to learn the following facts:  the tracks of the horde match these creatures; there must be hundreds more of them.  The tracks seem to lead back to Haystack Mountain.  The creatures were blinded by daylight, and seem nocturnal.  It will be dark soon.  Did I mention there were 400 of them?

As DM, now it's time to sit back and enjoy the sense of doom and horror that settles on the players as they realize they're deep in the woods (days from a settlement), only a few hours before sundown, and not far from where hundreds of these things will come streaming out of the mountain again.  Good times.

On a more serious note, the group needs a PLAN.  If they noticed the ruined tower, they might retreat there and spend their last few hours of daylight laying in defenses; I'd love to run this as an overnight siege - all you need to do is make it through the night.  The Gibberlings attack in wave tactics, with no apparent strategy other than numbers; they're also afraid of fire, so a group that discovers that they fear flames will have another advantage.

A boat or raft might be an option; fleeing by horse through the woods during night should lead to broken fore legs and lame horses, but I like the image of terrified characters running for their lives (for hours) to get out of the woods.  Have fun!

Assuming the players survive and attempt serious research to discover the secrets of Hay Mountain and the reason behind these horrible swarms, here's the story I'd eventually use:  the Gibberlings are the children of the "god of the wood", released whenever the god drifts from deep dreaming to awakening, and notices the encroachment of humanity into his sacred places.  After a few days of near wakefulness, the god drifts back to deep sleep, and the Gibberlings return to hibernation deep in the hill.  Dunno how they'd learn this, but with Commune and Contact Other Plane and sages and whatnot, there's always the chance.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locale:  the Old Wood
NPCs:  the forester
Monsters:  400 Gibberlings (AD&D fiend folio)
Artifacts:  na

Adventure 17 - The Silent Brothers

Continuing the series of September short (horror themed) adventures...

PLACEMENT
A small monastery near a remote mountain village.

SETTING THE SCENE
This is a "hookless" location that could be dropped into any hex crawl type map; a squalid little mountain village, less than a dozen small wooden cabins, huddles near the pass.  Higher up the mountain, a small stone monastery overlooks the village.  The poor villagers have no lodgings for travelers, and indicate the monks of the Silent Brotherhood, in the overlooking monastery, welcome all weary travelers.  They just need to go speak to the abbot.

If the characters visit the monastery, the doors are open and the place is well kept; a couple of monks are seen in their brown cassocks performing menial chores; they gesture towards the refectory (and also indicate their vows of silence).

The monastery has a simple layout; a walled compound, a small chapel, and a refectory for meals, sleeping quarters, and some offices.  A monk in the dimly lit refectory will nod in a welcoming manner and point the way towards the abbot's office.

WHAT'S GOING ON
The order is fallen into corruption and none of the monks are alive; they are all Huecuvas.  The Huecuva is a minor undead creature from the Fiend Folio, which can polymorph self; the monks appear as they did in life during the day, and at night walk the grounds as hungry dead, teeth clacking in their jaws.

The villagers have learned that if they direct travelers to the monastery, not only do the Huecuvas leave them alone, but a bundle of belongings, gear, and minor treasures is delivered to theclearing in the center of the village that night.  If too many months pass without the Huecuvas receiving an "offering", villagers go missing.  For this reason, they'll be very eager for any travelers to visit the monastery.

RESOLUTIONS
If the characters proceed to visit the Abbot, monks silently stream into the refectory from the grounds as well as from the living quarters adjacent to the refectory.; the characters will feel the presence of the monks behind them, waiting, while the hooded abbot finishes writing something on a scroll.  A suitably creepy image might be for the abbot to drop his hood, revealing the bared teeth and skeletal head of an undead monster, and then the gathered monks reveal their true forms as well.  There should be 10 or so Huecuvas.

There are tons of ways clever and paranoid players can avoid the monk trap; detecting the lies of the villagers (perhaps through ESP); detect evil at the monastery; noticing strange discolored stains on the refectory floor (which might be blood, or explained away as mud).  Perhaps the chapel has some flies buzzing outside; no longer used for it's original worship, the desecrated space is an ossuary for the bones of the Huecuva's  many victims.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locale:  a remote mountain village and monastery
NPCs:  deceitful villagers
Monsters:  Huecuvas
Artifacts:  na

Adventure 16 - The Hole

Continuing the series of September short (horror themed) adventures.

PLACEMENT
A peculiar book shows up in the city, with hints referring to amazing eldritch secrets beneath a crumbling estate outside of the city.

SETTING THE SCENE
An NPC patron is looking for some retainers to accompany him to a nearby ruined mansion.  The NPC, a book collector and chaser of rare knowledge, has recently come to own a most peculiar journal after trolling the market.  The book describes an underground shaft that provides ingress into the fairy realm, beyond which the author experienced myriad delights and learned many arcane secrets after passing through to the Fairy Otherworld.  The journal alludes to him passing into an immortality.

After reading the book, the patron is ready to see this for himself, and only wishes for adventurers to help with gear and guard his way (Hah!  The party gets to be retainers!).

Outside the city is an overgrown estate, fallen into disrepair; in the cellar is a raised circular slab, covering a hole in the floor - a deep vertical shaft.  The instructions indicated the possessor of the book needed to descend down the shaft (in the dark) in order to cross over into the Fey realm.

A fragrant smell of spring flowers wafts up from below.

WHAT'S GOING ON
The journal is a cursed artifact; the text's ancient secrets, rumors of immortality, and descriptions of the Fairy Otherworld are intriguing, but anyone reading the book must furthermore make a Save vs Spells or become obsessed with entering the Otherworld (treat like a Geas).

The shaft isn't a passage into the Otherworld, but it is the entrance to a lair of horrible Meenlocks*.  They generate the fragrant odors, and use their telepathy to convince the victim he's crossing over.  Of course, the horrible cries coming from the shaft might belie that perception.  Perhaps the journal didn't completely lie; those that are forced to join the Meenlocks live together with them in the dark, forever.

The cursed journal always seems to find it's way back into the world, ensuring another victim arrives to join the Meenlocks in their underground realm.

RESOLUTIONS
Although the shaft emanates evil, the patron is convinced he'll be okay.  This is a good chance for him to describe the descent, his excitement, his sensations, the welcoming telepathic thoughts, and then the horror when he gets yanked into a side shaft by the Meenlocks and borne off into the darkness.  Then it all goes silent.

Did he leave the book behind?  Does anyone else dare to read it?  Do they venture down the narrow shaft to try and find the entrance to the lair?

Good times.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locale:  A dilapidated mansion and cellar
NPCs:  the too curious Patron
Monsters:  Meenlocks!
Artifacts:  The cursed journal

*Meenlocks:  Meenlocks appeared in the Fiend Folio, and I made a post on them previously:  Mythic Monday, The Meenlock.  They appeared in the original Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, and also in the recent remake (where it's intimated they might be dark faries).  That gave me the idea for this short adventure.

Adventure 15 - The West Araby Trading Company

Continuing the September series of (horror-themed) adventures

 

PLACEMENT

A large mercantile company in the port city is looking for some skilled adventurers to help hunt down a monster that's threatening the company's officers.  They pay extremely well.

Although this is meant for D&D, the setting feels like Renaissance or early modern to me.

SETTING THE SCENE

The West Araby Trading Company is a wealthy consortium of merchants that have come together to form an early corporation; the chief financial officer of the company was recently murdered in his townhouse and the other officers are nervous.  Notices are posted around the city for qualified adventurers, in addition to the investigation being performed by the constabulary.

Adventurers responding to the job offer would need to prove their expertise, particularly for dealing with supernatural mischief.  If the job is awarded, various contracts are required on both sides - confidentiality agreements, non-performance clauses, and so on; the corporation is known for its deep legal expertise and skilled barristers.  However, the job offer pays extremely well and the company will pay reasonable expenses, including access to sages and NPC spell casters, if such exists in your game world.

Characters will be able to view the corpse, where it was moved to a private morgue.  The body is in an advance state of decomposition, as if it had been decaying centuries instead of a mere days.

WHAT'S GOING ON

The corporate officers are being hunted by a Night Hag (see the AD&D 1E monster manual for guidelines).  When the Hag kills a victim, it steals the soul to transform it into a larva; the soulless body immediately molders away, leading to the advanced state of decomposition.  Shortly after the investigation begins, perhaps another officer (the chief counsel) reports bad dreams and can describe the hag, giving the characters a lead.

Here's the important back story:  All of the ranking officers of the company are also members of an exclusive social club, humorously referred to as the "Friends of Mammon".  They engage in lavish parties in the countryside, masquerade balls and costumes and decadent activities like the 18th century hellfire clubs ("Do what thou whilt").  Friends of Mammon is more than the club name; the Club engages in devil worship, and much of the corporation's wealth comes from advantages gained through infernal knowledge and its extensive use of unfair contracts.

Some time ago, the corporation learned of the existence of a series of Resurrection Scrolls, potent artifacts recovered from the desert.  They know the fate that awaits them after death, and seek to cheat the devil; one of their members helped the Club test one of the Resurrection Scrolls on a member that passed on last year - the previous Chairman.  His soul was plucked from hell, and the arch-devil Mammon was furious about the breach of contract.  The Night Hag was sent to the mortal world to accelerate repayment of all debts owed by the officers of the West Araby Trading Company.

I'm considering two alternatives as the officer's goals:

1. The officers are desperately seeking enough Resurrection Scrolls in the desert lands to cover all the signers of the original contract with Mammon.  Their goal is to commit ritual suicide, as their contracts are fulfilled at death when their souls go to hell; resurrection will allow them to return to the mortal world, their debts paid; then they just to need secure an alternate destination for their souls after death.
2. Alternatively, the officers are seeking the corpse of the centuries old necromancer Paracletus; they hope to learn the secrets of undeath from him and cheat the servants of hell, forever.  It would be a great crime to return Paracletus to the world, he who murdered thousands in his cruel death experiments.

RESOLUTIONS

Zowie, this set up could have lots of interesting things happening.  For starters, the players will need to figure out how to stop an ethereal Night Hag from murdering the officers, one at a time.  The image of a sleeping officer, disappearing before your eyes into the ethereal plane after an intrusion by the Hag into the sleeper's dreams, is just super cool - a taste of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

However, if they choose to dig into the affairs of their employers, it won't be hard to discover the existence of the Friends of Mammon; there could be the chance to spy on one of the club's decadent parties, or learn the secret nature of the club as devil worshippers, in the arched chambers below the rural estate.

There's also the club's prized treasure, the indestructible Covenant with Mammon, kept under permanent lock and key at the corporate offices.  They might also learn of the secretive ex-Chairman, who supposedly died last year but has been spotted on occasion leaving the Company offices - most unusual.

The arch devil of hell, Mammon, furious about the double cross, might encourage diabolical agents to stop the characters from stopping Mammon's collections agent, the Night Hag.

If the players learn the Club's true aim - the resurrection of an infamous necromancer, or to cheat a King of Hell, would they try and escape their own contracts with the Company?

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

Locale:  The city, corporate headquarters of the Company, a lavish estate for the Club

NPCs:  Company Officers as cultists, the ex-Chairman

Monsters:  The Night Hag

Artifacts:  The Resurrection Scrolls, the Covenant

*Picture is from Eyes Wide Shut; fits the theme of the Friends of Mammon Club

Adventure 14 - The God in the Box

Continuing the series of short (horror themed) September adventures...

PLACEMENT
The setting is the poor Immigrant Quarter in the city during Halloween or a similar holiday in the fantasy world.  A stalwart priest has been warned to leave the quarter on Halloween night, but he's committed to staying the course.

A few ways come to mind on getting characters involved with the situation; if they have ties to the church through a PC cleric, perhaps a senior church official, worried about the priest, asks the PC to hold vigil with him on the holiday night; the Immigrant Quarter hasn't been kind to church property.  Another simple hook would be the stalwart priest himself seeks some mercenaries to help protect his little chapel.

SETTING THE SCENE
The church has always had trouble keeping the chapel of Saint Whatzit (pick a good name for your world) open in the Immigrant Quarter; last year, the chapel was burnt to the ground and the previous priest lost in the blaze.  The stalwart priest has received friendly warnings to leave on Halloween night, 'for his own good', but he insists on keeping the chapel open for the needy.

The Immigrant Quarter is festive in the afternoon before Halloween evening, including lots of appropriate harvest festival activities - let's go with an anachronistic American spirit for the day - bobbing for apples, baking contests, masks and costumes, pumpkin carving, and so on.  Some kindly folks have even decorated the chapel with corn dollies and festival decorations.

The stalwart priest will arrange to have the characters arrive before sundown, so they're in the quarter before the gates close.  The watchmen point out that it's city policy not to patrol the Immigrant Quarter after dark on this night, and the characters will be on their own.  Shortly after sundown, the streets are mostly empty and deserted, the many cottages and tenements barred against the night.

WHAT'S GOING ON
Some of the immigrants here have come from across the sea, but most are from the hinterland.  Though they outwardly converted to the Church, many persevered in their old beliefs and brought their practices with them, including the "god in the box".  This relic of the pagan faith required a harvest sacrifice to ensure a good harvest the following year; when those old time immigrants left their distant fields for the city, they dug up the god in the box and carried it with them, burying the icon beneath the cobblestones.  For a while, the annual ritual of blood sacrifice (in the form of an execution) was held at an intersection called Bloody Corners, and this ensured the hungry god in the box was sated.  Eventually those pagan practices were completely outlawed, and followers of the old faith have needed to come up with more creative ways to see that the god gets its due.  This year, the stalwart priest has been denoted as the sacrifice; the many corn dollies and other harvest decorations draped around the front of the chapel include markers for the god in the box.

As night settles on the quarter and the moon rises, the characters might hear a scream or two elsewhere in the quarter as a passerby catches glimpses of the god seeking out its due.  If the characters are in the chapel, build up the sense of impending trouble as the ground starts to shake with the footsteps of an approaching titan; there's the sound of heavy breathing like a large beast snuffling just past the door; and then the chapel starts to shake as the wall is tentatively pushed (before being smashed in next round).  It'll be even more exciting if they wait outside!

The god in the box appears like a huge four-legged skeletal beast, part armored bull and half wolverine claws and half snarling wolf, with vestigial bat wings and what appears to be the skull of a longhorn steer (for stats, something like the AD&D Bulette stats should horrify low and mid-level characters - two claws and a nasty chomp - it should also be immune to non-magic weapons and have regeneration).

The god will smash and rampage through the chapel trying to get at its intended victims.  When it smashes through walls and doors, there's a round or two where its head is stuck, giving characters a chance for some free shots (or running).  The horror theme here is DANGER - a big unstoppable monster is trying to eat you, so how do you put ground and obstacles between you and the monster?  A good tactical map of both the chapel and Immigrant Quarter would be useful for staging a chase.  The rest of the city is gated off, but characters could consider climbing the walls.  They might flee into the sewers, or try and reach the harbor and escape on the water.  Once the characters have been marked, the god in the box is an infallible tracker and will follow them throughout the night, continually smashing buildings to get at them, but it can't pursue outside the Immigrant Quarter.

To provide some vicarious horror, the DM could ensure the stalwart priest had some zero level men on hand to help watch the chapel as well; this gives the DM plenty of folks to munch first while working its way toward the PC's.  Crunching a zero level guy for 50 damage is where it's at - show the PCs what's coming!  Remember, you don’t have to outrun the god, just the hired help.

RESOLUTIONS
It's suggested that characters hear about the plot hook such that they meet the stalwart priest just before sundown - enough time to hear the spooky history of the chapel, get second thoughts about spending the night, but not enough time to do deeper research until the day after.  It may not work out that way, and its fine if the players are better prepared.  It's possible suspicious players will suspect there's something wonky with the festival decorations, and redirect them elsewhere before sundown - if thrown out, perhaps an innocent person trash picks them on the way home.  That's fine, too, let the god in the box rampage elsewhere - as long as it's loud and violent, it'll still be fun!

If the characters try and gather information, one place might be the old grizzled captain of the guard, who remembers "Bloody Corners", the place where people that followed the old faith were known to conduct a stoning or similar executions.  Those folks were cleaned out many years ago, arrested, and the church converted everyone in the quarter to the true faith, but it still seems that every year, something bad would happen near Bloody Corners around Halloween time.  After a riot some years back, now the guard just vacates on Halloween.  Some years it's vandalism, or street violence, or arson like the chapel burning last year.  One way or another, the god is fed on Halloween.

There are other sources of information to check into besides the watchmen; the characters could "convince" one of the older immigrants to talk about the pagan practices - "My mother learned from her mother and this is passed on mother to daughter, blah blah blah" about the darker reason for the festivities.  Searching church records in the church's headquarters (the diocese) will reveal how many priests have been killed serving in the quarter.

A daytime search of Bloody Corners might not reveal anything obvious, but detection spells like Detect Evil will immediately identify an evil aura in a spot where the cobblestones can be pried up, and a large box uncovered; inside is what appears to be an ancient cow skull, with horns and sharp teeth and fangs instead of flat cow teeth.  Destroying the skull releases the curse that allows the god in the box to manifest each Halloween.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locales:  the Immigrant Quarter of the city; a chapel; Bloody Corners
NPCs:  the Stalwart Priest, the grizzled guard captain
Monsters:  the god in the box
Artifacts:  the god in the box

Adventure 13 - I was a Teenage Demon

Continuing the September series of short (horror themed) adventures...



Megan Fox:  coming to a D&D table near you

 PLACEMENT
Any hamlet or settlement small enough to call a town meeting - a less dangerous civilized backwater is preferred.  Ideal for when the PCs are just passing through.

SETTING THE SCENE
A teenaged boy has been found dead in the copse of trees near the old mill house, and torches and pitchforks are out!  The dried out nature of the corpse (life energy drained) has everyone thinking a foul spirit, ghost, undead or similar monster is lurking nearby.  The reeve or constable is organizing patrols.

Player characters might be staying at the crossroads inn or tavern, and will certainly overhear the ruckus as townsfolk gather in the market square.  In a manorial system, the local reeve is likely in charge, while word has been sent to the lord and sheriff for extra help.  The characters might have the chance to see the distraught parents ("He was just sneaking out to see some girl he was sweet on…").  They might also pitch in and help with the patrols, etc.

Old Man White, the creepy guy with the run down farm out near Raven's Bluff, even shows up with his gorgeous teenage daughter, "Megan".  Perceptive characters will notice how many of the village boys try and get Megan's attention, who blushes demurely, while the father ushers her around protectively.  Old Man White gives some sensible advice about searching the graveyard, points out that he's too old to help with the search himself, and reminds everyone that he needs to get his daughter out of the night air.  "She has a delicate condition, and she needs special herbs and teas each evening so she doesn't develop the same condition that killed her mother, bless her departed soul…"

WHAT'S GOING ON
In folklore, the offspring of a devil and a human is a Cambion.  The succubus story from last post got me thinking how much fun it would be to have an adventure that featured such a creature.  In AD&D, there's a creature called an Alu-Demon that's the offspring of a Succubus (demon) and a human; and that works well enough here.

Old Man White is a chaotic Magic User that has "retired" to this little backwater village to raise his daughter and hide; Megan is the unknowing offspring of a Succubus.  For a campaign twist, assume there is a cult out there that works on arranging these human-demon pairings with Succubi and Incubi and caring for the issue, and Old Man White stole away his own offspring, fleeing the cult and seeking anonymity.  This works a little bit of the Rosemary's Baby theme into the story; even now the cult hunts him (though that may not matter in this particular situation).

Megan has been kept ignorant of her Abyssal heritage; she's been brought up since childhood with the belief that her delicate constitution will make her sick in the night air, and she drinks a daily infusion of herbs and teas (actually a potion similar to demon control) that keeps the demonic side of her soul suppressed.  She's a sweet teenager with unearthly charisma and beauty owing to her Succubus mother.

Unfortunately, as she matures into a woman, the potions are losing effectiveness, and demonic transformations are beginning to happen at night - she sprouts bat wings, claws, fangs, and flies off in search of life energy to suck.  Amorous trysts arranged by gorgeous teenage "Megan" often end up with the victim dead at the hands of her demonic alter ego.  At best, Megan remembers it in snatches of nightmare, which her worried father does his best to dispel the next morning.

I love this set up for a number of reasons - one, it travels the well-worn ground of hormonal teenagers getting smoked in the woods by a monster.  I loved the horror movie Jennifer's Body and it cracks me up to put Megan Fox in a D&D game.  On a darker note, the situation presents moral questions for a party of adventurers that could require them to step back and consider options; the teenager Megan appears to be completely innocent.  Her father, while once part of a dark cult, seems to be trying to turn a new leaf.  If they're confronted, I'd work to make Megan and Old Man White come across as innocent as possible to muddy the waters.  And yet there is a monster in the village.  Have fun!

RESOLUTIONS
The situation is meant to be somewhat fluid and free-form, so the adventure could evolve different ways based on player action.  The pitchfork and torches patrols won't find anything (though it would be a great red herring to root out a ghoul or some minor undead lurking in the graveyard, to throw off the hunt).

But boys will continue to court Megan, who just keeps looking better and better, and teenage corpses will be found shriveled and sucked of life.

Assuming players move on or don't intervene, Megan will soon piece together that the dying boys are the same ones she's meeting; her foggy dreams and nightmare snatches are her own fragmented memories, and she'll confront her father to learn the truth - the classic, "Father, am I a monster?" scene.  Where does it go from there? My default position would be that the release of suppressed memories, when she learns the truth, merges her two personalities, and the Alu-demon form becomes the dominant persona going forward.  After slaying her weak father, she goes off in search of Mom's side of the family.  Of course, other DM's might take a more sympathetic approach.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locale:  a small hamlet
NPCs:  the Reeve, distraught peasants, Old Man White, beautiful Megan
Monsters:  Megan, the Alu-Demon
Artifacts: Old Man White's demon control infusion


Other Blogs Posting September Short Adventures:
Here's a handy link to all the OSR blogs taking part in the challenge - 25 adventures in September:

Adventure 12 - The Night Visitor

Continuing the September of Short Adventures...

PLACEMENT
The churches in the city are under attack; priests are found dead in their quarters.  Similar deaths happened to a number of smaller churches and parishes out in the countryside.  Can the characters help unravel the mystery?

SETTING THE SCENE
There are a number of ways player characters could learn about the dying priests; PC clerics get informed by their order, and are asked to investigate; injured characters returning from a delve learn about the shortage of healing and clerical magic; characters with no ties to the church might be approached due to their reputation as professional adventurers.

The city is the seat of a bishopric, with a number of smaller churches around the city led by priests and acolytes.  Assume there's a bishop, canon or curate, 6+ priests, and 1-2 dozen acolytes.  At the time of the adventure, the bishop, a priest, and one of the acolytes has been found dead.  Word has been sent to a larger church city - the seat of the archbishop - but it will be weeks before help arrives.

WHAT'S GOING ON
The church is militant in it's crusade against evil and the influence of outsiders; what's to say the forces of darkness don't launch their own campaigns to strike back?

In a setting like Gothic Greyhawk, there's a powerful monotheistic church (the Church of the Eternal Spirit, also called the Blinding Light) that reinforces a European Medieval vibe, and witches are cast in the Medieval stereotype - servants of evil that gain spells from pacts with infernal entities.

A powerful witch has gained control of a demon's amulet, allowing her to summon and control a succubus.  She's launched her own one-person crusade against the church, and has wiped out numerous smaller churches in the surrounding towns and villages before coming to the city.

The witch's strategy is straightforward; a scrying mirror is used to spy on clergy and gain knowledge of a target's movements and habits.  The succubus is able to use clairaudience and teleport without error to bypass all manner of physical security and enter the most secret chambers.  In the darkness, the thing uses its shape change and ESP to assume the most alluring guise imaginable before slipping out of the darkness, augmenting its overwhelming beauty with charm and suggestion to quickly disarm any resistance, allowing the succubus to feast.  After returning to the witch's lair, the creature is returned to its magical circle prison until the witch has picked another target.

RESOLUTIONS
The theme here is information scarcity: it's unclear how the priests are dying and what is doing the attacking; there are dozens of targets to protect, and its also unclear who will be targeted next.  There might be some internal politics as well and general secretiveness of the clergy ala The Name of the Rose that might make information gathering difficult at first; these attacks could lead to a loss of faith and confidence in the congregations, and it could prove embarrassing when  it's learned that a succubus is behind the attacks (even if the seductive demon is achieving its ends through magic).

Once they have the trust of the key members in the local hierarchy, give the players full access to the accumulated spells of the surviving church clergy so they have access to magic that will help gather facts - things like Augury, Speak with the Dead, etc - assuming the PC's don't have it themselves.  What kind of precautions might prove effective to stop the attacks?  The witch has also compromised a servant or worker that has access to the churches, and this way she's getting personal effects, clippings of hair, and other trappings that are allowing her to scry the individual clergy - that might be another lead.  Meanwhile, the deaths continue to pile up, creating a sense of time pressure.  If the witch learns about the investigation through her cat's paw, maybe the succubus is turned loose on one of the characters.

This would be a fun problem solving adventure - the group first needs to decipher what's happening, then identify a demon is at involved, then try to find the witch's lair in the city and confront her.

If the succubus is destroyed in combat, the amulet crumbles away; if the amulet is somehow forced from the witch's grasp during a confrontation, the succubus will immediately teleport to the witch, and carry her off to the Abyss, for an eternity as a demon's pet.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locale:  The city, various refectories and churches
NPCs:  Various clergy
Monsters:  A witch, a succubus
Artifacts: the demon's amulet, the scrying mirror


Other Blogs Posting September Short Adventures:
Here's a handy link to all the OSR blogs taking part in the challenge - 25 adventures in September:

Adventure 11 - The Gauntlet

Continuing the series of (horror themed) September short adventures-

PLACEMENT
The adventure starts in the big city; the characters are requested to meet the constable in the dungeon.  This adventure hook assumes the characters are on good terms with the local law and might be hired for a delicate mission.

SETTING THE SCENE
In a dank cell, the constable is in the midst of a rough interrogation.  The guards escorted the characters into the dungeon past a side room where a beautiful woman, apparently still overcoming a difficult ordeal, is being given a hot drink by one of the guards.

The characters soon learn that the woman was kidnapped by a member of one of the local guilds (assassins or thieves, depending on campaign) and rescued by the watch before she was taken out of the city.  Apparently she was the latest in a series of kidnap victims.

From the prisoner, the constable learns how the local guild is being paid well by an eccentric patron to deliver women to him, at dungeon entrance just outside of town.

WHAT'S GOING ON?
There's a mad cleric or wizard in the center of a (hidden) gruesome trap-filled dungeon just outside of town, with a hapless maiden that needs to be rescued ("She'll only be alive another day", says the half-beaten prisoner in the constable's dungeon.  "He always kills them on Saturdays…"). There's a theme of resource pressure - limited time to clear the gauntlet before the killer ritually murders his next victim.

Holy jumping jumble of genres, batman!  A serial killer, in a D&D adventure?

Why yes! Here's a chance to mush together a bunch of traps and puzzles, put a heckling spell caster / mastermind at the end of the gauntlet, like a spider in the center of a web, and cut the player's loose.

For my part, I'd make the serial killer some demented whacko who considers himself the "flesh artist" - a worshipper of some obscure demon with a corrupted mind and twisted morals.  He's been paying the local guild well to deliver street waifs and urchins as art supplies, but the thieves' guild was sloppy and got caught.  The dungeon could borrow all sorts of dilemma-based death traps like the shticks in the Saw movies, and perhaps the caster has some kind of way to scry and heckle via magic mouths like Jigsaw, keeping the resource pressure on.  Previous victims of the traps, as well as his pieces of "art", litter the maze.  Perhaps his scrying lets him escape ahead of the characters, ensuring he's still alive for "the sequel".

RESOLUTIONS
The constable is in a panic; the last woman kidnapped was the wife of a merchant, and there's a sizeable reward for her return.  She might still be alive!  From the half-beaten thief, the constable gets the notion that the mad killer's would be beyond the skills of the constabulary.  Would the characters take the job, knowing a fat reward awaited them if the woman is still alive?

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locale:  the city, the jail, and your favorite trap-filled dungeon level
NPCs:  the mad killer, the constable, the rescued woman, and the victim
Monsters:  incidental
Artifacts: na

Adventure 10 - A Ghost Story

Continuing the September of Short Adventures

A Ghost Story
PLACEMENT
A border march where the hill folk are in rebellion.  After many years of peace, the aging lord of the realm needs to go on campaign again to pacify the border march.  The army returns to the scene of a decades old crime.

SETTING THE SCENE
The hill folk are always in rebellion; it's a theme that echoes through history; the civilized power of the lowlands has trouble exerting power over the independent folk that live in the wild hills.   It could be Charlemagne and the Saxons, the Picts and the Romans, the Welsh and the English… even Afghanistan and the US in the modern day.

The characters have the opportunity to go on the campaign.  If they're lower or mid-levels, perhaps they have the opportunity to hire on as irregulars and scouts; someone needs to head into the hills, find enemy encampments so the army can follow through with infantry.  Higher level characters might be champions or peers of the realm.

The aging lord has always avoided the border march; it was here, twenty years ago, where his young wife was murdered by the hill folk when she joined him on campaign.  A monument was built for her memory; the army camps in a river glade not far from the Queen's Rock (or whatever you call the monument in your game).

Unfortunately, the sprawling bivouac is visited by a nocturnal haunt, a spirit that steals into the camp at night and slays a soldier each evening; the bodies are found in the morning, contorted grimaces of fear on their face.  The camp is unsettled by the growing stories of "The Grey Lady".

WHAT'S GOING ON
20 years ago, the lord's wife was murdered, but it wasn't the hill folk.  The lord's own trusted advisor murdered the wife when he was escorting her to the front.  She rebuffed his advances and threatened to reveal his disloyalty to her husband; in a rage, her murdered her and dumped her body in the woods.  The advisor faked a hill folk attack and concocted a story of rape and abduction.  The hill folk were crushed, and the lord eventually erected a monument to his lost wife.

Where her body was planted in a shallow grave, a curse took root in the forest, and the blighted grove still stands a few miles from the camp, a cold and evil place.  The proximity of the betrayer has drawn the ghost forth, and each night it enters the camp, seeking out the lord's adviser and destroying any it encounters.
That's the situation; themes implicit here are standard ghost story fare:  old crimes from the past seeing the light of day once again; we can't change the past and no crime should go unpunished.  Will the group learn the story of the ghost and see that justice, delayed 20 years, is delivered?  To give the scenario a "Japanese horror" twist, the ghost might be implacable; delivering justice only releases its fetter to the grove, and now the ghost wanders the wider land, continuing to exact revenge on any it encounters.

RESOLUTIONS
While the characters are crossing the river into the wild hills scouting for hill folk war camps each day, fear escalates in the camp.  Eventually, the group might get involved into trying to intercept the nightly visitor.
It's also likely the group will learn the tragic story of the young queen and get a glimpse into the lord's tragic past - the story behind the monument is common knowledge.  It's a chance for foreshadowing, and perhaps revealing the advisor's discomfort and evasion around any mention of the dead queen.

This is a fluid scenario and I could see leaving it open ended to account for player actions - common spells might get to the root of the problem, find lost facts, ESP can read minds and hidden intentions, Detect Lie, and similar magics, until enough of the story is pieced together for a dramatic confrontation.

In the meantime, the prospects of a nightly visit from the ghost is quite terrible, particularly with the ghost's horrible gaze (which I'd consider supplementing with a death gaze attack similar to a hag or bodak).

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locale:  the border march, the queen's rock, the cursed grove
NPCs:  the lord, the wicked advisor
Monsters:  ghost of the queen - The Grey Lady
Artifacts:  the murder weapon - a dagger, lost in the river?

OTHER PLACES POSTING SHORT ADVENTURES:
Here's a handy link to all the OSR blogs taking part in the challenge - 25 adventures in September:

Adventure 9 - To Slay A God

Continuing the September series of short adventures

Horror Adventure 9 - To Slay A God

PLACEMENT
The borderlands domain of a high level fighter, the jaded lord.

SETTING THE SCENE
The jaded lord has declared an upcoming holiday and a grand feast at the castle.  Hundreds are invited to the feast, and the inner bailey will be opened for a grand ceremony after dinner.

The characters could be passing through, delivering valuable goods, retainers of the jaded lord, or tipped off by a patron to do an investigation.  All is not as it seems in the borderland's domain.  Exotic foreigners from the desert lands have traveled at the lord's expense, bearing many sealed boxes, crates of arcane scrolls, and similar suspicious accoutrements.  They are seen around town gathering supplies, and seem to be involved in secretive preparations around the upcoming holiday.

A dangerous reputation precedes the foreigners.  Rumors of an incident from the sea port follows them, where a man that crossed the strangers was cursed by the evil eye and stricken dead on the spot.  Fears of black magic abound.

WHAT'S GOING ON
The jaded lord is a self-made ruler; he started as an adventurer, became a mercenary captain, and eventually gained enough wealth and fame to earn a dominion.  His trophy hall is littered with mementos of the fearsome creatures he's fought and the treasure's he's recovered.  In younger days, his campaigns took him to distant desert lands to fight for gold and god, and there he learned of the desert sorcerers and their summoning techniques.  He returned with a storied artifact called the Crown of Solomon, whispered about in hushed tales where it was used to summon angels and djinn and used to wrest powerful boons from them by a king of old.  After many years, he now seeks to use the crown himself.

At great expense he has brought scribes, ritualists, and ancient texts back from the desert lands, to prepare for the calling forth of a great power.  Perhaps he hopes to wrest the secrets of immortality from a fiery angel; perhaps he wishes to prove he can slay a god.  Pick a motivation appropriate for your campaign.  The holiday and feast are ruses to get enough people together at one place, focused on the great ritual.
Unfortunately, the ritualists are all members of a secret cult of desert fire worshippers; they plan to betray the jaded lord.  (It makes me chuckle to call the cultists Servants of the Secret Fire).

Note:  Once the stage is set, and the players have a little bit of information about the ritualists and their bad reputation, leave it up to the players decide if they wish to investigate and snoop further, or do something else.  Treat this like an event-based scenario where the holiday events are going to happen as planned, unless interrupted.  Lots of fantasy fiction involves the protagonists stopping the cultists from summoning the eldritch horror in the nick of time; it's perfectly fine if the characters choose not to intervene, and then have to run away or get stomped by said eldritch horror when it "goes all Godzilla" on the castle and town.  Themes implicit here include meddling with powers beyond the ken of men, the chance for a big monster stomping around and smashing things, and the xenophobia often seen in early pulp fantasy.

INVESTIGATION
If the players choose to investigate the jaded lord and are able to use stealth and other techniques to snoop around the castle, they'll come across implements of arcane ritual, discover the secretive foreigners pouring over astrological star charts, and even find pens of animals set aside for ritual sacrifice.  This is more than a simple feast.  The crown itself will always be heavily guarded, but it's certainly possible that determined characters could steal it.

For the feast night, fires are set around the castle, bonfires on the towers, torches on the battlements, and a central fire pit in the middle of the bailey.  The gathering crowd has been given rhythm sticks and instructions on creating a beat.  As the din in the courtyard builds, the lord appears on the balcony, wearing the crown;  he's accompanied by his shroud-clad ritualists from the distant desert lands.

RESOLUTIONS
If the ritual goes off as planned, a comet of flame streaks downward from the cold depths of space and lands in the bonfire in a shower of sparks, sending hot coals into the crowd and generating screams of panic as people get seared.  A soaring pillar of flame rises up from the bonfire, towering above the balcony of the keep.  The jaded lord proudly steps forward to command the thing he calls "the great angel of fire".  He's the first one immolated.  After the crown falls off his charred head, the fiery space devil starts lashing out and burning the cultists and the other people congregated in the courtyard.

If the characters are simple attendees at the holiday, hopefully they're smart enough to flee for their lives, and the challenge is about putting enough ground or fire proof barriers between themselves and the monster as the gargantuan horror starts stomping the settlement.  The angel of fire is an alien thing from the skies; after roasting everyone in the castle, it will step over the walls and start blasting the village.  It will then start some wildfires in the surrounding area before streaking back to the cold depths of space - it can only be here while its home star moves across the night sky.

For the angel of fire's stats, the simple approach is to use something like a titanic 48HD fire elemental, and give it a flame strike ability (as the spell) to shoot gouts of flame at range.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locale:  domain of the jaded lord
NPCs:  the jaded lord, a group of fire cultists from the desert lands
Monsters:   the angel of fire (alien horror)
Items:  crown of solomon, a new spell - the evil eye

OTHER OSR BLOGS:
Here's a handy link to all the OSR blogs taking part in the challenge - 25 adventures in September:

Adventure 8 - As the Worm Turns

Continuing the series of September short adventures.

Horror Adventure 8 - As the Worm Turns
How many purple worms does it take to destroy a kingdom?

PLACEMENT
Place this adventure in a settled area with a major city and town, several outlying villages, and a borderlands or march.  Outlying settlements in the kingdom are being devastated in the night; buildings are destroyed, trees knocked down, and the ground is torn up.  No one has survived the attacks yet.

SETTING THE SCENE
Rumors of the destroyed settlements begin to trickle into the interior of the kingdom.  Engagement with this adventure depends on the level of the characters.  For higher level characters, this might be their own domain, or they might be considered peers or champions of the realm.  Lower level characters might respond to rewards or requests for information; they could be trackers themselves or accompany scouts and trackers into the wilds as escorts.

As the characters leave the civilized interior, one of their first destinations is a borderlands village that will act as a base.  A half day before reaching the village, refugees are met on the road, fleeing more destruction - the borderlands village has been destroyed as well.  "It happened last night", the refugees will explain.  "They were giant, they came from beneath the ground…"    They won't have a detailed description, but had the impression of large things, bursting out of the ground, smashing through the village with speed and power, before disappearing again beneath the ground.

After the latest attacks, there will be enough data points to plot the attacks on the map and see that they are following a spiral pattern towards the center of the kingdom; if the attacks aren't stopped, the largest town or city will be right in the path of the rampage!

WHAT'S GOING ON
Not far from the main settlement is an isolated wizard's tower.  Concerned primarily with research and magical experimentation, the wizard has built a deep shaft in the dungeons below the tower.  The shaft leads all the way to the underdark, where he meets merchants and peddlers from some of the deep dwelling races and gains access to rare components.  Recently, he purchased a sack of spherical rocks from a shady group of goblin scavengers.  He eagerly returned the spheres to his lab for study, to identify them and see what value could be wrested from these underworld oddities.

The spheres are purple worm eggs, and now a large pod of purple worms are ravaging their way across the kingdom tracking down the stolen eggs.  There should be enough worms to make them a threat to even a high level party - like a dozen purple worms.

The goblins had stumbled upon one of the rare nesting grounds of the underworld's purple worms and escaped with a clutch of eggs.  The worms breed infrequently and often leave the eggs in remote places; they have an innate ability to track the eggs across great distances.

The theme of this adventure is resource pressure, and the resource is time.  Once the group realizes there is a pattern to the mysterious attacks, there is only a short amount of time to develop a solution before the underground monsters reach the main settlement, and the group is probably a fair distance away.  The DM will have to calibrate the velocity of the worms and the remaining time based on distances on the map.

A secondary theme is information scarcity.  At first, secondary reports of destroyed settlements are heard.  Next, they hear the story of a survivor, but still no definitive monster description.  Ideally, the players would get into position to see a fleeting glimpse of one of the monsters from a distance, and the next encounter would be at one of the settlements where the PCs might be attacked directly.  (And then hopefully they'd be smart enough to run).  Slowly reducing the narrative distance is a good literary technique that translates well to RPGs in just about any type of horror scenario.

RESOLUTIONS
Once the problem is identified, the solution is open-ended.  It could involve evacuating as many people as possible from out of the path of destruction path before the main settlement is destroyed, or mobilizing the army and militia.  It could involve using auguries and divination to gather information about the attacks and possibly identifying the reason behind the attacks.  It seems unlikely the characters would be able to figure out the connection with the eggs and the wizard in time to put the eggs somewhere that would avoid the destruction, but you never know - players are resourceful and magic is powerful.  If they're not stopped earlier, the worms will continue until they destroy the wizard's dungeons and tower, although the wizard himself should easily get to a safe distance.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locales:  the kingdom
NPCs:  varies
Monsters:  a dozen purple worms
Key Item: a sack of purple worm eggs

MORE SEPTEMBER ADVENTURES:
Here's a handy link to all the OSR blogs taking part in the challenge - 25 adventures in September:

Adventure 7 - Seed of Evil

Continuing my series of September short adventures.


Horror Adventure 7 - Seed of Evil

PLACEMENT
A borderlands trade town on the edge of the wilds.

SETTING THE SCENE
Strange things are happening in the trade town, a subtle contamination and poisoning.  After spending some time back in town, there are some things the characters will notice:  fruits and vegetable don't taste quite right; they're overripe and a bit unnatural.  The water tastes bitter, as is milk and beer.  Vermin appear unusual - rats are too large, insects are oddly shaped and also oversized.

No one leaves the trade town.  After a night's sleep, this effect applies to players characters as well; if they decide to head out, they need to attempt Saves vs Spells.  Otherwise,  shortly after reaching the gate, they find themselves back in a common area - their tavern, the market.  Time has slipped, and they have no memory of turning back.  As long as sufficient characters make their saves to drag the others out, they can leave.

Some of the buildings and streets glow faintly at night as if the stone and wood is infected.  If the characters begin to search the town for the source of these unusual events, they begin to discover the shriveled corpses of small animals; cottages and houses that seemed sturdier a few days ago appear crumbling; the horror escalates if they enter any of these structures and discover shriveling humans, confined to beds and chairs and slowly dying in place.

Mention a few times the unmoving figure of a wilderness traveler by a courtyard fountain; earlier in the adventure he blended in with the activity in the square and others sitting near the fountain, but as fewer people are out and about during the passing days, his unmoving presence becomes more obvious.

WHAT'S GOING ON
Months back, a meteor crashed in the deep forest.  The sage in the trade town hired explorers to retrieve the object for him and return it to his tower.

The meteor had splintered, and one of the small sections remained in the forest; it sucked the life out a section of the forest, creating a permanent blight a hundred feet across.  The druids learned that most of the meteorite was taken back to the human town.  They sent an agent of the woods to warn the humans, but it was already too late.

The idea behind this story is explicitly based on The Colour Out of Space, an HP Lovecraft story.  One interpretation of The Colour shows up in Goblinoid's Realms of Crawling Chaos; one facet of the entity omitted in the Goblinoid stats is the ever-increasing malaise and apathy the Colour generates, preventing victims from leaving the area until they slip into death.  I'd add that characteristic to the description, and be fine using the Goblinoid write-up.  Brought into a settlement, an entity like the Colour is deadly, draining life from everything around.

RESOLUTIONS
If the characters discover the figure sitting by the fountain, they'll learn that he's a druid a sent by the council of the woods to warn the settlement about the dangers posed by the meteorite.  He's unable to go on, but the characters will know  the sage's small tower is the next stop.  Alternatively, their own searches would have identified that the eerie nighttime luminescence is strongest near the sage's tower, or just choose the tower as a good place to kick in a door.

Inside, the sage was the first victim; the entire laboratory is bathed in a sickening purplish light, and when the sage stands to greet the characters, he literally crumbles before their eyes.  The meteor has crumbled as well,  and the entity is all around, dispersed as an intangible, gaseous light.

In the literature, the Colour Out of Space is an implacable entity that drops from the stars, sucks the life out of an area, and returns to the stars (perhaps that's part of it's lifecycle - none can say).  The Colour is intangible energy, so there's no apparent way to drive it off early, and  containment is not an option - but in a world with magic and creative spell options, clever players will come up with something.  Otherwise, the explicit theme of a Colour Out of Space style story is bleak inevitability.  Once the characters discover the source of the malaise in the trade town, the DM might consider bonuses on their saving throws to leave.  Otherwise, the town can't be saved; the crumbling ruins of the town will be a lifeless blight hereafter.

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locale:  a borderlands village or town
NPCs:  the druid
Monsters:  The Colour Out of Space
Artifacts: none

OTHER OSR BLOGS:
Here's a handy link to all the OSR blogs taking part in the September OSR challenge - 25 adventures in September:

Adventure 6 - The Ghoul Gate

Continuing the series of September Short Adventures

Horror Adventure 6 - The Ghoul Gate
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
-Hamlet

PLACEMENT
A town with a very large, very old graveyard.  The son of a cook skips his chores to spend time in the graveyard.

SETTING THE SCENE
The meal is ruined!  (What meal?)  It doesn't matter - it could happen any time the players are with a patron or some fellow of standing who has a reason to feast the characters or celebrate with them.  The host is terribly upset; the host's servant - the cook - is furious and apologetic; he sent his son out for some key ingredients, and he's hours late.  That boy will have the beating of a lifetime, the cook swears.  In the meantime, the boy had a delicious stew in the back he offers instead.

The boy has been spending more and more time wandering the vast, ruined graveyard in the town, forgetting his chores.  Is that where he gets his radical ideas of freedom and equal rights, wonders the host?  Perhaps he meets a secret mentor there - a demagogue of low character?  The host wonders if the characters would be interested in surreptitiously following the lad - perhaps various wagers are offered on what they'll find?

WHAT'S GOING ON?
Tired of an abusive father, despairing of the peasant's lot in life and a dead-end future, the boy had taken to wandering the cemetery, ruminating on mortality.    On one of these nocturnal wanderings, he met a ghoul; something in the boy's despair convinced the creature to bring him to the other side.  The ghouls have an unusually egalitarian view of the world, and ghoul philosophy has been revelation.  Now, they are close to finishing the ghoul transformation process.

Ghouls are monstrous humanoids from "Elsewhere" that steal into cemeteries in the mortal world via "Ghoul  Gates" to devour corpses.  Through arcane rituals they can bestow the ghoul transformation on humans.  (More on Lovecraft ghouls can be found in Realms of Crawling Chaos, and this story borrows additional ideas from Neil Gaiman).

The boy sneaks into the graveyard when he can, opening the ghoul gate with a few magic phrases.  Depending how closely they follow and their success at stealth, a party might catch sight of him disappearing into a crumbling mausoleum, there's a brief flash of light as the gate opens, and then he's through.

RESOLUTIONS
How things shake out is open-ended and needs to depend on the player choices.  Will the characters cross into the other world and confront the ghoul and the boy, attacking the monster on sight?  Would they let the boy complete the transformation and keep it secret?  Is a future as a serf, and life with an abusive father, worse than becoming a "monster"?

The ghoul gate leads deep in the otherworld, eventually descending to Ghulheim, the city of the ghouls.
For a malicious twist, part of the ghoul transformation ritual could involve eating the delicious secret stew the characters were served.  Blech.  (Gauge your group's sense of disgust).

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Locales:  A patron's house, a sprawling graveyard
NPCs:  A patron, his cook, the boy
Monsters:  A philosophical ghoul
Artifacts:  the ghoul gate

OTHER OSR BLOGS:
Here's a handy link to all the OSR blogs taking part in the challenge - 25 adventures in September:

Adventure 5 - You Can't Go Home Again

Continuing the series of September Short Adventures.

Horror Adventure 5 - You Can't Go Home Again
PLACEMENT
The south - the deep south, the Gothic south.  An aging knight returning home after the crusades.

SETTING THE SCENE
After a long career abroad, fighting religious wars on behalf of the holy Church, an aging knight is returning home to reclaim his birthright.  He lost contact with his family a half decade ago when his father passed, but was unable to come home and manage the estate; his wicked brother claimed the knight's birthright, and any letter the knight has sent since then has gone unanswered.  Expecting trouble from his brother, the knights pays well for tough adventurers as bodyguards to accompany him home.

The journey south is a journey back in time.  As the weather gets hotter and moister, the villages and settlements seem become more timeworn and in disrepair.  Occasionally they'll pass a distant castle or fort, some of the walls tumbling or overgrown.  If the knight were to impose on their hospitality, the group would meet lords and ladies hanging on to faded glory.

The area near the knight's village is overgrown and decayed; marsh and swamp have reclaimed the farms and cottages furthest from the village center.  One of the best kept buildings is the old parish church; the venerable priest still fondly remembers when the knight went off to squire for one of the northern lords, and the two share a friendly reminiscence.

The priest will warn the knight about going back.  After the brother claimed the estate, he brought in more foreign people - strange native folks from the colonies.  The family was always arguing about the brother's pagan wife.  Then there was the night of the storm, when the main house was struck by the lightning, and burned to the ground, killing everyone.  Folks say the ruins are haunted, and there have been many disappearances near the village since then; folks with means have been moving out, and the village is quickly dying.

WHAT'S GOING ON
The knight's younger brother traveled overseas in his career as a slaver and arms merchant, and discovered esoteric lore in the jungle colonies.  He married a primitive sorceress, and returned home to dominate the family with her powers.  The strain was too much for the father, and the entire family was thrown into turmoil as the brother brought more of his wife's people to the estate.  Tragedy struck when the brother and his native followers forced the entire family to perform a ritual honoring his wife's snake god; the ritual ended with the destruction of the mansion, and a worse fate for the family.

RESOLUTIONS
The aging knight knew his younger brother abandoned the merchant career after marrying a foreign woman, and brought strife to the family back with him.  Despite his grief, he'll insist on seeing the grounds for himself.
The estate grounds are crawling with snakes, and the group will be attacked by a threatening group of poisonous snakes on their way to the ruins of the house (I'd use LL Pit Vipers).

There were extensive wine cellars beneath the mansion and a family vault; the knight insists on seeing what treasures remain of his family.  In the cellars, the group is attacked by more vipers, and a pair of aberrant savage snake-men hybrids, a man and a woman (something like AD&D's Yuan-Ti).

The scavenged remains of the family treasure is in the vault, along with fragments of the brother's spell books, notes and diary.  They'll learn sordid details of half-glimpsed rites and primeval snake gods from overseas.  The characters and knight will be able to piece together the curse of the snake-god that transformed the household into monstrous vipers - and learn the final truth - the snakes the group has been slaying are the remains of the family!  (Betcha saw that one coming...)

ASSEMBLY REQUIRED*
Locations:  an overland journey south, the knight's village, the ruined estate
NPCS: the venerable priest, the knight
Monsters: lots of snakes, a pair of degenerate snake-people
Artifacts: fragments of spell books, remains of snake idols

*I'm going to go back and add this section to adventures 1-3, it'll help me keep track of things I need to stat out later for use at the table.

BLOG HOP CODE:
Here's a handy link to all the OSR blogs taking part in the challenge:

Adventure 4 - The Candy Lady

Continuing the September of Short Adventures OSR challenge...

Horror Adventure 4 - The Candy Lady

PLACEMENT
The poorer sections of the big city.

SETTING THE SCENE
Children go missing in the city all the time; amongst the youthful street urchins of the city, there's a persistent legend about a beautiful lady that walks on the air, doling out sweet treats to the urban poor; and sometimes, after a nighttime visit from the Candy Lady, the children are gone.

There are a number of ways to introduce this short adventure when the party is in the city; perhaps the child of a patron, friend or relative claims to have been visited by the legendary Candy Lady, and the patron asks the group to look into the truth of such childish matters, just to set the child straight.  Alternatively, when the group arrives at their favorite inn, a homeless woman with a young waif is outside, begging for help getting a room.  "My little one saw the Candy Lady two times, and if she sees her again, she'll be lost forever.  Please sirs, we just need help staying in the inn common room for the night, a few silvers, just to get off the street for one night.  Please."

WHAT'S GOING ON
The Candy Lady is a dark fairy, the urban equivalent of a river fairy or wood-dwelling enchantress; once benevolent, her home was destroyed by the growth of the city and she's transformed over time into something... different.  Three times per month, on the darkest nights, she glides through the city streets, invisible to normal eyes, appearing before a lone child as a beautiful madam offering a tasty treat.  Children that taste the fairy's candy thrice are doomed to leave with her, forever, becoming her thrall in her otherworldly grotto.  Over the years, she's collected many, many children.

RESOLUTIONS
The group might consider guarding the child at night, performing a vigil.  The Candy Lady can be driven off with magic, the sound of church bells, or turned by a cleric.  But first, those keeping vigil must resist the magical sleep her presence induces in adults.  Sleeping on holy ground is an excellent defense.  It's quite possible modern gamers won't remember fairy aversions to churches; don't remind them.

Research and investigation could involve speaking to old timers in the poorest neighborhood, and learning the courtyards and street where the Candy Lady is rumored to be seen most frequently, along with details of hauntings, bad luck, and a malign presence.  A historian or sage might relate the history of the city, and be able to share that the nearby stream, diverted to expand the city's poorer areas, was rumored to be haunted by a benevolent river spirit back in "olden times".

The dried well in the poor neighborhood gives access the fairy's grotto; in a lightless cave she sits like a bloated spider (literally - in the fairy realm, sans glamour, the Candy Lady appears like a bloated spider with a woman's emaciated torso), surrounded by a dozen of her most recent victims.  Treat these pale, eyeless, transformed children as Larvae or Manes, or perhaps Dark Creepers.  When the lady tires of them, she eats them, and the grotto is littered with small bones.  The grotto is in the fairy otherworld, and it's possible there are additional exits into the realm of Fairy from the grotto.

THE CANDY LADY
In the mortal realm, the Candy Lady appears as a beautiful, black clad lady; she is invisible at will, can pass insubstantial as a ghost over the ground, and causes Sleep in a radius around her (allows a Save vs Spells).  She'll suffer from the standard fairy vulnerabilities - magic, cold iron, holy ground.

In her grotto, she's corporeal and can be slain; I might stat her like a Drider.  (Actually, when all these short adventures are done, I may take more time and actually stat up all the monsters and NPCs and turn the adventures into a little booklet - thinking about it, at least).

Transformed children can't be saved, barring a Wish.

ASSEMBLY REQUIRED:
Locales:  The city, the fairy grotto
NPCs:  A patron and child (or) a beggar and waif
Monsters:  The Candy Lady
Artifacts:  none

Adventure 3 - The Prison

Continuing the series of 25 short horror-themed D&D adventures in September...

Adventure 3 - The Prison

PLACEMENT
Any forsaken wilderness; the traveling party discovers the lair of a hermit.

SETTING THE SCENE
The area is littered with carved religious icons and symbols built of local materials; wood, driftwood, soft pieces of stone.  When he becomes aware of the travelers, the hermit comes to the mouth of the cave, yells barely coherent warnings to stay away, and throws a few rocks at the characters.  His actions are interrupted by seizures and he heads back into the cave.

WHAT'S GOING ON?
Many years ago, the hermit was a devout priest attending an exorcism with an experienced bishop.  The exorcism failed, the bishop died during the attempt, and the foul spirit entered the priest.   The experience leading up to the exorcism strengthened his faith and he discovered he was able to keep the demon imprisoned in his flesh.  He fled civilization for the wilds and chose a hermit's life; he would die in the wilds and his resting place would become the demon's prison.  The cave is filled with etchings of magic circles and warding symbols that would keep the demon imprisoned after he passes; there are tethers he dons at night to keep his sleeping form from wandering away when he can't suppress the demon.

RESOLUTIONS
If the group approaches the cave, they might get close enough for the demon to attempt to possess a party member, especially while the priest is agitated and his self-control is lower.  If successful, the demon is intelligent enough to lay low and leave the character "in control".  The priest, long attuned to the demon's presence, will go berserk if it escapes him, and attack the characters with a gnarled staff, repeating over and over again that they can never leave.

If the party kills the priest, they can piece his back-story together from shreds of a diary and learn what they've done.

The demon will attempt to hop from character to character to sow confusion; it can be located with Detect Evil, and other bizarre effects may surround the character currently possessed - more buzzing flies than usual, curdles milk, that kind of thing.  Splashed holy water and Bless spells will trigger reactions in the unwitting host; it can be trapped with Protection from Evil, removed with Exorcism, destroyed with Dispel Evil.

If the group returns to civilization, the demon will wait for an opportune time to seize control of the possessed character and escape into the world;  by the time the others catch up, it's likely the possessed character has already caused quite a bit of damage, and the demon has fled elsewhere.

THE DEMON
I wrote a previous post on using traditional "unclean spirits of the wilderness" as demons in D&D, providing game stats and interaction with certain clerical spells, you can see it here:  Unclean Spirits of the Wilderness.

ASSEMBLY REQUIRED:
Locales:  A forsaken wilderness, the hermit's cave
NPCs:  The pious hermit
Monsters:  The Demon
Artifacts:  none