Actual Play - Candlewick Mysteries

Over the last 6 months or so, I've been playing on-and-off in a campaign using Candlekeep Mysteries, run by Jack Shear from Tales of the Grotesque & Dungeonesque. I made it to more sessions than I missed, though, and it was satisfying to have (what was, for me) a long-term campaign come to a conclusion recently.

 

Candlekeep Mysteries by Clint Cearley

 
The adventures in Candlekeep aren't really intended to be run as a single, linear campaign, I don't think. I believe the idea is that they're meant to stand alone, and that you can drop them in to other ongoing campaigns to add a bit of variety. They all involve books in some way, and I think most of them have a connection to Candlekeep Library set somewhere or other in the Forgotten Realms. Jack reskinned this to be Creedhall University Library, in his Krevborna setting.

I managed to play in 13 of the 17 adventures (although I missed the back half of one of them) and had an especially good run at the end. I played a paladin - a first for me! - and generally enjoyed getting to assist the other characters with healing and my various auras, and getting to smite my enemies with the power of divine magic.

Jack kept a running series of actual play posts on his blog, and a parallel series of reviews of each adventure. You can find links to the whole of both series here, in the appropriately titled "We Played the Whole Thing". I've gone ahead and linked to the adventures I played in below:

The Joy of Extradimensional Spaces, part 1 and part 2

Mazworth's Mighty Digressions

The Book of the Raven

A Deep and Creeping Darkness, part 1 only

Lore of Lurue

Creedhall Dekonstruction!

Zikran's Zyphyrean Tome

The Curious Tale of Wisteria Vale

The Book of Inner Alchemy

The Canopic Being

The Scrivener's Tale

Alkazaar's Appendix

Xanthoria

Since Jack's already written a good narrative of each session, I'm not going to try to reconstruct all of them now. My paladin Elsabeth had a good run, becoming friends with another lady knight NPC, getting magic muscles from a magic painting and managing not to suffer any consequences for it, slaying an actual dragon, and saving the world like 2 or 3 times. But I did want to say a few words about what I thought about playing through the campaign.

Too Many Demiplanes - If I had one critique of Candlekeep Mysteries, it would be that too many of the adventures have the same set-up where a magic book transports you to another dimension, and specifically a mini-dimension created by the book's author. (And way too many of those involved a rather tedious guessing game to figure out how to open the portal!) I mean, I get it, it's already metaphorically like every book has a secret world inside it, and like reading transports you there. It's a pretty good metaphor to make literal. But there are too many of them. And I also get that Candlekeep isn't meant to be played straight through. But there are still too many of them. 

D&D is set in a magic-filled world, Forgotten Realms especially so - you don't need to travel to some wizard's pocket dimension just to set the adventure in a magical environment. The need is even less if the environment turns out to not be very magical anyway. It sometimes seemed like the only purpose the conceit of the demiplane served was to handwave travel time or to put up a wall around the playable area that the player character couldn't travel beyond. But if so, I would argue that's the wrong approach. Metafictional concerns like that don't need rules workarounds, they just need the GM and the players to agree on what kind of game they're running.

Complex Backstories, Linear Adventures - If I had a second critique about Candlekeep, it would be that the backstories that set up the adventures are often complex to the point of unintelligibility. The example that stands out in my mind is "The Book of the Raven". The PCs get a book delivered to them by some mysterious ravens. The book leads them to an old abandoned house with ravens flying overhead. The house is haunted, with some whole drama playing out among the ghosts as they continue to fail to resolve their unfinished business from life. Also it turns out the ravens are secretly human cultists who can magically transform into ravens. They were compelled to deliver the book to you by a different cult, who worship some kind of demon lord, and who then pull you into, wait for it, a pocket dimension, where a couple of demons try to kill you. There is, as far as I can tell, no connection between the ravens and the ghosts, the ghosts and the demons, or the demons and the ravens.

And while the backstories of Candlekeep can be convoluted, many of the adventures themselves are pretty linear. You arrive at the entrance to the adventure site, perhaps by being teleported there by the book, and then follow a straight-line path going from one encounter to the next until you reach the conclusion. That's certainly not true of all them, but more than you'd hope for in what's meant to be a flagship product. The worst offenders combine both - a terribly complicated backstory leading to a terribly simplified conveyor belt of encounters.

Options and Opportunities - That said, some of the adventures did provide some good chances for the players to make meaningful choices. While trapped in a grotesque fairy tale, we met some wolves and managed to befriend befriend them and enlist their help in fighting some terrible hunters by borrowing a page from Aesop. We met a dragon who might have killed us, but we offered to catalog his library, and he ended up offering us safe passage through his section of the dungeon. In a desert hideout, we met a giant worm, realized we'd followed the wrong clues and were in the wrong place, and left without needing to fight it. (Though sadly we did lose our camel to the worm's ferocious hunger!) Even the dragon Elsabeth fought and killed was avoidable - although this was another case of misunderstood clues, and having set it free from its ancient trap, we didn't feel good about just letting it seek unlimited vengeance on the world that had entombed it.

Because we played this campaign as an "adventure path", we didn't take advantage of any of the opportunities to follow up on details that could give rise to new side adventures. If I recall, replacing the missing books in "Mazworth's Worthy Digressions" could have occupied several more sessions of questing, if the book thieves hadn't turned out to have spare copies on hand in the back room. And the university tower that turns into a rocket ship absolutely cries out for a follow-up adventure where you get to use the damn thing and go into space. Jack repurposed the last adventure in the book and set it on one of Krevborna's moons, but if we'd just let it blast off with us inside, instead of preventing the space cultists from launching it, I don't know if there would have been any advice in the book about where it should take us. But that's not just an obvious follow-up, it's a necessary one - if you write an adventure where it's possible for the characters to steal a rocket ship, you'd better also make up a planet they can fly it to!

Better Boss Fights - Boss monster types in 5e get special "lair actions" and "legendary actions" that basically let them react by doing something every time they're attacked. I was really impressed with how well this worked out in practice. I recognize that the ideal military strategy to use against a big monster is to come at it with overwhelming numbers and the element of surprise, win the initiative, and kill the damn thing before it ever gets to strike a single blow. But while that's probably the ideal strategy, it's not necessarily the ideal gameplaying experience. With these special actions, the monster gets to alternate with the players; we get to see the monster doing cool, scary, monstrous things; our numerical advantage is somewhat balanced by the extra attacks; and the fight ends up feeling much more epic and narratively appropriate than it otherwise would. These are a 5e innovation I can absolutely get behind!

Tolkienian Science Fantasy - Replacing the PC Species

Recently, Trey of From the Sorcerer's Skull proposed a worldbuilding concept that interested me. How would it change the game to replace the species available to the player characters?

Trey first proposed imaging a fantasy setting without elves, dwarves, or hobbits, but featuring the species from TSR's Star Frontiers setting - the insect-like Vrusk, amoeba-like Dralasite, and flying-monkey-like Yazirians.

Later, he suggested a pulp scifi campaign using the same species, set entirely within the Solar System. (Trey has a bit of a cottage industry reimagining interstellar scifi as 1930s-style pulp confined to just our one star system. In addition to the Solar Frontiers I just mentioned, he's briefly written about Solar Wars, and he has a whole series of posts about Solar Trek.)

  

  

Elf Replacements - Vulcan, Talosian, Minbari

 

I want to build on his original suggestion though, and try some worldbuilding that stays relatively close to D&D's world, populated with Tolkien's heroes and monsters, just with, you know, different heroes, and different monsters.

We know that constraint encourages creativity, and I think that's especially true of worldbuilding. By limiting yourself to a small number of component parts, you can create a compact, thematic setting that's uniquely your own. Look at the 10 Monster Setting, or the 7 Class Setting, or the New New Crobuzon Challenge - they're all worldbuilding prompts that encourage you to select a small number of components and use them as the basis for a fantasy world.

 

If your handful of seedlings are particularly weird, so will be the garden that grows from them. The downside of that is that you can end up with a setting that's so weird that it doesn't really make sense to other people, and maybe not even to yourself. And obviously, actually running a campaign like this requires securing enough player buy-in beforehand, since their options for possible characters are radically restricted compared to a more open setting.

(Alternately, if you wanted, you could spend your Session Zero letting each player pick out their bespoke species and occupation combo, and then working together to imagine what sort of world it must be if those particular sorts of characters are a totally typical, run-of-the-mill adventuring team.)

  

  

Dwarf Replacements - Klingon, Narn, Rigelian

  

A variation on this kind of prompt would be to try to make your own "French Vanilla" setting. By that, I mean a setting that mostly draws on the tropes of vanilla fantasy, but is specific enough to be uniquely your own, the kind of thing Trey writes about here. And as both Trey and Jack from Tales of the Grotesque & Dungeonesque have argued, vanilla fantasy is, almost by definition, something that is understood by almost all potential players, something that essentially generates its own buy-in because its expectations are so clear. Done well, french vanilla might give you the best of both worlds - enough familiarity to form a solid basis for a shared fantasy gameworld, but enough difference to make something that's personal and interesting.

(I had some success with this in a campaign where I offered my players a handful of classes - human fighters, thieves, and wizards, plus "venturers" who are basically adventuring capitalists, or like, white collar thieves; elven druids and "courtiers", another variety of legit thieves; and dwarven roboticists and tomb robbers, who are, you know, basically more thieves. My players seemed content with the assortment, and I felt like I had established a strong sense of what sort of people go adventuring in that setting.)

What I've called the "Non-Core" is one source for a french vanilla setting. The non-core is made up the kinds of ideas that don't usually make it into the core rules of most fantasy games, but do usually appear in the first batch of expanded content. 

 

Imagine the sort of setting you end up with if you replace elves, dwarves, and hobbits with drow, duergar, and svirfneblin? Instantly you have a darker and spookier campaign setting, and one will make extensive use of the Underdark as a location. 

 

Or what if you used only the species that got added when OD&D expanded to become AD&D? What if you had only half-elves, half-orcs, and gnomes? Unlike the "good fey" of a straight Tolkienian game, this settings imply that humans deal with the Unseelie Court as often as the Seelie, and that full-blooded elves are, in their own way, as monstrous as orcs, and both are ineligible as player characters.

Restrict yourself to just "new school" creature types like tieflings, dragonborn, and goblins, and while Old School players might grumble about the loss of elves, the younger generation of Critical Role and Adventure Zone fans might not even notice the restriction - or if they did, they might be more upset by the loss of aasimar and genasi than of hobbits and dwarves.

In a variation on Trey's initial idea to use the species from Star Frontiers, you could also borrow the playable species from TSR's Alternity game - the psychic Fraal, cybernetic Mechalus, bat-like Sesheyan, fringed lizard Tsa, and bestial Weren. 

(One advantage of using totally alien species like these is that it lets you get away from an effect you sometimes see with the standard demi-humans, where each represents a different extreme, with humans like Goldilocks in the middle, defined by our flexibility and moderation. I suspect but I don't know, that Tolkien intended his elves to seem French and his dwarves German, one overly artistic and cultural and the other too industrial and militaristic compared to the "just right" modern middle-class British hobbits and medieval British humans. Though for all I know, old JRR could have been taking potshots at the Irish and Scottish, or maybe I'm imagining chauvinism where none exists. In other people's writing, I think I sometimes see elves, dwarves, and hobbits as representing feminine, masculine, and childlike qualities. This is fine if you want it, though it always contains some embedded assumptions about what humans are "supposed" to be like, which others might find objectionable. Scifi species potentially give you the chance to make humans just one species among several, rather than the center of Creation.)

  

  

Hobbit Replacements - Ferengi, Orion, Centauri

 

But suppose for now that we want to stick fairly closely to the Tolkienian archetypes, but use alien species to create a kind of science fantasy french vanilla. Still unquestionably D&D, still built on familiar tropes, but with enough a difference to make this campaign feel special. For each species being replaced, I have a suggestion from regular Star Trek, from Babylon 5, and from the original Star Trek pilot episode "The Cage".

 

Elf Replacements - The alternate elves I've chosen here all reflect a vision of elves as "human, but better". I could write a whole post - and who knows, maybe sometime I will - about how fundamentally weird it seems to me that there's a widespread belief reflected in science fiction, everything from pre-Golden Age pulp stories to Star Wars and The Matrix suggesting that human perfection, whether it comes on a species level through evolution or individually through enlightenment, looks like an emotionless ascetic in a monochrome outfit, living in a harsh environment, spending all their time meditating for mental discipline and learning to fight real good.

Vulcans - The Vulcan homeworld is a harsh desert with habitation concentrated around the few oases. Both as individuals and a society, they used to be very passionate and emotionally-driven. At some point in their past, they adopted en masse a philosophy of logic, asceticism, and emotional self-control. The lawful Vulcans have a counterpart in the chaotic Romulans - who are the same biological species, but a different society, one that split off from the other Vulcans before the adopted their new philosophy (or perhaps as a rejection of it?) Vulcans famously have the the abilities to perform a Nerve Pinch that can stun most humanoids, and a Mind Meld that allows them to share thoughts and memories.

Minbari - Minbari society is divided into three castes - warriors, workers, and religious. They value honor and tradition, formal rituals and baroque decorations. Their society is the oldest of the current age, and they have the closest relationship with the Vorlons, the last remaining elder civilization of the previous age. They grow buildings out of crystal, and their ships incorporate biotechnology. Their warriors are skilled martial artists, while their religious caste can use crystal-based technology to produce almost magical effects.

Talosians - The remaining Talosians are the last survivors of a once great civilization. Their physical bodies are weak and somewhat frail, but their enlarged brains possess incredible psychic powers. They speak only telepathically, and routinely project illusions to disguise themselves and their allies. Talosians can read thoughts and project physical pain, but their powers can't penetrate really powerful emotions, such as rage.

I would represent Vulcans and Minbari with D&D's Monk class, which is a good match for their fighting style. I would probably pick the Cleric as a second option. Spells like Command, ESP, and Hold Person are pretty good representations of their abilities. Talosians should probably be Bards and Wizards, perhaps with an emphasis on illusions and enchantments to match their powers.

 

 

Dwarf Replacements - Although we might think of dwarves as being miners, or engineers, the replacements I've chosen all kind of tap into the "proud warrior race" archetype. Really, scifi has an embarrassment of riches for this particular trope, so you have plenty to choose from that aren't listed here. Your only limitation is probably your willingness to use a species that's been portrayed as an antagonist for your player characters, since these guys are rarely the heroes in fiction.

Klingons - The Klingons are a very proud society. They prioritize personal honor and the glory won in battle and they inflict harsh corporeal punishment for all crimes and moral transgressions, especially cowardice and other forms of perceived weakness. They consider a death during combat to be the only acceptable way to die. Klingons have distinctive ridged foreheads and fight with a two-handed, multi-pointed sword called the bat'leth.

Narn - The Narn have a reptilian appearance, hairless and mottled with spots. Although once a peaceful society, they were conquered by the Centauri and their planet occupied until they could drive the invaders out. They are now militaristic and intent on both protecting themselves and getting revenge on their enemies.

Rigelians - Okay, so technically these guys, the inhabitants of Rigel 7, are called Kalar, while it's the inhabitants of Rigel 5 who get the honor of being called Rigelians, but it's clearly the better name, and could be applied to anyone from that star system. They are notably taller than other humanoids, and prefer to fight with spear and shield. While Klingons and Narn routinely wear metal armor, Rigelian's wear thick layers of leather and fur.

All three of these species should probably receive a Fighter option, although they have different fighting styles - Klingons prefer two-handed weapons, Narn daggers, and Rigelians fight with one-handed weapons and shields, and are the only species here who wouldn't use guns. Although most Klingons vocally support honorable conflict, their ships use invisibility cloaks, they surgically alter spies to pass as human, and occasionally use poison and suicide bombs to achieve victory, even at the expense of honor. Their second option should probably be Assassin, or its equivalent. The Narn are shown to be pretty religious, so their second option should be Paladins or Clerics, even though in the show, it's a big deal that they're one of the only species to not have indigenous telepaths. Rigelians are clearly also Barbarians.

 

 

Hobbit replacements - The symbolic role of hobbits is a bit unclear to me. As I said above, I think Tolkien wrote them as being essentially like modern humans, contrasted against the old-fashioned humans of Rohan and Gondor. In most D&D settings, they don't seem to have a culture that's any different from human society, with the exception of Eberron, where they have their own little Dinotopia. For my replacements here, I've chosen species that are cast as sort of "dark mirrors" of humanity, reflecting our worst qualities back at us. Instead of modern middle-class homeowners, I've chosen capitalists, gangsters and slavers, and colonizers.

Ferengi - The Ferengi are mercantile capitalists. They don't particularly make anything, but they make money as middlemen, buying low and selling high. Their whole society is structured around commerce; their Rules of Acquisition are practically a sacred text, and their currency, gold-pressed latinum, is more-or-less the currency of universal interchange. Their leader is simply whichever Ferengi has the most money at any given time. The Ferengi have very prominent large ears, and they're immune to telepathy. Ferengi society classifies women as property, owned by their fathers and later by their husbands; by law and custom, their rights are severely restricted.

Centauri - The Centauri are a society past their prime. They once had an expansive empire, but most of their former colonies have since won independence. The hierarchy of their society is based on proximity to the hereditary emperor; status in the royal court is the primary determinant of social position. Centauri culture and fashion are still very much frozen as they were at the height of their power; anything new is almost automatically worse. Their taste is ornate and baroque. Centauri look very much like humans, although their women shave their heads bald, and their men grow fan-like crests of hair, the taller the better.

Orions - The Orion people have carved out a niche for themselves as dealers in illegal merchandise. While the Ferengi sometimes dabble in legal vice - such as gambling and holographic prostitution - Orions deal almost exclusively in contraband and outlawed services. Orion slavers kidnap members of their own species, and others, to sell into forced labor. Orion pirates raid ships and seize their goods. Orion gangsters make loans, collect debts, deal illegal drugs, and sell stolen goods they received from the pirates.

All three of these species should obviously receive Rogue as one of their class options. After that, I'm a little bit torn. Ferengi and Centauri would both probably alike another roguish archetype, but more along the lines of a Merchant or a Noble, though most rulesets don't treat those as playable classes. Bard might be a fair representation of their more flamboyant and charismatic members? As for the Orions, I think they could use a Fighter type to act as enforcers for some of their more violent crimes.

Necro-Cavaliers of the Astral Galaxy

  

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, obviously one of Jack's inspirations

  

I recently had the opportunity to playtest a new ruleset written by Jack from Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque.

The game is called Necro-Cavaliers of the Astral Galaxy. You can get it free or PWYW from Jack's new itcho.io storefront.

In this game, you portray a highly-cultured and morally-depraved aristocrat, trained in the martial sciences and arcane arts, in the service of the God Empress of the Astral Galaxy. The grandeur of the God Empresses various houses and courts reminds me, for some reason, of the Catholic Church, or probably more accurately of the 2018 Met Gala of "Catholic" fashion, with cathedrals made of bone, and endless orders of nuns and priestesses all dressed in flowing silk. 

I think Jack was inspired by Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, both by Tamsyn Mur. My own touchpoint for my character was Jack Vance's The Last Castle, which is also about bored, decadent aristocrats who are incomparably talented, but also lazy, incurious, condescending, and immoral. I played a member of House Satomi, who are the God Empresses archivists and librarians.

You can read Jack's first summary of my playtest here, and his second summary here. I rescued my missing sister and was terribly snobby toward the police on a farming planet. Playing a character who is rich enough to buy almost anything she wants, and talented enough to accomplish almost any task successfully is a real switch from most versions of D&D, where something like the opposite assumptions hold true. Probably the biggest challenge was using my character's occasional "insights" to my best advantage. The mystery my character helped solve was apparently inspired by the film Devil's Gate, which sounds like it really wastes the efforts of its impressive cast.

  

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, also obviously another of Jack's influences

  

Resurrection of Wormwood - Warlock Mentor - Anshall of the Spirits

Your mentor is Anshall, a spirit medium who channels the voices of the dead to provide comfort to the grieving, and taught you to channel a god. Your class is warlock.

Anshall is a foreigner from across the Darkling Sea, a woman with pink skin and white hair whose native garb is decorated with insect motifs. Anshall believes in a spirit world, where the ghosts of the dead lie dreaming, and she claims an affinity with these spirits. Many shun Anshall as a heretic and eccentric, but others pay her to conduct séances, where she speaks with the dead to temporarily reconnect families separated by the plague.

Anshall taught you mediumship and channeling. She showed you a glimpse of the spirit world, where her soul appeared to you as an alien insect. Anshall trained you to contact an otherworldly god, to supplicate and beseech it, to swear a pact to become its avatar in the mortal realm.

If you are the first player to train with Anshall, select a vacant building on the town map and label it as "House of the Spirits".


You are a warlock. You know the spells eldritch blast and hex.

You have leather armor, two daggers, and a scholar's pack. You own a memento portrait of your dead fiancé, who you have never been able to contact during a séance. You also own a mask of your patron god's face, which you wear while channeling their power.


d6 How did your fiancé die, and what otherworldly vista did you glimpse when Anshall showed you the spirit realm?

1 Your fiancé died of plague. You saw the Tombstone Stairwell, where the souls of the dead descend endless engravened stairs down into the spirit world. You know the spells minor illusion and unseen servant.

2 Your fiancé starved to death in a plague house, locked in for quarantine with too little to eat. You wept before the Alabaster Gates, where the doors were locked, where every soul was turned away, the innocent and the unrepentant alike. You know the spells mage hand and protection from good and evil.

3 Your fiancé died while traveling - sleepless, lost, exhausted - when no one would open their door to aid a stranger. You saw the Grey Wastes, where each soul wanders alone through a faded afterimage of the living world, empty and devoid of life. You know the spells friends and witch bolt.

4 Your fiancé was killed by bandits, beaten and abandoned alongside the road. You turned away from the sight of the Inverted City, the place of all demons, where human spirits were helpless before their tormentors, tossed about an tortured like playthings. You know the spells blade ward and hellish rebuke.

5 Your fiancé died of exposure, traveling through the rain on a cold winter's night. You stared into the Frozen Lake, where the loneliest souls are imprisoned in isolation, far from the warmth of others' love. You know the spells frostbite and charm person.

6 Your fiancé died by ingesting false medicine, deceived by poison disguised as panacea. You watched the Transmigration of Souls, where the ancient dead finally escape the spirit world to be reborn as living infants. You know the spells poison spray and comprehend languages.

What was your fiancé's name? What business called them to travel to the distant city so often? As a complication, your game master may rule that an ongoing adventure involves completing your fiancé's unfinished business.


d6 Which otherworldly patron did Anshall teach you to channel?

1 You knelt in fealty at the court of the Umbral Queen, the raven-haired sovereign of the shadowed realms, who wears a crown of knives, who is cloaked in a gown of swords. In time, the Queen will send one of her umbral knights, a tiny raven-winged humanoid, dressed in autumn leaves, wearing a bird's skull as a mask, to serve as your familiar (as imp).

2 You bowed your head in prayer to the celestial Archangel of the Bell Choir, who rings out a song of resistance against the plague and the rule of the Plague Lord. In time, the angel will send you the apocryphal Gospel of Lazarus, a prayer book that teaches the spells guidance, resistance, and thaumaturgy.

3 You raced along footpaths through the trees behind the fey Daughter of the Dreaming Forest, as she lead a wild hunt through thickets of memory and groves of deceit. In time, she will send you Trumvaldbuch, a book of fairy stories illustrated with ambiguous inkblots, that teaches the spells druidcraft, primal savagery, and thorn whip.

4 You wandered lost through crooked streets to find the Architect of All Mazes, a great elder from the Abhorred Cosmos, who looks like a fractured reflection in a shattered mirror. In time, the Architect will send you a crooked cormorant, like black bird viewed through broken glass (as pseudodragon).

5 You descended to the bottom of abyssal waters to reach the Avanc of the Depthless Fathoms, a miles-long serpent lurking in the deep, whose slumber stirs gentle the tides, whose thrashing roils typhoons and floods. In time, the Avanc will send you a manuscript in a bottle, Voyage of the Arathustra an account of a failed expedition to the polar ice that teaches the spells infestation, ray of frost, and shape water.

6 You opened your mind to accept Concept of the Stellar Wind, an immortal entity representing the idea of undying light blowing across the void of the outer dark. In time, your patron will send an allegory of photon, a tiny insect-winged humanoid made of golden light, to serve as your familiar (as sprite).

Select a vacant building on the map and label it as your patron's place of power - the House with Black Walls, the Church of the Bell Choir, the Floral Greenhouse, the Crooked House, the Drowning Well, or the Stargazer's Observatory. As a complication, your game master may rule that an ongoing adventure requires an additional task requested by your otherworldly god.


Designer's Commentary
When Jack Shear published The Liberation of Wormwood, I thought he'd come up with a remarkably flexible framework for combining random character generation with co-creation of the campaign setting with an overarching campaign goal that players could pursue in a variety in ways. It occurred to me at the time that rather than the town of Wormwood being conquered by a Usurper and their army, that the whole region could be oppressed by the personification of plague, who could eventually be overthrown by sufficiently ambitious adventurers.

I didn't do very much with this idea when I first had it, besides jotting down some notes about possible Plague Lords and some potential ideas for character and setting creation. But recent events have gotten me thinking about the idea again.

The idea behind Anshall is to provide a different, hopefully Gothic-seeming, interpretation for warlocks and their powers.

Urzya Powder Keg 2 - Boltinka Nakogard

Boltinka Nakogard is a city in the heart of the Northern Devastation Zone, far from the Capital, beyond the frontier of the Borderlands, a city of perpetual winter huddling alone in Urzya's frozen wastes.

The city is home to two great households, both alike in dignity, both ancestors of the Dragon. The great houses were once vassals to a vampire queen, but the Noble is aged and ailing, and her authority has failed. Now the two houses' enmity flirts with open warfare, and each house dreams of a new era, and a new heir to the Dragon to rule over all.

Boltinka Nakogard is a city of migrants. Miners come to dig for prism-stones. Treasure seekers search for crystals that can imprison the living magic of the wastes. The work is dangerous and the workers desperate, and the wind at night howls in mourning for the dead.

This is a city, too, of missing children. At first few, now many. At first only orphans, now more and more migrant children have disappeared.

Boltinka Nakogard is a city about to explode.


The Forbidden Lovers and the Lost Child

Tension between the two great houses has been high for sometime, but the current state of open vendetta began with the elopement of a pair of young lovers, one from each house. The two youths hid in the slums while their families went to war over the disappearance. Each side blamed the other, alleging abduction, seduction, and worse. When the pair were finally found, each spouse was executed by their own household for their treason, but the war between the houses hasn't dimmed, it's flames fan ever brighter.

Rumor has it that the lovers bore a child who was spirited away by an accomplice right before the pair were captured. Due to complicated legal and genealogical reasoning, most people believe that the child, if found, would be the rightful ruler of both houses. The public assumes each house wants to raise the child so that she will grow up loyal to them and bring their rivals to heel. If this story is true, the lost child was the first of Boltinka Nakogard's child disappearances. (I've intentionally left the timeframe a little vague here. If the child is an infant, she has no real agency of her own; if she's a teenager she becomes more of a full-fledged NPC.)


Imprisoning Spells

The reason for Boltinka Nakogard's existence is the presence of living spells howling amid the winds of the northern wastes. These spells can be imprisoned, and gemstones containing a bound spell at their hearts are a valuable treasure and invaluable tool of war for the vampire Nobles.

In generations past, the czarina and her army ruled the city absolutely. Her dragonborn vassals harvested the perfect prism-stones from the mine; her dragonmarked servants cut these stones into the ideal gem-prisons for trapping living spells. As she's weakened, her grip has loosened, and with the two houses unwilling to cooperate, the industry has all but ceased. The dragonmarked have no reliable source for stones; the dragonborn no especial skill for cutting them.

The price of even a single bound spell is enough to attract migrant workers. They forage for uncut stones along the edges of dragonborn territory, they make the simplest of cuts by copying the dragonmarked's discards. They scour the wastes looking for gems left by previous migrants and pray to find one already imprisoning a spell. But try searching a snowblind field for buried stones! Try distinguishing a prism-stone from a simple rock or shard of ice! Migrants have lost limbs from the frost and their lives to exposure. And the cold is less deadly than the living spells.

Leave an uncut gem with the correct prismatic dimensions to sit in the snow of the northern wastes, and rarely, so very rarely, a living spell will crawl inside to make its lair there. You can increase your chances with a properly cut gem-prison. You can increase your chances more by fighting the spell until it is defeated, until it is at the brink of disappearing. Then it might retreat inside the stone. Or it might slip away on the wind. Teams and pairs used to work the snow fields together, the dragonborn fighting the spells with their magic breath, the dragonmarked using their skill to bind the spells to the stones. The migrants almost always work alone, each seeking their own fortune, few willing to share the ultimate prize with their neighbors.

The railway company brings the migrants in to work. The railway company traps them in Boltinka Nakogard with exit tickets too expensive to afford.

If any one faction in town could assert authority or control over the others, production could resume, and great fortunes could be made. Increasingly, the thought is heard, once whispered, now sometimes spoken or shouted aloud, that if the rivals cannot be quelled then they should simply be killed, and let control go to the survivors. This is a thought that would drown the city in blood.


The Child Disappearances

No one but the criminals themselves knows who is behind the child disappearances. At first it was orphans who vanished. Then migrant children with living parents. Recently, Boltinka natives have gone to their children's rooms in the morning and found them missing. Recently even the children of the great houses and the railway company aren't safe.

Why are the children disappearing? The rumors are many, and seem to conflict. 
Some say the czarina is searching for an heir to take over her throne.
Some say the dragonborn and dragonmarked are looking for the lost child.
Some say a cult within the church is looking for a dragon goddess reborn.
Some say the railway company is simply sending the children away on night trains - but back to safety or onward to greater servitude?
Some say desperate gangs are working the children on the snow fields at night, using them to attract living spells.
Some say ruthless traffickers are serving any or all of the above, kidnapping children to sell to whoever actually wants them.

Any or all of these seem possible. Opinions about the fate of the children are a popular topic of argument. To be partisan in defense of one's chosen rumor has become a way to cope with one's inability to prevent the disappearances.


The Districts

Grand Hotel Vanna - An opulent palace, the crown jewel of an earlier era. The vampire czarina's estate. She hold court in the building and her knights still control the grounds. Her authority outside this district is limited.

Government District - City hall, courthouse, aldermens' house, home to the czarina's disinherited dhampirs. Ostensibly the seat of city government, but largely ignored.

Spa District - Bathhouses, clinics, and resorts, all controlled by the dragonborn house. Bred for warmer climes, they love petroleum spas.

Industrial Quarter - The gem-prison mine, several petroleum wells, abandoned manufacturies. Nominally controlled by the dragonborn but mostly fallow. Migrants sometimes sneak onsite to search for prism-stones.

Financial District - Banks, jewelry stores, the mercantile exchange, home to the dragonmarked house. They're more ambitious than the dragonborn, not content with the Nakogard's current decadent state, and seek allies among the dhampirs and the railway executives.

City Center - Home to most Boltinka natives. Members of the great houses who choose to live here have only tenuous relationship with their family's seat of power.

Slums - Home to most migrants, especially the widows and orphans of slain treasure seekers. Overcrowded, vulnerable to disease, and the site of most child disappearances. The migrants, formerly disorganized, increasingly look to each other for assistance and support.

Propiska Railway Station - Company headquarters the railway. The upstairs of old railway hotel is home to the executives, the downstairs has been converted into barracks to house their security guards. The best organized and most efficient business in Boltinka.

Orthodox Cathedral - The seat of ancestral Dragon worship, segregated internally between the dragonborn and dragonmarked seating areas. Recognized as sanctuary and neutral territory, the elders of the great houses conduct sensitive business here.

Research Hospital - An abandoned university campus, centered around the hospital, fenced off and quarantined from the city. Regarded as poisonous and unclean, home to a small population of mutants and other exiles, each living in near solitude. Recently taken over by the Daughters of Tiamat, a cult determined to resurrect the Dragon Goddess, they could unleash toxic horror by accident. The townfolk have barely begun to notice that something is amiss.



Adventurers in Boltinka Nakogard

My instinct is to say that the role for player characters at the start of the campaign should be to arrive in town as vagabond spell-hunters, then become increasingly entangled in affairs and intrigue. Every native they talk to will want to gossip about the Lost Child, the child disappearances, the faction conflicts, etc. One side or another could try to hire them to commit plausibly-deniable odd jobs. There are plenty of mysteries and perils to get inveigled in.

And as they make their fortune, they'll begin to realize, for individual miners, there's good money to be made selling imprisoned living spells to various faction elders to add to their stockpile of munitions ... but for the city as a whole, there's much better money to be made restarting the mass export of the gem-prisons to the Vampire Nobles in the far off Capital.

If the players want their characters to be natives, they could play more-or-less the same game by creating a mixed-faction coalition of townspeople, representing the Nakogard's middle class, rather than the migrant underclass like the original scenario. Being embedded in the town's factions and conflicts from the very start might give this game a greater sense of urgency. Start the game with the discovery of the Lost Child, and you're off the races from the moment the starting gun fires.

A final option would be for the players to agree to all belong to the same faction, and to mercenarily advance their faction's agenda at the expense of all the others.

Urzya Powderkeg 1 - Dreaming of Urzya

One of the first fantasy worlds to really make an imprint on my imagination was Magic: the Gathering's Ice Age setting. I love the frozen landscape, the taiga and tundra and glaciers and ice. I love the image of medieval redoubts holding on to the last vestiges of civilization against the unceasing winter night. That's probably why B/X Blackrazor's Land of Ice is one of my all-time favorite unpublished campaign settings.

I remember playing out in the snow with my sister, imagining a world so cold that magic sometimes froze when you cast it, and the land was littered with ice crystals containing frozen spells. (In retrospect, that part sounds a bit like unexploded ordinance leftover on a battlefield, which is actually consistent with Ice Age's status as a kind of nuclear winter following an apocalyptic mages' war.)

I remember dreaming once of a frozen land, where the royal court was ruled by psychic vampires, who could read minds and drink souls, where among the outcasts dwelt warmth vampires, who craved the heat of another's touch and could never, never drink in enough. (The lords in my dream wore armor like Babylon 5's Vorlons. The outcasts went naked in the wastes, but wrapped shivering in furs within any settlement; it was only HUMAN warmth they longed for.)

source: Zero Wing

So when Jack from Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque published Dirge of Urazya, detailing a postapocalyptic fantasy Eurasia ruled over by a decadent and collapsing feudal hierarchy of vampires, the setting he described managed to touch on a very formative bit of my own personal fantasy mythos.

Jack also manages something that Eberron tries, and, in my opinion, fails at, which is to make historical conflicts between monster factions matter to the present day of his setting. Eberron has something like 40 thousand years of recorded history that takes place before the player characters show up and get to interact with anything. All the events of that history are really samey and easy to conflate, and they're also all just backstory with no particular relevance to the gameworld the players are interacting with. You could maybe argue that all that long history is intended to help gamemasters pick appropriate set dressing and treasures for the ancient ruins the player characters might explore, but it's presented in a way that does nothing to facilitate that goal.

In contrast, in Jack's campaign set-up for Saltmire, the waning vampire lords have two groups of unruly vassals who are jockeying for ascendance, and both are derived or descended from dragons. This in turn implies some prior conflict between vampires and dragons that the vampires won, but the war itself is never even mentioned, the focus is entirely on the present-day conflict. (Jack Vance did something similar in The Dragon Masters, with humans and aliens each breeding captured members of the other species to create fantasy monsters. Unfortunately it's one of Vance's weaker books; the idea is much better than his execution of it.)

Trey of From the Sorcerer's Skull has some really good advice for making setting history matter in your game. One of the key points for our purposes here is that history is useful when it helps define the parameters and scope of the present-day adventure.

Dirge of Urazya itself is much less a setting than an invitation to the reader to create their own setting, within certain parameters, and Jack's recent post about making a powder keg is another invitation, with Saltmire as an example "powder keg" campaign set-up along an unnamed piece of Urazyan coastline. (I don't know why, but I assume either the Black Sea or Caspian Sea.)

To make a grotesque and/or dungeonesque powder keg you need six ingredients:

• two ambitious noble houses with a bitter rivalry
• a fading imperial power that nominally holds the nobles in check
• a trading company or corporation wants to expand from economic to political power
• a religious sect whose members are more loyal to it than to any other authority
• a foreign barbarians who exist outside the society the other factions belong to 
• and finally, some scarce resource that all five factions are competing to control

Ideally, the scarce resource should be something the players want for their characters as well. That gives them maximum incentive to get their hands dirty and join the competition. As Brendan from Necropraxis advises, let the players decide who their enemies are. (Although they could, I suppose, like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, simply play each against all with the goal of creating maximum chaos.)

source: Babylon 5

Jack has successfully inspired me to make a powder keg campaign start of my own. I'll create an outline here, and add details in future posts. For now, I'll focus on the key elements. Names for things are a detail to be added later. (Also, since this is my own little thought experiment, and since I initially misread the title of Jack's zine, I'm going to be spelling it as "Ur-zya" rather than as "Ur-a-zya".)

Location: An isolated town in the far north of Urzya, possibly in what used to be Siberia. Based on details from the factions, it looks like the town was once some sort of vacation or resort spot, that it houses either a biological weapons laboratory or a biological waste dump site, and that it has a railroad running through it.

Imperial Power: An ailing vampire tsarina. She has a loyal court of aging suitors and their household knights, and the town has a sizable population of disinherited dhampirs. The tsarina holds court in a former grand hotel. She badly wants an heir, ie, a young person she can perform either brain transplant surgery or a psychic personality transfer on.

Noble House: The first noble house are dragonborns. Sorry Jack, I'm shamelessly stealing your idea here. The dragonborn were bred by the vampires either to fight their war against the dragons or as some kind of symbol of victory after the war ended. These days they're the more established noble house. I bet they love the petroleum spas in the town's old resorts. I'm not sure what they want besides knocking off the competition, but that's another detail that can come later.

Noble House: Stealing from Jack again, my second noble house is made up of dragonmarked humans. Their dark and gritty origin story also involves being bred as enslaved soldiers by the vampire elites long ago, and let's suppose that they're the more up-and-coming of the two houses. I'll need to look up what the different dragonmarks do to pick out the right one for these nobles. I do remember that dragonmarks come in different sizes, and the larger ones are more powerful.

So one thing they want is to find a child with the correct aberrant dragonmark to become their new leader. Probably the current leader wants to kill the kid, someone else wants her on the throne so they can be regent for a decade or so, and, I don't know, maybe there are revolutionaries who want her as a figurehead atop a democratic government. Three sects within the same faction feels like too many, so ideally I'll narrow that list down to two going forward.

Trading Company: I think that something like the Trans-Siberian Railroad ought to run through this town. Probably no one controls its entire length anymore, or at best there's a very fragile syndicate made up of dozens of local franchises who control the tracks in their turf. (Or maybe there IS a single company that runs the whole thing, and THAT level of control and ownership makes them one of the most politically powerful forces in Urzya?)

Anyway, there's a local company operating out of the old railroad station, and they control passage into and out of town on the only mode of transportation that will reliably get you to another bastion of civilization alive. In addition to controlling the food supply, they're probably also arms dealers selling to both the noble houses, amplifying the risk of conflict. I bet the foreign barbarians have been causing them trouble lately. What do they want that they don't already have? Good question! It'll have to wait until a future post for the answer though.

Religious Sect: My favorite Urzyan religion so far is Our Lady of the Drowned, but I don't think she's the right fit for this town. Instead, I want to use the followers of the Five Headed Empress. Tiamat was a literal weapon of mass destruction in Urzya's past. Let's say that she was defeated at the end of the war and her cult was outlawed.

There's presumably a mainstream dragon-worshiping religion that manages to fill the churches in a town with two different dragon-descended noble houses. In that case, the cultists are like followers of the left-hand path of dragon religion, hoarding banned books and forbidden scriptures, meeting in secret to worship a figure who acknowledged but despised by the dragon church's orthodoxy.

Tiamat was a biological weapon, so let's suppose the cultists are either searching for samples and research notes from her original creation or remnants of her that were buried as waste. They're probably risking touching off a plague by accident. Let's also suppose that they really want to find either a human vessel who can reincarnate Tiamat's spirit, or some way to raise her up in her entirety as an undead (or reborn) dragon goddess.

Foreign Barbarians: What kind of creatures live in the frozen wastes outside of town? Well let's start with some sort of feral life-drinking vampire type. The name "breath-stealer" has a nice ring to it. Let's also have some living spells out prowling amid the snowdrifts. These aren't a coherent faction yet so maybe some sort of winter elves would fit in here? I'm also not sure what they want, other than to raze the city and kill everyone in it. They sound scary though!

Scarce Resource: My first instinct is to say "enough food to last the winter," but that seems really depressing, even for a grimdark crapsack like Urzya.

A thought occurs to me that each faction might be searching for a specific young person - a vampiric heir, the bearer of an aberrant dragonmark, Tiamat Reborn. Perhaps, like in Dune, each faction's messiah is the same person? Each faction might racing the others to find the girl before anyone else, and place her on their preferred throne. The town's other children could probably also use a champion to protect them from being kidnapped by the various factions. (Wait, IS this actually any less depressing than the grain idea? I guess "town where children are disappearing" is time-honored plot element, often in stories intended for children, although it seems awfully creepy. But would this work for a game, or is this the kind of idea that works for book, but wouldn't be any fun to play?)

This part might require more consideration. If there's not any one single thing all the factions want, then there should at least be a couple desired objects with overlapping interest groups.

source: me

Two Supporting Castmembers in Umberwell

Jack from Tales of the Grotesque & Dungeonesque has a new book out about his Umberwell setting (which I've played in!) Included in the book is a section for generating "supporting cast" or NPCs. Let's generate two.
 
 
First NPC - Ugly Safra
 
Race & occupation - wight stevedore
Appearance & personality trait - brutish and bold
Ideal, bond, flaw - progress, land, superstitious
Nemesis - a collector wants something she owns
 
Short and horrid, Ugly Safra looks like a mindless corpse. Her cloudy eyes never seem to focus, her lipless mouth always hangs slack-jawed, her wet rotten skin, her hair like tangled black seaweed. But Safra's ugly visage belies her lively heart. She is friendly to a fault, and assumes instant intimacy with anyone who shows her the least bit of kindness - though admittedly, those who've been kind enough to see her friendly side are few in number. And Safra's no fool, she can tell genuine kindness from the sort who would feign it in order to use her.
  
Safra is a recent victim of the Necrophagous Fever. Her life before is gone now. But unlike most who succumb to the disease, Safra kept her intellect intact. She works on the docks now, mostly night jobs unloading contraband at the shore of the rivers that run between Umberwell's island boroughs. She's still in awe of her new undead body and works unloading the most dangerous cargoes, the ones too deadly for the living. Living a life of crime, handling materials that would have killed her with a touch before - Safra loves the excitement and opportunity that the Fever brought into her life.
  
Safra's only problem is that someone's after her diary, the journal she kept as she was wasting away with Necrophagous Fever. Safra thinks of it as her "brain" and fears that if she loses it, she'll lose the spark of intelligence that separates her from the Fever's countless mindless victims. She's not sure who this collector is, but through agents, they've tried offering her cash, breaking into her room, even attacking her at work. The Knights of Ruin have offered to recruit Ugly Safra, as they offer all of Umberwell's recently undead, and so far she's refused ... but if she can't get rid of the collector who's hounding her, she might accept the protection, and the obligation, that comes with Ruin membership.
  
Using Ugly Safra in your game -

• The characters want to buy something illegal, need to learn about the underworld's shipping schedules, or meet a contact on the docks, and find puppydog-friendly Safra.

• A patron hires the characters to steal Safra's diary. Or a faction wants the characters to use Safra to infiltrate the Knights of Ruin. The characters know someone will get the job done whether they accept or reject.

• Desperate Safra approaches the characters wanting to hire them. She needs help finding out who the collector is before they simply kill her to take her book. Or she learned something from a Ruin recruiter that scares her, and her conscience demands that she tell someone before it's too late. 

     
Second NPC - Darbidian Ral
 
Race & occupation - rakshasa cultist
Appearance & personality trait - pristine and double-dealer
Ideal, bond, flaw - wealth, dead loved one, prideful
Why he came to Umberwell - seeking revenge against someone in the city
Cult devoted to - Ravsana, goddess of pleasure
 
The newest most glamorous cabaret in town is The Sinners' Home, operated by the rakshasa gangster and impresario Darbidian Ral, a recent immigrant from a sun-soaked and demon-haunted land far to the east. Ral stands shoulders above most of his clients, looking for all the world like a tiger on its hind legs wearing the most fashionably-cut and hand-tailored suits. Ral always catches eyes with his immaculate coiffure, silk ties, gemstone cufflinks, and fresh flowers tucked into his lapel. He seems to be everywhere in the club, booming voice, hearty laugh, slapping backs, shaking hands, stooping and stage-whispering confidences with his clients.
 
And oh! what clients The Sinners' Home attracts, all the highest rollers in Umberwell are here, night after night, drinking the finest imported wines, snorting the purest manufactured drugs, gambling at Ral's high-stakes tables (and every table in the Home is high-stakes), watching the intricate choreography of Ral's cabarets. Ral's dancers dress up as different incarnations of the goddess Ravsana, often several dancers in close coordination portray a single goddess with many arms, or several heads, or male and female aspects, all set to lively foreign music. Ral claims that the dances are all authentic to his homeland, but he must be lying, must have sultryed them up, unless dancers in that distant land beneath the demon sun truly end every performance by making love onstage for far longer than they initially danced. And besides, what tradition would have the goddess humiliated, made ridiculous, what tradition would rob her of all respect, song after song?
  
It's expensive going to Ral's, everyone seems to pay more than they intended, but it's worth it just to be at the best club in town. It must be worth it, because his clients come back every night, dropping more and more coins at his baccarat tables, his roulette wheels, dipping into savings, taking out loans, some working all day to afford just one more drink, one more dose, one more dance.
 
Though few realize it, Darbidian is not the first of his family to come to Umberwell. His younger brother Arvanyan Ral came first, and died here. Arvanyan's servants came back without the young man, but carrying rumors, stories, and one harrowing daguerreotype of Arvanyan with a smile on his face, surrounded by willing executioners, partaking in the pleasures that would soon consume him. Darbidian believes Arvanyan joined a pleasure cult in Umberwell, believes he gave himself, willingly, to be used, beaten, degraded, even beyond the superhuman limits of his rakshasan body. Arvanyan's body died starving, covered in sores and unhealed wounds. Dravidian blames the cult, blames the goddess Ravsana, blames the city of Umberwell, and the wealthy elite who permit deaths like Arvanyan's to take place. The Sinners' Home is Darbiddian Ral's trap, his revenge. His club is a lure to draw in the people he thinks killed his brother, his demon magic keeps them coming back, keeps them wanting to come back, even as they are ruined and brought to the brink of death themselves. Unless stopped, he will bring Umberwell to its knees.

Using Darbidian Ral in your campaign -

• The player characters first meet Arvanyan Ral and witness his self-destructive tendencies over a couple sessions, then he is gone, then The Sinners' Home appears, and Darbidian Ral makes a splash in Umberwell's demimonde.

• Someone wants to know Ral's secrets and how to stop him. It might be another cabaret, starving for business since The Sinners' Home opened. It might be a wealthy family, trying to save their fortune from total dissipation at Ral's club. It might be a true believer in Ravsana, trying to stop Ral from further besmirching her name. It might be the lover or family member of one of Ral's clients, wanting to rescue them from self-destruction, or seeking revenge on Ral for facilitating their loved one's demise.

• Ral's servants seek out the characters for help. They fear their master will destroy himself in his open-ended pursuit of revenge. They want the characters to find out who killed Arvanyan - was it the Ashram of Willing Vassalage? the Risen Temple? some other self-abnegating sect? or did Arvanyan come to Umberwell already prepared to die to fulfill his desires? Be warned, for this or any other adventure - Darbidian Ral is impossibly proud, and it will be much easier for the player characters to persuade him he's won than to convince him he's wrong.

Two Neighborhoods in Umberwell

Jack Shear from Tales of the Grotesque & Dungeonesque is writing a book for his Umberwell campaign setting, which will likely be similar to his Krevborna book. I've played in Jack's Umberwell campaign, and recently, I had the opportunity to preview a random neighborhood generator he's written for it.
    
So here are two random Umberwell neighborhoods, built using the generator, and my idea for the seed of an adventure you could have there.
    
    
Neighborhood purpose: artist's quarter
Neighborhood aesthetic: maze-like
Noteworthy neighborhood feature: monument

    
1 - The Cubist's Quartet: 
Filled with art students all slowly driving themselves mad, streets are so sharp-angled they're nearly non-Euclidean, uncanny resemblance between local streetmap/architecture and the output of the local artists, here cubism is realism, dozens gather daily to sketch beside the quarter's most famous statue - the 20' tall "Portrait of the Artist Descending the Stairs".
    
Why would you adventure here? The streets aren't just maze-like, they are a maze. And the purpose of this maze is to hide from the world a single house and the unwilling occupant kept prisoner there. A recent gallery opening provides three clues - the same artist has a painting of the house, a portrait of the prisoner, and an abstract rendering of half the maze. A patron in the position to recognize what the paintings show has hired you to obtain the artist's sketchbooks and to navigate the maze, find the house, and visit the prisoner, to kill, free, or relocate them.
    
       
Neighborhood purpose: landfill
Neighborhood aesthetic: floral decoration
Noteworthy neighborhood feature: rooftop farms
    
2 - Rose Hill Reclamation:
(This was a really tough one!) Once a botanical garden, then rezoned as a dump after being flooded with sewage, specializes in chamberpots and other broken crockery, the red clay tiles on the original surrounding wall were all stamped with a rose motif before being fired, the ground is like gravel made of shattered pottery, the roofs of the original exhibition buildings now grow wild with feral Queen's Roses possessed of animal intellect.
     
Why would you adventure here? A mysterious group calling themselves "the Reclaimers" have taken credit for a half dozen assassinations, all using Queen's Roses as the murder weapon. The dump seems like an obvious place to start looking for them, but no one seems to be present on-site during the day. Climb the red tile wall at night though, and you'll see a handful of campfires arrayed in a loose circle. Investigate the center of the circle during the day, and you'll find what you were unlikely to notice before, that someone is excavating the dump, peeling away layers of soil and pottery with the thoroughness of an archaeologist. They're obviously looking for something specific.
    
    
The aesthetic seems to be more important in my first adventure seed, but it might inform what the Reclaimers are looking for in the second. I hope I caught the feel of Umberwell in both neighborhoods and adventurer-starts. The seeds are deliberately a bit light on detail to leave the important decisions to the individual referee. As I said, Jack offered me the chance to preview part of his book (after reading my previous random neighborhood post, actually) and I thought it would be fun to put his procedure to the test. I will say that unless you're a very fast thinker, this is probably better to use to prep beforehand, rather than trying to use at the table during play.

Those GOD-DAMN Bird People in Scarabae

I was able to play one final session in Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque's online Scarabae campaign last year.

After this game, I picked up a new shift at work, which prevented me from playing anymore online games during the Scarabae timeslot. Also sometime after this game, the referee, Jack, renamed Scarabae "Umberwell", and he's been posting a lot of new ideas and hosting a lot of new games in the renamed city.

I harbor some hope that I'll get a chance to venture back to the weird city of Umberwell-Scarabae in the future, but for now, this post is a swansong.

At the end of Travita's previous adventure in Scarabae, Yuriko, the adopted daughter of her tiefling "odd jobs" broker Koska, was kidnapped by anti-city cultists called the Children of Fimbul.

Traviata may have been experiencing a bit of an identity crisis over her previous failures to sufficiently punish "the guilty" (basically, other, more successful artists) but the other half of her life's mission was to protect "the innocent" (herself, and other people who remind her of herself) - and Koska's daughter Yuriko certainly qualified! So together with her previous companions, Khajj the minotaur cleric, Crumb the kenku artificer, and Viktor the dragonborn sorcerer, and a new ally, Dr Aleister Whiffle the human fighter, Traviata boarded a steamship bound for Zarubad, the trading port nearest the jungle where the Children of Fimbul are believed to be holed up with Yuriko.

Zarubad proved to be quite different from the close, dark, dirty streets of Scarabae. Traviata had passed from a city where it seemed to always be night (or at least draped in impenetrable fog) to a city bathed in sunlight, the hot glow like being fixed in the opera's limelight, the wide streets a crowded riot of colored fabrics and flowers, the air thick with the scent of spices and sweating bodies.

In an attempt to get at much free swag as possible of Koska's dime prepare for their upcoming expedition into the jungle, the group split up in the market and began shopping and listening for rumors. The jungles south of Zarubad were supposedly full of biting insects spreading a disease called "monkey fever" so Khajj and Aleister bough gourds full of liquid insect repellent, and Traviata, retaining her sense of civility, purchased cones of incense she was certain would keep her safe. Crumb heard rumors of an undead paladin haunting the jungle, once charged with defending his god's temple, but cursed after abandoning his duty. Traviata heard about an ancient lost city somewhere in a basin or crater, allegedly filled with magic, which she thought would be a likely hiding spot for the Children of Fimbul, if they could find it.

Unfortunately, no matter how many maps they bought, every drawing seemed to disagree with all the others. The local guides likewise had nothing but ill-words for one another, so the group hired the most self-promoting specimen, a young woman named Salome, who was only too happy to tell them that all the other guards were frauds, charlatans, and thieves out to rob them of their wages. Traviata took an instant liking to the young woman and trusted her implicitly. On Salome's advice, they finished shopping by buying a canoe, a barrel of water, tents and mosquito netting, and a few other camping supplies, and finally set out into the jungle.

Collectively, the group decided to take the western branch of the river that led into the jungle. It was rumored to go deeper than its twin, and Salome claimed that it led all the way to a depression where lobster people lived. Traviata thought this "depression" sounded an awful lot like the "basin" she knew they should be headed towards, so it was decided. In less than a day on the water, they passed into the jungle itself, and as they did, the sky went dark from the canopy overhead, and the air filled with the sounds of frogs, insects, monkeys. On the third day, Khajj and Traviata both had good luck while fishing, supplementing their dry (though spicy and flavorful) rations.

On the sixth day down the river, they found a clearing that looked like an abandoned campsite. They found evidence of recent digging and dug it back up, finding a cache containing folded wooden tables and chairs, perhaps left by someone planning to return later. On the seventh day they found a more permanent campsite ... or rather, they found the remains of a more permanent campsite, since the place had been burned to the ground, with nothing but the scorched shells of cabins and long-buildings remaining. They were about to return to their canoes when Khajj spotted a statue he was sure had religious significance - a giant image of a man carrying a crocodile on his back. He was intrigued, but when he asked Salome, she knew nothing about either campsite, and had never heard of such a statue or image before, and Khajj felt the first tremors of misgiving pass through his heart. Searching the campsite further revealed no clues, only that whoever burned the place also seemed to have broken and wrecked everything that wasn't consumed by the fire, except for a tarot card depicting Strength, found in the mess hall.

Khajj's mighty heart fluttered again, and he remembered a human parable that might make sense of the statue. The first man who stood on a riverbank spoke to the first crocodile to come up onto the land. The two made an agreement with each other, that each would carry the other in times of danger. The crocodile began by carrying the man across the river, then climbed aboard the man's shoulders where it remained for the rest of his life, leaving the man feeling burdened and deceived. Salome said she'd never heard that story before, and Traviata too felt the first whispers of doubt begin to tickle her ears.

The statue had a doorway with stairs leading downward built into its base, and the group decided to investigate. They arrived in a long hall, and though Viktor's lizard eyes could spot a door at the far end, his spell to create a magical hand couldn't reach it. Mighty Khajj led the group through the darkened hall, and his canny senses noticed a pit trap in the center of the floor, and, after the group had sidled around that, the trigger for some other trap just ahead. Crumb was able to trigger the trap from a distance, releasing a huge scything blade that swept across the hall, and then ran forward and spiked the trapdoor shut. Finally close enough, they asked Viktor to open the far door with his mage hand, although just as he did, everyone but Salome experienced a kind of premonition and fell to the floor to take cover. As the door opened, Salome was thrown backward down the hall, as though by the shockwave from a silent, invisible explosion. Inside the door they found a spiral staircase leading up into the statue itself, with the skeleton of a giant lizard or crocodile scattered around the foot of the stairs. Aleister felt very worried that the bones might somehow reanimate, but Triavata thought that the skull would make an excellent crown and put it on. (A lot of my characters end up doing things like this. It might be my fondness for hats.)

To ease Aleister's mind Viktor cast a spell to sense magic and examined the bones. They were ordinary, but when he looked at the staircase, he noticed that several of the steps were somehow enchanted, and marked them out by drawing on the steps immediately before and after each one. They made their way safely to the top, where they found a large globular jug hanging from the wall by a strap. Guessing it might be important, Traviata tried to identify the object, but Victor simply pulled it down, in a hurry to return to safety outside. Somehow the jug had been weighing down the lever it had been hung from like a coat peg, and when it was removed, the lever popped up, and the entire structure began to collapse. Even the statue itself seemed to rain down upon them. Crumb, Traviata, and Salome were all nearly crushed, but Khajj rescued Traviata and hearty Salome somehow stayed on her feet and managed to pull Crumb's body to safety. Aleister and Viktor clung together, limped out side-by-side. Outside in the wreckage, Khajj and Aleister administered aid to Crumb and Traviata, saving them from death. Finally safe, the group made camp for the night on the shore.

In the morning, Traviata fully examined the clay vessel and found it to be an alchemical jug, an enchanted object capable of generating gallons of fresh water and other liquids. Before leaving, the group made a final sweep of the campsite. Khajj found and tamed a baby bird that was being kept in a pen by the remains of the barracks. Salome had never seen a bird like it before, but Aleister was able to match it to a drawing from the guidebook he bought in Zarubad - it was an axe-beak, a fearsome jungle predator. Khajj seemed quite pleased to have a new pet. Viktor meanwhile decided for some reason to enchant a pebble to make light, then threw it down the military latrine. Surprisingly, he found a human body down there, a solider wearing scale armor and carrying a warhammer. Crumb climbed down into the horrible pit and retrieved the soldier's belt pouch, which contained five small gemstones. After bathing in the river, he was allowed back in the canoe, and the group continued downstream. For the rest of that day, and four more days after, they continued down the river, eating fresh fish, drinking fresh alchemically-treated water, and hearing distant roaring sounds like some animal loud as thunder, growing closer the further they went downstream.

On the evening of the thirteenth day, the river ran out, widening out to a mudflat and disappearing down a sinkhole, perhaps continuing somewhere far underground. The group left their boat by the "shore" and approached a plateau that stood over the jungle in this spot. Salome claimed success and bragged that she had successfully led them to the "depression" she'd told them about, brushing off all questions about the lobster people who were supposed to live there. Traviata wondered if the plateau could really be the lip of some great crater, and if so, if it could be the "basin" that held the lost city she still suspected the Children of Fimbul were using as their jungle hideaway, the place they were keeping poor Koska's kidnapped daughter, Yuriko.

Viktor led the way, using his magical slippers to walk up the wall as easily as he walked across the ground. As he strolled up the cliff-face, he saw a boulder, practically a whole island made of stone, floating in the air above the jungle far too high up for any method of approach the group currently had on-hand. He passed carvings of winged lizards and curling flames. Eventually, he reached a landing and threw down a rope to his friends, inspecting the rotted remains of a wooden door set directly into the wall of the plateau. After his friends joined him, Viktor used his mage hand to push the last remnants of the door out of the way, when he heard a frail woman's voice call out from inside: "Hello? Who's there?" An impossibly old-looking woman toddled out of the doorway, short, stooped over, wrinkled and wizened with age.

Viktor tried engaging the woman in conversation, with mixed results. "Victor? Are you the Victor who brings the bread? No one has brought me bread in a long time." Eventually he learned that the woman, who insisted on being called "Nanny" was especially perturbed by a group of "those GOD-DAMN bird people" who, she claims, keep breaking into her home and stealing her things. She gives Crumb a long, evil look until Viktor is able to regain her attention.

Noticing that "Nanny" keeps grumbling about how things are "not like they were in the OLD days," Viktor tries asking her what the old days were like. "Oh, you mean the OLD days? You mean before those GOD-DAMN bird people came around and started ruining everything?" Yes, those old days. It emerged that in the old days, Nanny was a bit of a literal hell-raiser, dancing naked in the woods, summoning demons from the Pit, and performing other bits of black magic just for the fun of it. "Not like these punk kids these days, no respect, and not like those GOD-DAMN bird people neither!" Traviata asked if Nanny could use some of her black magic to cast a spell to locate a lost child. Nanny readily agreed, but it quickly became clear that she thought they were finding the child so that they could put together a good, wholesome, old-fashioned human sacrifice. Aghast, Viktor tried a different tactic, and asked the easily-distractable old woman if she could help them find some people who'd moved into the area recently, some people who were practicing dark magic, but doing it like a bunch of PUNKS and AMATEURS, not the RIGHT way, not like Nanny and her friends used to do it in the OLD days. Nanny (again) readily agreed, and wandered back inside to cast her spell. Khajj wanted to sneak away immediately as soon as the woman was out of sight, but the others persuaded him to stay and hear her out.

(Now, Traviata is a smart woman, but she's not very emotionally complex. She has two goals in life, feels like she hasn't been doing enough to accomplish one of them, and then finds herself face-to-face with an actual honest-to-goodness wicked witch who lives in the forest and wants to cook a child in her oven. It shouldn't be a surprise what happens next. And - if you think more carefully about the tropes of D&D than I was at the time - it also shouldn't be a surprise how that works out for her. I WAS surprised, but you shouldn't be.)

While the group waited, Vikor used his magic shoes to walk around the perimeter of the plateau, and saw the wreck of a sailing ship, looking to all the world like it was fresh out of the ocean, lying broken atop the jungle canopy. He returned just around the same time Nanny was finishing up her hour-long spellcasting ritual. She emerged carrying a hand-drawn map that called for them to backtrack several days back up the river (Khajj shot Salome a withering look) and would have them end up near the shipwreck Victor saw. "Now you want to avoid this spot here, here, and here ... that's where those GOD-DAMN bird people make their filthy nests ..." She started mumbling again until Viktor assured her they'd use the map to get revenge on the AMATEURS for her. "Yeah, really show 'em what black magic should look like! Now in my day, in the OLD days, we would have skinned them alive before roasting them on the..." Again, she began to ramble at some length before Viktor cut her off again. "Victor? Oh Victor! Oh are you the one who brings the bread?" At this point it was Traviata who cut her off, play-acting at feeling happy and offering her a celebratory drink to her health. Despite seemingly having her fill of all the scenery she could chew, Nanny happily accepted the beverage and quaffed it in one gulp.

What Nanny actually drank was magical, alchemical poison, which would have killed a lesser being, but mostly just seemed to make her angry! She immediately slashed Traviata with her fingernails, nearly killing the poor singer. Nearly everyone else attacked Nanny with their guns or spells, and all of them bounced off her iron-hard hide, although Salome managed to cut Nanny with her scimitar, drawing first blood from the old crone. Nanny retaliated by slashing Salome, again, nearly murdering the woman with one stroke. Nanny continued to shrug off almost everything the group could throw at her, though Aleister's magical singing spear was able to pierce her flesh as well, as Nanny continued to savage Salome, who at this point was only kept alive by Khajj's quick thinking and magical healing touch. Finally, at the end, Aleister managed to pin her down with his singing spear, Crumb used his magical firearm to put an enchanted bullet into her, and Salome, whirling around like a pirouetting ballerina, swung wide her scimitar and lopped Nanny's head clean off, ending the fight.

That was the end of the night, and as I said, I never made it back to find out how the adventure ended, although in fairness, I don't think Jack ever made it back to this particular plotline either. After the new year, he changed the city's name and began running a slightly different sort of campaign there. When Traviata next sets foot in Scarabae-Umberwell, it will be a far different place than she remembers. I imagine her stepping off a boat on the docks, her memories of Zarubad already fading, unable to remember why she ever left the dank and gloom of her home, to rediscover anew what weird delights await her in the remade Umberwell.