Cults, cultists and D&D

This came up in response to my recent post on mapping generic OSR-land. When I drew the map, I covered it with cults until I started running out of map-space to put them in. Gus L's comment, on the associated G+ thread? 'Needs more cults.'

Why do we love cults and cultists so much? There are at least ten really obvious reasons:

1. Tradition. Evil cults have always been a big part of D&D: as Gus L recently reminded us, Temple of the Frog is all about invading a cult temple, and that has a decent claim to be the first D&D adventure module ever printed. Other highly influential early D&D adventures, such as B4 The Lost City and N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God, also prominently featured weird cults. 
2. Influence. Evil cultists are the default enemies in both Call of Cthulhu and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which have both been enormously influential on subsequent weird fantasy gaming. And they got the idea from weird fiction authors like Lovecraft and Howard, who also used a lot of cults as antagonists. 
3. Moral clarity. It might not be OK to kill the barbarian just for being a barbarian, or the orc just for being an orc - but if someone voluntarily chose to join the cult of Skull-Fang The Planet-Fucker, then that's on them. When you stab them to death in mid-ritual, you can legitimately say they had it coming. 
4. Dungeon-Friendliness. 'It's an ancient tomb' is probably still the number one explanation for why an underground complex full of monsters, magic, and treasure is lying around in the middle of nowhere: but if 'it's a cult temple' isn't number two, then I'd bet it's pretty close. Cultists need somewhere to gather in secret; they need somewhere to perform their horrible rituals; they need somewhere to store their mundane and magical treasures; and they probably have both the motivation and the ability to create traps and summon monsters to protect themselves. Instant dungeon. 
5. Appropriate Scale, Disproportionate Influence. If the city is being openly ruled by the Dark Warlord of Woe, then it's often going to be pretty tricky for the PCs to meaningfully take him on: storming his fortress, or fighting his entire army, are going to be beyond the capacities of most D&D groups. But if it's being ruled secretly, from behind the scenes, by the cult of the Dark Sorcerer of Shadows, then saving it is totally within the reach of a party of 4-6 homicidal lunatics. Those 20 soldiers you just hacked down are probably less than 1% of the Warlord's army, but those 20 cultists you just slaughtered might well be the Sorcerer's entire cult.
6. Easy Excuse for Magic and Monsters. Why can the cult champion vomit rivers of boiling blood at his enemies? Because he's a cultist. Why can't the party wizard learn to do that? Because they haven't devoted their life and their sanity to Skull-Fang the Planet-Fucker. 'It's a gift from their dark patron!' is effectively an open excuse for giving your cultists anything from minor mutations to demonic guardians to actual world-ending powers.
7. Scalability. Directly linked to 6, above. Unless there are whole armies of them, then 'drive off the goblins' is always going to be a low-level adventure. But 'destroy the cult' could easily be an appropriate job for level 1 novices or level 10 champions, depending on just how much evil mojo they possess.
8. Easy Excuse For Violence. I personally hate enemies that attack on sight and fight to the death, especially if they're supposed to be intelligent humans. But if you really want some, then 'they're cultists' is a pretty good excuse. They attack on sight and fight to the death because they know that, if they don't, Skull-Fang will eat their souls.
9. Cultists Love MacGuffins. The rituals and requirements of cults are so arbitrary that it's very easy to hang adventures around them. Why do your PCs have to defend the Jewelled Skull? Because the cult it's sacred to will do anything to regain it. Why do they have to retrieve the Ebon Dagger? Because the cult can't summon their monster-god without it. And so on.
10. Easy Excuse For a Final Boss Fight. If you attack an army, then it's usually going to hit back immediately, with as much force as it can muster. But if you attack a cult temple, then there's an inbuilt excuse for the GM to save the worst until last. It's only when you finally breach the Inner Sanctum that the High Priest, enthroned in his place of power, is able and willing to summon the Horror From Beyond. And you have an easy excuse for making it a load-bearing boss, too: of course the rest of the cult will scatter when you hack their god to bits right in front of them!

Cultists, in other words, are easy to build D&D adventures around... maybe too easy. They're a narrative shortcut, a way to explain why the otherwise extremely unlikely combination of elements which constitute a generic D&D scenario should exist in the same place at the same time. But the shortcut only works if you assume the existence of a very odd bunch of people, namely the kind of people willing to behave like cultists in D&D adventures. Why, exactly, is Patricia the Priestess willing to sit in a dark room for twenty-four hours a day, on the off-chance some intruders wander in for her to stab with a sacrificial dagger? Because she's a cultist. OK. But why is she a cultist? What can possibly have happened to her to make her decide that signing her soul away to Skull-Fang the Planet-Fucker would be a good idea?

A lot of adventures gloss over this stuff, and clearly expect the PCs to find it unremarkable that some random cult leader was able to round up ten, or twenty, or a hundred people from the surrounding community who were so impressionable or crazy or desperate that they were willing to act as his personal cultist army. And I'd buy that if the cult activities were a bit less extreme: if all that most of the cultists were expected to do was wear big robes, chant creepy prayers, and maybe intimidate people who persisted in asking awkward questions about exactly what happens at the old standing stones on the night of the new moon. But most D&D cults are hardcore, and expect their cultists to demonstrate fanatical loyalty even when their own lives and/or souls are on the line. Where is your average dark magician supposed to find dozens or hundreds of people like that?

(Lovecraft himself isn't very helpful on this topic, because - like many people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - he saw socially deviant behaviour like crime and cultishness as being basically genetic. If you have the wrong heritage, then you'll just naturally gravitate towards worshiping giant tentacle monsters. It's probably fairly obvious why that's a line of explanation I'm reluctant to make too much use of, though...)

I've often found myself thinking about this as I read D&D adventures, and Warhammer adventures and, perhaps above all, Call of Cthulhu adventures. Who are these people? Why do they do these things? Call of Cthulhu had a standard way of dodging this question, in the form of its concept of 'cultist-level insanity': Cthulhu Mythos cultists had Sanity scores of 0, indicating that their minds had been so shredded by exposure to supernatural forces that acting like cultists was now the only thing they were capable of. But that always struck me as a bit of a cop-out answer, especially as they often didn't seem all that mad in other respects: no delusional or irrational behaviour, just a rewrite of their life-goals to read 'summon Cthulhu at all costs'. 'They're all mind-controlled or possessed' is even more of a cop-out: at that point you're not really dealing with people, just with zombies who happen to still be technically alive. In fact, mind-controlled cultists come closer to the original zombie myths of Haiti than any modern-day undead shambler.

If they're not mindless drones, though, then why do they do all this D&D cultist stuff? Brainwashing? Fear? Drugs? Desperation? Greed? Are they upholding an old family tradition? Do they think the ends justify the means? Do they have some kind of value-system so bizarre that they believe what they're doing is actually a good thing? Are they just hopelessly devoted to their leader, driven by the deluded conviction that if they just kill one more person, then their sexy, charismatic Dark Master will finally give them the attention and recognition they deserve? Whatever it is, it must be something pretty powerful, or they wouldn't be sitting in an underground temple someplace waiting for the PCs to break in and kill them all.

Regular readers of this blog will already have guessed where I'm going with this. Cultists who are cultists because they're cultists are narratively convenient, but they're also kinda boring: they can't be bribed or intimidated or reasoned with, so the only way to deal with them is through yet another commando raid on yet another evil temple. But if the cult leader has to rely on more mundane means to keep his followers in line, then the PCs can disrupt or exploit them: they can steal the drugs he has them hooked on, or engineer a situation that will shatter his illusion of omnipotence, or offer his desperate followers some kind of hope for the future that doesn't involve feeding people to demons.

I understand that sometimes the whole reason you're using cultists in your adventure is precisely because you want antagonists who are basically human zombies - foes who have organisation and intelligence and whatnot, but who will never say or think anything other than 'Die, infidel, in the name of the Planet-Fucker!' But if you're not, you can still get all the advantages listed above while still making them into actual people - with the added advantage of helping to differentiate each cult from the last one. A personality cult built around an charismatic leader and his adoring devotees is going to be very different from a conspiracy of ambitious, amoral individuals who worship demons as a get-rich-quick scheme, and is open to very different kinds of solutions, whereas yet another bunch of robe-wearing, dagger-waving lunatics is only going to be differentiated from the last lot by the exact kind of magic and monsters they have in their inevitable Evil Temple.

In my current Team Tsathogga game, the PCs basically are cult leaders, and it's been fascinating for me to watch the various schemes they use to impose and shore up their made-up religious authority. There's some good drama right there. Might as well use it, right?

[Actual Play] Severed hands in lobster-pots: The Sinister Schemes of Team Tsathogga

Man, it feels as though all I use this blog for these days is actual play reports. But the crazy keeps coming, and someone has to record it all for posterity, right?

So the PCs were last seen fleeing into the night, after escaping from the Temple of the Golden Lotus. They were convinced that the monks were up to something sinister, but their captive sadly succumbed to massive brain trauma without reawakening - probably something to do with being hit on the head with a fucking door - so they needed someone else to question. Heading to the nearest stupa indicated on Hash's sketch map, they noticed that it was evidently being maintained and inhabited, with neat channels of water and gardens of golden lotus growing around it. Concluding that this would be a good chance to learn more about what the monks were up to, they dressed Sovan up in the dead monk's robes and sent him in to pose as a messenger from the temple, ostensibly to warn them about the dangerous band of travellers who had just escaped from it. The monks within thanked him for the news, and asked him whether these people were associated with 'the old order'. Sovan, bluffing desperately, guessed that they probably were, and the monks looked serious and sad and said that it was tragic that such divisions had been necessary, but that the work they were doing had to be done, regardless of the cost to themselves or anyone else. Was it not for that very reason that they had come here, reclaiming this stupa from the hungry ghosts who had haunted it? Sovan agreed heartily and left as quickly as possible.

Monks: 1. Hungry Ghosts: 0.

Concluding they needed to know more, but fearing that the power of the stupas was protecting the monks from mind-altering magic (which they had seemed oddly resistant to back at the temple), the PCs hit upon a plan to lure them out by staging a 'hungry ghost' of their own. Using Command Corpse on the dead monk's body, they ordered it to start stumbling and moaning around near the stupa, while illusion magic was used to give it an unearthly glow. Sure enough, the monks came rushing out to exorcise it, at which point the PCs unleashed a barrage of Hold Person and Charm Person spells which left them all either paralysed or charmed. Leaping out of cover, the PCs then staged a heroic 'battle' with the animated corpse, before telling the charmed monks that they were secret foreign agents of the Golden Lotus who had come to save them from this undead horror. (At this point Circe went off on a mad tangent about how the paralysed monks had been frozen by the weight of their guilt and would only recover if everyone started confessing their sins, but the rest of the party shushed her.)

Claiming to have just arrived from overseas, they quizzed the monks on what they were doing out here, and learned that they were performing one part of an immense geomantic working which was designed to cleanse the whole kingdom of Qelong from the evils afflicting it and put the naga back to sleep... at the small price of 'moving the remaining population painlessly on to their next incarnations'. It was the disagreement over the necessity of this rather drastic plan which had led to the fissuring of the order, and the apparent slaughter of most of the moderates by the hardliners. Reassuring the monks that they were totally on their side, and that the super-secret foreign Golden Lotus cult of which they were the agents would remember their tragic but necessary sacrifices forever, the party ran off before the Hold Person spells wore off on the paralysed-but-uncharmed monks.

Grim though their solution was, the PCs had to admit the monks had a point: if no other way of ending the land's corruption could be found, Qelong would soon be nothing more than a blighted, depopulated monster-factory. With renewed urgency they headed for the hills - but along the way they chanced across a strange road, cut through the fields in a completely straight line, wide enough for several people to walk abreast. Following this odd path to the south-east, they found its origin point appeared to be a strange metal container embedded in the earth as though fallen from a great height, covered in strange snakeman glyphs and warning signs, with a hatch hanging open on one side and a few human finger-bones lodged in the handle. For a moment they thought that this unremarkable-looking object might be the fleet beacon they were looking for, but a Comprehend Languages spell soon revealed otherwise, translating the snakeman script as reading WARNING: PROJECT MYRMIDON BIOWEAPON. HANDLE WITH CARE! Wisely, the PCs decided not to handle it at all.

Probably harmless, though, right?

As they ascended into the hills, the miasma clinging to the land became worse and worse. Noting that their mechanic droid, Princess, was unaffected by it, the party started using her as a scout, sending her to look over each ridge and report back. First she found an abandoned village, which actually turned out to be infested with a swarm of horrible skittering severed hands that chased the PCs from the area. Next she found a crude fort built on a larger-than-human scale, which the PCs concluded must have been built and then abandoned by the vatspawned demons who had answered the call of the fleet beacon. Then she went over the next ridge and didn't come back. Following cautiously, peering into a miasmic haze so powerful that they could barely see through it, the PCs saw what could only be the fleet beacon itself embedded in the hillside: a shining metal object the size of a house, with one demon watching over it from a crude watchtower, and several more pinning Princess to the ground and piling rocks on top of her. One panel high up on the beacon's side was hanging open, and what looked like a human corpse in a ragged silk robe was dangling down from it, its upper body apparently embedded in the beacon's inner workings.

So the party faced a problem. They needed to somehow deactivate the beacon if Qelong was to be saved, but the waves of arcane radiation pulsing off it were so powerful that they'd probably just melt if they came too close. Their first bright idea was to set fire to the dangling corpse with flaming arrows, in the hope that the flames would be sufficient to cripple the beacon's mechanisms; they thus took up position on a ridge overlooking the beacon, although even getting within bowshot of it meant absorbing so much malefic radiation that Jack and Sophie started sweating blood. Hash began firing flaming arrows at the corpse, hitting on his third attempt. The demons assumed they were under attack, and started advancing cautiously towards the ridge, shields held high over their heads; but the party fled as soon as Hash had hit his target, and the demons showed no interest in pursuing, clearly prioritising the protection of the beacon. The corpse burned and fell, but the beacon's malefic energies remained as strong as ever.

The PCs then came up with a new plan: seeing that dead flesh was apparently unaffected by the radiation, they decided to use the crawling hands from the abandoned village as delivery systems for improvised acid bombs. To these ends, they went to the edge of the village, dug a series of shallow pits, put pungi sticks at the bottom, and covered them with leaves and branches. They knew from their earlier conversations with refugees that these hands would have been severed because the dark energies of the land's curse had become so concentrated in them that living flesh simply came apart under their touch, and assumed that the same would be true now in their severed but animate state: so Skadi, who was to act as their bait, put on her gas mask and armour to ensure that every inch of her skin was protected from their touch. The party then lurked in wait in the bushes, holding pots, buckets, and even gongs and cymbals looted from the temple at Pralaj - anything big enough to trap a hand under, basically - while Skadi walked into the village and tried to look tempting.

They're coming! Run away!

Sure enough, scuttling hands soon came swarming out of the houses and began crawling towards her. Skadi fled, leaping over the pits: the hands pursued, and lacking any intelligence some of them fell and were impaled on the spikes below, leaving them flexing uselessly in holes. Skadi led the rest of the mob into the bushes, at which point all the other PCs jumped out, slammed their improvised traps over the hands, scooped them up with lids, and scattered, while the animated hands bounced around frantically inside their crude prisons. The remaining hands gave chase, with Jack, Sophie, and Hogarth blazing away over their shoulders with lasers and magic missiles to thin the pack; but Sovan stumbled as he ran, and one of the hands gleefully threw itself at his face, causing his forehead to split apart and blood to pour down into his eyes. Desperately, he tried to catch it inside the same pot that he was already carrying one hand in, knowing that if he was too slow then both hands would escape and probably kill him; but one good Dexterity roll later, he nimbly used his pot-lid to flip the hand off his face and into the pot before its current inmate could leap to freedom. With the remaining hands now lasered to death, the PCs then circled back and used long pairs of tongs to extract the ones caught in their pits, dropping them into yet more improvised lobster-pots.

They were now the proud owners of nine evil severed hands in boxes. For their plan to work, Hogarth would need to control them using Command Corpse spells, so they retreated to the abandoned fort to rest; but their sleep was tormented by headaches and nightmares, and memorising new spells proved impossible. Descending from the hills, they dosed themselves up with extra large helpings of golden lotus tea (to which both Circe and Sophie were now becoming somewhat addicted), and spent another day resting: but they were once again interrupted, this time by a booming voice calling out from the trees nearby: 'Hu-mans! Vord! VORD!'

It was good news, for once. Vord was their demon ally, who they had last seen in the foothills of Deathfrost Mountain, marching off towards the distant call of the beacon; and while the demons calling to them were clearly not Vord himself, they obviously knew him and had been told by him to watch out for them, as their references to 'green-skin' (Jack) and 'purple-hand' (Hogarth) demonstrated. (Jack and Hogarth had been left permanently discoloured in two separate magical mishaps the year before.) Warily they followed the demon messengers, who led them back into the hills and away from the beacon, into a deep valley filled with dead trees. There, in a hidden camp in the thickest part of the forest, they found Vord - looking much the same as ever, except for huge masses of scar tissue around both ears.

Vord's welcoming new home.

Vord was delighted to see them, and they exchanged stories, hampered somewhat by the fact that Vord was now clearly rather hard of hearing. He told them of how he had come to the beacon, and found thousands of his kin assembled there, waiting for their 'commanding officers'; how he had told them that the empire which had created them was long dead, and they were now free to do as they chose; and how they had built a fort and claimed the lands around the beacon as their own, safe in the knowledge that its radiation would protect them from any human encroachment. But then the snake-men had come from the Purple Islands, in some kind of flying machine whose loudspeakers played their hateful command codes in a continuous loop, hijacking the genetic programming locked into the vat-grown brains of the demons and forcing them to obey. Vord had escaped by stabbing himself in the ears the moment the machine crossed the horizon; a handful of other demons, absent from the fort when it arrived, had also slipped the net, and had been gathered together by him here. All the rest, enslaved once more by their ancient masters, had been marched away into the jungles of the west, leaving only the ten sentries who now watched over the beacon itself.

The PCs told Vord that the beacon's energies had corrupted the river and all the lands watered by it, bringing untold suffering to the people of Qelong, and that it now had to be deactivated before the Naga awoke. Vord agreed that putting the Naga back to sleep would be best for everyone, but he was very unwilling to risk the lives of his followers, and reluctant to kill the sentries unless he had to: after all, they were only doing what they had been programmed to do, and he knew only too well what it was like to have your free will overruled by someone else's override codes. The party decided to give their 'acid-hand' plan a test run, and used a Command Corpse spell to control one of the hands, sending it crawling towards the beacon with a jar of space-acid strapped to its back, with orders to throw itself into the exposed machinery; meanwhile the PCs staged a distraction, involving lots of noise, poorly-aimed arrow-fire, and a dancing purple snakeman conjured with a Purple Simulacrum spell. While the demon guards were trying to work out what the dancing purple snakeman could possibly mean, the hand completed its suicide mission and threw itself into the machinery, causing a noticeable distortion in the energy pulsation but no obvious reduction in its strength.

The PCs regrouped and reconsidered. Damaging the mechanism didn't seem to be helping, but the only person who might be able to safely turn it off was Princess, who was currently in captivity. Consulting with Vord, they formed a new plan: they would go back up to their sniping ledge and try to non-lethally incapacitate as many demons as possible with magic, at which point he and his followers would charge the remainder and try to bring them down without killing them. One volley of Light and Hold Person spells later, half the demons were either blind or paralysed, and Vord and his comrades ran in to grapple and bludgeon the rest, with only one of them getting killed in the process. Mentally programmed as they were, the captured demons simply wouldn't stop struggling, so Vord and his followers ultimately dug a huge hole and buried their captives up to their necks in earth, hoping that they'd eventually find a way of deprogramming them. They then moved the crude watchtower over to the beacon, allowing the now-rescued Princess to climb up to the exposed panel. After several hours of intensive tinkering with the burned and acid-damaged machinery inside, the faithful droid mechanic was able to safely deactivate the beacon's power source, ending the magical radiation being vomited into the water, air, and soil of Qelong. Before they left, however, Jack looted a magic ring from the corpse they had burned earlier - seemingly the body of a Qelongese magician who had tried and failed to deactivate the beacon months before - which some experimentation revealed to be a ring of water walking. Given Jack's crippling phobia of drowning, this made him feel very much safer.

Jack-the-Fighter! Su-per-star! Do you think you're what they say you are?

This was a major achievement: but the surrounding area was still a blighted, poisoned wasteland, the Golden Lotus monks were still presumably planning on performing their magical hard reboot of the Qelong valley, and the snakemen would presumably be instantly aware that the beacon was no longer emitting its signal. After making sure it could not be easily turned back on again by removing several key components and burying them under Vord's hidden camp, the PCs decided to leave before the snakemen and their demon army came back to find out what had happened; so, bidding farewell to Vord once more, they headed back down into the lowlands, giving the Temple of the Golden Lotus a wide berth. After several days travel, during which Sophie's golden lotus consumption reached alarming levels, they returned to the ruined town of Pralaj, where the handful of remaining people bemoaned their now poisoned river - surely nothing to do with all the space acid the PCs dumped into it during their fight with the naga-kin! - and begged to accompany them downriver; so, with a straggling trail of seventy-odd malnourished refugees now limping along behind them, they headed on towards the city where they had seen the foreign mercenaries on their journey upriver. Not wanting to tangle with a numerous and well-organised force, they left the refugees camped several miles away while the party crept off to scout the city under the cover of darkness.

They found the city desolate. The same straight path that they had found emerging from the Myrmidon capsule, much wider now, had apparently intersected with the river and then simply carried on down its bank, unable to cross the water, until it reached the city wall. The city's gates were broken open, and no sign of life could be seen within. Entering cautiously, the PCs saw no people, no animals, no life of any kind... just scattered bones, picked clean, and a single silver ant, gleaming in the moonlight, which Circe scooped up in a bowl. Growing increasingly anxious as they realised that the city seemed to contain no organic materials at all - no scraps of leather, no rags of cloth - they began to hurriedly retreat, only to hear crashing sounds from a building, from which soon stumbled a bulky humanoid figure caked in a thick layer of clay, completely enclosing it apart from its eyes and mouth. From its crude mouth-hole poured a stream of silver ants, swarming across its clay-covered body. The party fled, woke the refugees, and told them that they needed to get across the river as soon as possible, ultimately rigging up a crude rope-drawn raft with which to ferry everyone across to the far side. (The ring of water-walking helped, as it allowed Jack to simply walk over the river carrying the rope to which the raft was attached.) The next day they continued down the river, seeing the broad, straight trail that the ant-creatures had cut along its other bank, but hoping that none had managed to cross to their side of the water.

As they drew near the capital of Qelong, which stood at the mouth of the river, they were stopped by a patrol of exhausted-looking horsemen, who made a half-hearted attempt to question them about which pretender to the throne they were loyal to before simply giving up and confessing that everything had fallen apart. First the mercenary soldiers had come charging downriver under cover of darkness: well-equipped and highly motivated, they had been easily able to breach the city's fortifications, fight their way down to the harbour, capture all the genuinely seaworthy ships, and sail away, all within the space of a few hours. After them had come the horde of refugees from the city the mercenaries had abandoned, bearing awful stories about ant-monsters covered in clay... and then the monsters themselves had arrived, implacable and unstoppable, smashing their way through the already-breached fortifications and into the city itself. Everyone who could had fled, and all the bridges over the river had been torn down, leaving the whole population crammed onto the river's left bank. The right bank was in the hands of the ant-monsters, now.

THE ENEMY.

As they approached the city, the PCs saw the situation for themselves. In one half of the once proud royal capital, thousands of refugees crowded together in a seething mass of human misery. In the other half, over the river, stumbling figures lurched in mobs through the streets, covered with glistening ant swarms and a thick armour of clay: victims of PROJECT MYRMIDON. Circe tried to use Speak With Animals to talk to her captive ant, but all she heard was psychic static. This was not an enemy which could be tricked or reasoned with. Staring grimly over the river, Hash began muttering that maybe the Order of the Golden Lotus had the right idea about Qelong after all...

Will the PCs save Qelong from this out-of-control bioweapon? Will they abandon it to its fate? If they leave, how will Sophie obtain a new supply of the golden lotus petals she now takes three times a day for 'medicinal purposes'? Have faith in the Frog God! All shall be revealed!

[Actual Play] The Lotos-Eaters: Team Tsathogga Head Upriver

So, the last installment of Team Tsathogga's adventures saw them perched on top of their improvised wall near the flooded temple that the naga-kin were using as their headquarters, ready to take on whatever emerged from it after the sun went down. As the darkness gathered, Hash's nightvision picked out slithering forms moving out of the building, taking up positions on its sloping roof: then the temple bell rang out once more, and a single figure leaned out from the tower. Covered in robes of embroidered silk, once-gorgeous but now foul with river-slime, the figure held out its hands towards the PCs and began orating at them sonorously, its words rising and falling like a chant as it gestured eloquently towards them with its clawed and misshaped hands. Unfortunately, the PCs had used up all their Comprehend Languages spells earlier that day, so none of them had any idea what it was saying.

Seeing the PCs make no response to its oratory, the figure appeared to grow angry. Turning to address its followers, it began to speak to them, gesturing furiously towards where the PCs crouched on their makeshift barricade. Alarmed by the awful sounds spilling out of the darkness, the rest of the PCs begged Hash to do something about the situation - so he drew back his bow, and loosed an arrow right into the orator's body. Stumbling back, the robed figure howled a curse and gestured at Circe, but her deranged faith in the Frog God defended her from its magic: and with a shot that only an elf could possibly have made successfully, Hash's second arrow sliced through the darkness and silenced him forever.

Lizard Man, by GutsBerserk. No matter how mysterious you look, you'll still drop to an arrow in the eye...

As their leader dropped, the naga-kin went berserk, charging out of the temple to assault the barricade from all sides. Unable to see what was happening outside their narrow circle of lamplight, the PCs hurled more acid bombs and gas grenades at the naga-kin surging through the floodwater towards them, horribly aware that more were clambering up onto other parts of their makeshift wall as they did so; then, as more of the mutant beasts came rushing at them along the top of the barricade, they unleashed a storm of spells and arrows at them, while Circe held down the button on her looted snakeman pain-wand and blazed away with it for all she was worth, sending naga-kin tumbling down in agony on every side. Subjected to this withering bombardment, the creatures broke and ran, howling, into the night; and once the sounds had faded into the distance, the PCs descended, cautiously, to explore what lay within the temple itself.

Within lay a disturbing scene. Circles of bloated, mutated children, their skin discouloured by long immersion in river-water, knelt in silent circles around a central pit, in which had been heaped all the wealth that the naga-kin had looted from this once-rich trading town: skeins of torn and filthy silk, sodden books, ink-run calligraphic scrolls, and once-beautiful painted screens all lay heaped in the floodwater, slimy and ruined and foul. Here and there, however, gold still glittered in the PCs lantern-light - and seeing that the children merely watched them silently as they advanced, Skadi's criminal instincts rose to the fore, and she pushed forwards and began probing the pile with a stick. When this brought no immediate retribution, she succumbed to greed and started stuffing items of jewellery into her pockets.

The effect was dramatic. The items heaped in the pit pulsed, heaved, and then burst upwards in a shower of sodden finery, as an immense creature hurtled upwards: a gigantic snake with four heads, each face resembling a human woman with fanged mouths and long, long trailing waterfalls of hair. The naga hurled itself upon Skadi, tearing bloody chunks out of her body with its four mouths, while her companions rained attacks upon it: the space acid they hurled at it burned ragged holes in its body, while Hash used a Light spell to blind one of its heads and Hogarth cast a Choke spell to throttle a second. Finally Skadi shoved her shock baton into one of the holes burned into the creature's flank and electrocuted it from the inside, killing it: and as it crashed down its body dissolved into a wave of venomous river-water, rushing rapidly out and killing the naga-kin children where they knelt. The PCs fled for the tower steps, with variable success: but such was Skadi's hardihood that she fought off the mingling venoms burning in her bloodstream and staggered onwards, bearing wounds upon her body which would have killed any four normal men.

(Skadi passed three saves vs poison in succession, any one of which would have killed her. She really earned that treasure!)

It was a bit like this, but much less heroic. Art from Kenneth Hite's Qelong, naturally.

Searching the body of the fallen priest revealed only a strange jewelled dagger, which Circe swiftly incorporated into her growing Evil Dagger Collection; so once the PCs had finished taking all the remaining unspoiled valuables from the heap of offerings, they headed off to inform the townsfolk of their victory. The next morning, the people headed out to the temple, where they gathered up the bloated, mutated remains of the people who had once been their friends, relatives, and, most heartbreakingly, children: but the surviving naga-kin seemed to have fled for good, restoring a measure of safety to the ragged survivors who remained. About half of them decided to take the opportunity to attempt the long, hazardous overland journey to the coast, while the rest opted to maintain their barricades and try to wait things out until the troubles finally ended. The PCs stayed with this latter group for a few days, recovering from their injuries; then, promising to check up on them during their return journey, they headed further upriver, towards the source of the Qelong's woes. By this stage Sophie was starting to feel a little strange, so they decided not to eat or drink anything which they hadn't cast Purify Food and Water on first.

Their journeys soon brought them to a fork in the river. Uncertain which way to proceed, they decided to make camp: each day they would catch one fish from each fork of the river, and Circe would use Speak to Animals to question them about what they had seen upriver, in the hope of deducing which fork would lead them closer to the fleet beacon. (For some reason, they opted to stay for exactly five days, on the grounds that their experiment wouldn't be 'scientific' unless they questioned five fish from each branch.) On the fourth day, they spotted a band of starving refugees stumbling out of the hills, several of whom were missing their hands: and in exchange for a few castings of Purify Food and Water the refugees told their miserable tale, explaining that the mutilated individuals were the victims of a curse which seemed to have befallen these lands, the power of which gathered in their hands until they had to be amputated in order to avoid afflicting everyone they touched. They also told the PCs that the east fork of the river would take them past the famous Temple of the Golden Lotus, the holiest site in all of Qelong, although what state it was in now they couldn't say. As Circe's fish-interrogations had strongly suggested that the east fork was the more seriously afflicted of the two, the PCs heard this news with considerable interest; and the next day, after questioning one more fish from each branch of the river, they headed down the fork to the south-east.

Once again they found themselves moving through abandoned villages, but with a difference: everywhere, in abandoned pools and overgrown gardens, they found swathes of gold-coloured lotus flowers. Detect Evil and Detect Magic spells revealed that these flowers were exempt from the air of evil and magic which hung over everything else in this blighted land: so, reasoning that they might be of use in warding away the curse the refugees had spoken of, they gathered the flowers and experimented with mashing them into a soup, which they then mixed with boiling water and fed to Sophie. Sophie experienced trippy visions of wheeling geometric shapes expanding in endless fractals, and spent the next few hours with blank eyes and a big, stupid smile on her face; but upon coming down from her trip, she reported that she was definitely feeling a bit less odd than she had been before.

(I was rather proud of the fact that the PCs worked out both the need to use Purify Food and Water spells on everything they ate and drank, and the potential value of the lotuses as anti-curse medication, entirely on their own, without the need for any hints or dice rolls...)

That evening they came to the temple: a towering stupa surrounded by formal gardens laid out on geometric lines, in which the ubiquitous lotus flowers grew in great profusion. Here and there, serene, golden-robed monks and nuns could be seen tending the grounds, in striking contrast to the desolation which surrounded the stupa on every side. Hailing them, the PCs received a friendly greeting, and one of the monks went off to fetch a middle-aged nun from the stupa, who welcomed them in their own language. She invited them to stay at the temple, but insisted that the holy laws of their order would permit them to accept them as guests only for one day and one night, no more. Incredulous, the PCs pointed out that the land outside their temple was now a monster-filled wasteland of death and chaos, but the nun politely but firmly insisted that however regrettable the circumstances, they could not permit guests to remain with them for longer than twenty-four hours. Grumbling, the PCs then asked how the temple had been able to preserve itself from the horrors which had depopulated the rest of the region. The nun explained that they had been able to keep the ravages of the curse at bay through the rigorous maintenance of spiritual purity and the consumption of a special tea made from golden lotus petals, which she gave Circe a quick lesson in how to brew.

After a humble supper of plain rice and vegetable broth, the PCs were packed off to the guest dormitory, where they discovered that the temple had another guest that night: a man named Sovan, with a slightly wild, traumatised look about him. Sovan (who also happened to speak their language) explained that his village had turned to indiscriminate golden lotus consumption when the curse struck: many of them simply abandoned themselves to the lotus-visions and starved to death, but after overdosing on lotus blossoms he had experienced some kind of transcendent visionary experience from which he had emerged with miracle-working powers. Held captive for months by a cannibal clan in the hills, who found his healing abilities useful, he had finally escaped and fled to the temple for shelter and guidance - only to be told, to his disbelief, that even he would only be permitted to remain for one day and one night. Upon learning that the PCs were searching for the source of the evil which had befallen Qelong, he eagerly agreed to join their band.

By this point the party were intensely suspicious of their hosts, especially as Sovan confirmed that giving charity to the poor and desperate was meant to be one of their key functions: throwing people like him back out into the wilds went against everything they were supposed to believe in. Their suspicions were intensified by the fact that the number of monks in the temple was obviously far smaller than the number it was intended to house, and deepened even further when they found that they had been locked into their dormitory for the night. Deciding that something very odd was happening here, Skadi picked the lock and the PCs crept out to explore the temple: they took some food and lotus petals from the kitchens, and stole a bag of random scrolls from the library, where Hash also sketched a copy of a huge map of Qelong which hung on the library wall, illustrating the positions of all its many stupas. (Fully two-thirds of these had markers pinned next to them bearing sylised gold lotus designs, which made the party even more nervous.) Sneaking up the stairs behind the main prayer-hall they found a room above it, with two monks standing guard while two more meditated silently nearby; so, reasoning that something important was probably inside, they sent Sophie up to try to bypass the guards with Charm Person spells.

SO SUSPICIOUS.

Unfortunately, everything went wrong. The spells didn't work, and Sophie was promptly jumped on and restrained by four weirdly-calm monks, who pinned her down on the floor. The rest of the PCs, hearing her cries, decided they needed to get out of there, and sneaked back to their room, lay down, and pretended to have been asleep the whole time. Through the guarded door came the head monk, who looked entirely normal apart from the trippy golden mandalas in his eyes, and who gently requested that Sophie explain her presence at on doorstep. She claimed to have just been sleepwalking, but he was unconvinced, and gave orders for her to be locked in one of the storerooms beneath the temple. Shortly afterwards, the PCs were 'woken' by the same woman they'd spoken to before, who knocked on their door and explained that their comrade had been apprehended trespassing in the temple. Hash stealthily cast Charm Person on her, and begged her to intercede on Sophie's behalf: but she returned an hour later, visibly agitated, saying that there was no question of Sophie being released before she had been thoroughly interrogated, and the rest of them would still have to leave, without her, the following day. When asked if she could at least promise that their friend would not be tortured, all she could say was that if she was truly innocent, she would surely be released unharmed in due course.

After she left, the PCs agreed that they had to stage a jailbreak and rescue Sophie immediately. Being able to see in the dark, Hash sneaked out and began searching the complex, soon spotting the two guards posted outside a seemingly-normal kitchen storeroom; he returned for the others, and Sovan cast Hold Person to try to immobilise the guards, but they both shrugged off the effect and leaped forwards, yelling for reinforcements. Skadi shouldered her way to the front to take up her role as 'designated meatshield', flailing uselessly at the monks with her shock baton as they dodged and wove, pummeling her with nerve strikes which would have felled a weaker warrior: Circe's Command spell temporarily dropped one of them, but the other simply dodged or resisted everything they threw at him, yelling for help the whole time. But aid came from an unexpected source when Sophie, realising from the commotion outside that her friends had come to rescue her, charged at the door of her cell - and proved that all her weight training had paid off by smashing it clean off its hinges. Snatching up the falling door, she whacked one monk with it from behind, while trampling the other underfoot; Princess then pinned the still-mobile monk to the wall, her robot body impervious to his nerve strikes, while the rest of the party flooded forwards to pummel him into submission. Their rescue effected, they then fled for their lives, taking the unconscious monk (and the storeroom door) with them.

Pursuit was not long in coming. Seeing lantern-bearing monks running towards them across the gardens, the PCs ran for the perimeter wall, with Sophie propping her stolen door up against it to use as a gangplank. Hash ran straight up it to the top of the wall, and started pulling the others over; but the stompy metal feet of Princess crashed straight through the boards, and Skadi yelled that it was time for the robot to be abandoned to her fate. Circe, Sophie, and Sovan refused to leave her, throwing down ropes and hauling her up one bicep-straining foot at a time, until finally she crashed over the top and toppled down onto the other side; and with Hash's darkvision to guide them they fled away into the night, with Sovan advising them of little-known drover's trails that carried them deeper and deeper into the depopulated countryside to the east.

Just what are these gold-robed monks doing in their temple? Why are they so calm all the time? What do the markers on the map mean? What is up with that guy's eyes? Watch Circe and her minions comrades try, and probably fail, to discover the answers to these and other mysteries in the next installment of The Adventures of Team Tsathogga!

Almost a review: Mutant Crawl Classics adventure modules

Derek Holland asked for reviews of the adventure modules which were released as Kickstarter rewards for Mutant Crawl Classics. So here they are.

All these adventures have good black and white art, with the maps, in particular, being wonderfully embellished with illustrations. They draw on a very similar set of ideas: mutants, robots, ancient computers, and laser guns. Only one of them makes any use of manimals, and none of them use plantients at all, which seems to confirm the impression I got from the main MCC rulebook that they were basically just tacked on. (It's a shame: the chance to play a sentient heap of radioactive ivy was one of the things which attracted me to the game in the first place!) All but one of them also features artificial intelligences as NPCs, usually in very prominent roles - so if you want to run all of them then I hope your players enjoy talking to faces on computer screens...

Hive of the Overmind (level 0): A 0-level character funnel, with a great concept - the PCs are people who have been kidnapped by ant-men and drugged into servitude within their hive, but one day a giant bee attacks and the mental grip of the ant-men weakens enough for them to make their escape into the ancient science complex below! What I like about this one is that there are multiple different ways for the PCs to escape the hive: steal a digging machine from the tunnels, ride to freedom on the backs of giant horseflies, or even use the labs to plug themselves into the hive mind and turn the tables on the antmen, enslaving them in turn! There's also some good stuff with warring robots down in the tunnels and a chance to do the whole you-say-you-are-programmed-to-destroy-all-nonhumans-but-look-you-yourself-are-a-nonhuman-the-incinerator-is-that-way routine, which is always good for a laugh. As a way to start a new campaign, it's way better than being hired to kill some goblins by an old guy in a tavern.

A Fallen Star For All (level 1): An ancient industrial complex is torn open by a meteor, and now a whole bunch of scavengers are converging on it. It's alright, but sadly most of the rival scavengers just attack on sight, as does virtually everything inside the complex itself. There's a fun bit with a robot nanny called MATRON, and skeletons in containment suits are a classic, but overall you could probably put together something just as good yourself with a few hours work.

Incursion of the Ultradimension (level 2): This is basically the same set-up as the last one: a crazy AI and a bunch of killer mutants in an ancient science complex. There's some stuff about incursions from another dimension, but the extradimensional creatures are no odder than the local mutants, so all it really means is that you get to 'win' by turning off the portal in the last room. The highlight is probably a chance to make friends with the 7' tall furry warrior-mutants who have evolved from the lab's population of guinea pigs.

Warlords of Atoz (level 3): This is a Zardoz homage. An army of mounted gunmen are spreading out from a temple, enslaving and exterminating local populations, but the temple turns out to be a giant flying head ruled by an AI which has set itself up as a god. (Sadly, the gunmen don't wear red underpants and thigh-high boots.) The concept is clear and good - infiltrate the temple, kill the boss, try to avoid crashing the flying temple into the ground - but it's very short, and there's just not a whole lot to it. There is an opportunity for your PCs to jump into surgical pods and get random cybernetic implants, though.

Blessings of the Vile Brotherhood (level 4): This one was written by Harley Stroh, so of course it's the best one. Mutant raiders butcher an order of monks to unearth an ancient warbot beneath it, but then fail to control it and promptly schism over the resulting disaster. It's non-linear, it features memorable set-piece encounters, it's full of factions you can play off against each other, it rewards intelligent problem-solving, and it even features non-suicidal enemies. My one quibble is that it feels rather like a repurposed DCC scenario: its quasi-medieval setting of monasteries, bandits, pilgrimage roads, monks and nuns, and so on is very different to the world of primitive scavengers hiding in the jungle which is presupposed by the other modules. (Warlords of Atoz even assumes that the PCs will never have encountered agriculture or horseback riding before!) Even the mutants resemble D&D monsters - one of them's basically an ettin, for example. It's still the best of the bunch, though.

The Apocalypse Ark (level 5): This adventure is hardcore. A genocidal scientist roams the world in her giant mobile laboratory, sending genetically-engineered monsters out into settlements to infect everyone with her artificial plague, while rocking out to a soundtrack played by her robot DJ (who interprets everything that anyone says to her as a song request, which would probably be hilarious in actual play). When the PCs and their village are hit, they have to board her lab and search for a cure - but the scientist has psychic ability to project her mind into a new body every time she dies, so if cornered she'll just shoot herself in the head and possess one of her vat-grown murder-mutants, meaning that it'll take more than just violence to defeat her. So the PCs are likely to end up stranded aboard a fortified laboratory crashing through the jungle at high speed, under attack from waves of mutant knife-fighters who keep crawling out of the spawning vats, and hunting a villain who just swaps bodies every time they kill her, all while probably dying of the plague. Luckily, the lab contains some possible allies as well as enemies...

I like a lot of things about this adventure, which confronts the PCs with an extremely challenging central problem, and then gives them lots of possible tools with which to solve it. The mobile lab, with its crew of freaky hyper-specialised mutants, is also a much more interesting adventure location than yet another ancient underground bunker - especially as the PCs are actually allowed to interact with it as a vehicle, with the option of smashing its tank treads, crippling its sensor arrays, and so on. Very good stuff overall.

Condensation in Action, part 4: Council of Thieves

I've been planning to do another condensed Pathfinder AP for a while, now, and Svebor Midzic put in a request for Council of Thieves. So here it is. Anyone who wants to see one of my previous condensed APs - Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, or Kingmaker - can find them here, here, and here, respectively.

Council of Thieves is a fucking mess, and I don't think anyone involved with writing it really had any idea what they were doing. The six adventures which constitute it are barely connected to one another, major plot threads appear and disappear at random, and the finale comes completely out of left field, so what follows is less of a 'condensation' than a rescue mission. Rise, Curse, and Kingmaker are all very highly regarded by the PF community - Rise and Curse got deluxe expanded editions, and Kingmaker is getting adapted into a goddamn video game - but Council is often voted as one of the worst, if not the worst, adventure path which Paizo has ever put out.  Despite this, however, Svebor thinks it has potential, and I agree with him. The fact that it basically consists of a heap of random stuff linked together by almost nothing except their shared location makes it a rubbish Pathfinder railroad, but means it has the potential to be a pretty decent urban sandbox!

So with no further ado...

Background: This AP takes place in a decadent and decaying port city called Westcrown, which has recently been mauled by a civil war in which its rulers backed the losing side. Half the city lies in ruins, and the rest is under military occupation by the Hellknights. It has also been afflicted by a strange enchantment, the Shadow Curse, which summons dangerous shadow-creatures to roam its streets after dark.

Back in its glory days, Westcrown was home to a powerful mafia, the Council of Thieves, who grew so rich and influential that their crimelords married into the nobility. As the city waned, the Council became a shadow of its former self, but notional leadership of the Council continued to be passed down the male line of the once-famous Drovenge family. Its current head, the formidable Vassindio Drovenge, is growing old; and when his only son, Sidonai Drovenge, reached middle age with only a daughter to his name, he couldn't bear the thought of the line dying with him. Sidonai sought out a witch, The Mother of Flies, who gave him an enchanted coin, and told him to swallow it next time he lay with his wife. He obeyed, and sure enough his wife conceived and gave birth to a son, Eccardian: but the child's horns and silver eyes betrayed his otherworldly heritage, and Vassindio soon found out about the whole affair. Sidonai was immediately banished from the city, and hasn't been heard from since; his wife died soon after, apparently of fever, but actually of poison administered on the orders of her furious father-in-law.

All through the civil war, and the occupation that followed it, Eccardian and his half-sister Chammady were raised in the home of their distant, domineering grandfather, who detested them as embodying the ruin of his house. They longed for his death, but the old man seemed determined to live forever; so a few years back, they began gathering allies in preparation for a coup. Now that Eccardian has finally reached adulthood, they have decided to take matters into their own hands, and to attempt to seize House Drovenge, the Council of Thieves, and perhaps even Westcrown itself for their own...

Westcrown: This city has seen much better days. Once one of the world's great trading ports, it has been left behind by more recent political and economic developments, and now most of its wharves and canals lie empty. Its people, and especially its aristocracy, still entertain an over-inflated estimate of their place in the world, and have not yet come to terms with the fact that most people now view the city as a backwater whose time has passed. Its rulers live in decaying mansions, mere wrecks of their former grandeur, and lose themselves in dissipation to distract themselves from their city's decline.

Due to an extensive history of diabolism among the city's aristocracy, Westcrown has a significant tiefling population, who are the victims of widespread prejudice. Those born with demonic traits small enough to conceal live in fear of exposure, while those unfortunates whose demonic features cannot be hidden are driven into lives of crime and poverty in the city's slums. Tiefling thugs and street gangs are a persistent menace in the rougher parts of the city.

The Hellknights: These are the army occupying Westcrown. They wear distinctive spiky black platemail armour, partly to make themselves look intimidating, and partly to protect them against missile fire from any opportunistic would-be patriots (such as the Children of Westcrown) who might be lurking in upstairs windows as they march through the streets. The locals hate them and fear them, and whisper that under their armour they are all monsters and demons rather than men.

The Hellknights loathe Westcrown. The city is so rundown and war-ravaged that the taxes raised from it don't even cover the costs of maintaining their occupation, but it's a matter of national and regimental pride, now: their prestige is on the line, and they can't be seen to back down in the face of some ragtag urban insurgency. If someone could credibly promise to ensure order and loyalty in the city, they'd happily leave the place forever: they'd even be willing to offer the city a measure of self-government, if they could be persuaded that it would mean an increase in the tax revenue. If, on the other hand, the situation in Westcrown appears to be spiralling out of control, they will call in more and more reinforcements until all disorder has been crushed by overwhelming force. They are completely willing to destroy the city in order to 'save' it.

The leader of the Hellknight force in Westcrown is Paralictor Chard. He is unaware that one of his lieutenants, Signifer Verennie, is secretly in the pay of Chammady and Eccardian Drovenge, who have promised to aid her advancement if she assists them in their coup. Verennie has tired of the severe restrictions of life under Paralictor Chard's austere interpretation of the Hellknight code, and longs for an easier and more enjoyable life in which she calls the shots, instead. Verennie will thus do her best to ensure that the Hellknights look the other way while the Drovenge siblings make their moves.

The Council of Thieves: Back in Westcrown's glory days, the Council of Thieves were a force to be reckoned with. These days they're a shadow of their former selves, so weakened that most people in the city are unaware that they still exist. The head of the Drovenge family still serves as their hereditary leader, and several other members of Westcrown's aristocracy hold (largely ceremonial) roles within its leadership structure. Even in its current diminished state, however, there are still a fair number of criminals in Westcrown to whom loyalty to the Council still means something, and its leaders can call up a small army of thugs and cutthroats if they need to.

The current head of the Council is Vassindio Drovenge, who is well into his eighties, but has no intention of dying any time soon. It is largely due to Vassindio's efforts that the Council still retains any kind of power or operational capability, and most of its members are fiercely loyal to him. If he dies then this role will be inherited by his 'grandson', Eccardian - but the Council's loyalty to him is purely a matter of tradition, and if evidence emerged that he isn't really Vassindio's grandson, or that he was responsible for Vassindio's death, it would turn against him at once. If the Drovenge family dies out, then the Council will probably die with it.

Eccardian Drovenge: As a horned, silver-eyed, golden-skinned tiefling, Eccardian has been forced to spend most of his life in hiding, barely ever permitted to leave his grandfather's mansion. The official story is that Eccardian suffers from terrible eye and skin diseases, which keep him confined to his room most of the time, and require him to completely cover his skin and wear tinted glasses on the rare occasions when he's permitted out. Lonely and resentful, he has grown to hate his grandfather, his city, and pretty much everyone and everything else except his beloved sister, Chammady. His planned coup is the culmination of a lifetime of fantasies about forcing the world to give him the respect and status he feels to be his due.

Eccardian's plan has four stages: first use Liebdaga, Ilnerik, Irimeian, the Bastards of Erebus, and his demons to create chaos in the city, then use that chaos as cover for his murder of his grandfather and several of the city's other leaders (including Vuiper Ghivel, Paralictor Chard, and Mayor Arvanxi), then take control of House Drovenge and the Council of Thieves (both of which he should inherit after his grandfather's death), and finally stage a 'glorious rescue' in which he and his men appear to save the city from all its troubles, culminating in a faked battle between himself and an army of his own summoned demons (hopefully led by Liebdaga). After 'saving' the now-leaderless city (from himself), he will then offer his services to the occupying powers as its new Lord Mayor, as he will have proven himself the only person capable of keeping order in its streets, with Signifer Verennie aiding him as the new commander of the Hellknights. Then he'll have shown them. He'll have shown them all!

Unlike Chammady, Eccardian is basically driven by resentment rather than ambition, and he'd rather see Westcrown destroyed than let things continue as they are. If his plans seem to be falling apart, he'll simply unleash all his minions - demonic, undead, and human - upon the city in the hope of doing as much damage as possible, a nihilistic act of pointless destruction which will horrify his more pragmatic sister.

Despite being barely 20 years of age, Eccardian's infernal heritage has made him a natural demonologist, and has secretly summoned a small army of demons to assist him. The most dangerous of these are his Hellish Cavalry: six demonic warriors riding on blazing infernal saber-toothed tigers, whom he has stashed within a summoning circle in a secret room beneath Drovenge Manor, waiting for the time to be right to unleash them.

Chammady Drovenge: A scarily intense woman in her mid 20s, Chammady is a skilled swordswoman and a dangerous opponent, even when she doesn't have Kruthe the Hammer looming behind her like a big, ugly shadow. She's devoted to her brother, Eccardian: in fact you might as well go ahead and make them incestuous lovers, which is hinted at but not outright stated in the original. She's ambitious and ruthless, but the real drive behind their planned coup comes from Eccardian, and she lacks his deep-rooted anger at the world. She doesn't think Westcrown is worth dying for, and will cut her losses if everything seems to be falling apart. If her brother seems determined to drag the whole city down with him, the PCs might even be able to turn her against him.

Chammady is currently conducting a secret affair with one of the city's most senior clerics, Vuiper Ghivel, who is also the head of one of its oldest aristocratic families. Vuiper is vain enough to believe that she really loves him, and is doing everything he can to assist her plans, in the deluded belief that she will marry him as soon as she manages to pull of her coup; but in fact she's just using him for his wealth and connections, and plans to feed him to her brother's demons as soon as he's outlived his usefulness.

Kruthe the Hammer: A half-ogre warrior of prodigious size and strength, Kruthe was raised from early childhood within the Drovenge family to serve as an enforcer for the Council of Thieves. Growing up in the same household as Chammady Drovenge, he has nursed a helpless crush on her ever since he reached puberty, and would do anything to win her approval. If Chammady ever needs someone or something utterly wrecked, then Kruthe and his henchmen are the ones she'll send to do it.

The Bastards of Erebus: This gang of thuggish tieflings do Chammady and Eccardian's dirty work. Right now they've been told to cause as much trouble down in the slums as possible, in order to distract the city's authorities from the coming coup. They are currently hiding out in an old abandoned temple, guarded by animated dog skeletons, where their most freakishly deformed member - Dravano the Digger, who has huge mole-like claws - is busy excavating a new base for them in what was once the crypt.

Dravano.

Irimeian: This cannibalistic undead sorceress lurks in Sunset Gate, a gatehouse which once watched over the road into Westcrown's ruined districts. As the road now leads to nothing, she's mostly left undisturbed, preying upon the vulnerable and building undead minions from their remains. Chammady and Eccardian have struck a deal with her, keeping her supplied with corpses and body parts in exchange for her promise to unleash her minions upon the city to cause havoc when they most need her to do so.

The Slave Barge: Rumours are circulating in Westcrown of a mysterious pleasure barge which sails the city's canals at twilight. Four beautiful women entice people aboard, promising a night of pleasure, but those who board it are never seen again. In fact these women are demons summoned by Eccardian, and their victims are taken back to a makeshift prison in the ruined districts, where they are either pressed into service or sold into slavery. (If the PCs are captured by the Council at any point, this prison is probably where they'll end up.) The prison is run by a tiefling named Skarx, who dreams of winning Eccardian's love and ruling the city as his queen. She views Chammady as her rival, and would happily betray her to the PCs if she thought she could do so without harming Eccardian. She is one of the few people who knows about Chammady's relationship with Vuiper Ghivel.

The Shadowcurse: Each night, as darkness falls over Westcrown, its streets fill with supernatural shadows. The baying of unearthly hounds can be heard, and the people hurry to lock themselves indoors. Those who roam the streets after dark will often find themselves pursued by packs of hounds seemingly composed entirely of solid shadow, who will drive them back indoors. Anyone who fails to take the hint will be attacked by shadow hounds, and probably torn apart.

The people of Westcrown blame the curse on their occupiers, and they're not wrong - the Hellknights introduced it as a cost-cutting measure, as it saves them the trouble of patrolling the city's labyrinthine alleyways after dark. It's maintained by a magician named Ilnerik, whom the Hellknights believe to be a simple sorcerer for hire. They are unaware of his true nature and origins, but might not care very much if they found out.

Ilnerik: Ilnerik was once a famous explorer, who operated out of his sprawling home in Westcrown, Delvehaven. His decline began when, in a far-off land, he discovered an ancient relic, the Aohl, sacred to a long-forgotten dualistic religion. Not understanding its nature, he separated its two halves - holy to the lords of day and night, respectively - and left the former in Delvehaven, while carrying the latter half, the Totemrix, with him. Unbalanced, its shadow powers soon consumed him, turning him into a weird creature of living darkness with the ability to summon beasts of shadow from the void. He is totally dependent upon the power of the Totemrix, and if it is taken from him - or if its power is neutralised by combining it with the other half of the Aohl, the Morrowfall - then he will rapidly wither and die.

Ilnerik volunteered his services as a shadow-summoner to the Hellknights, but his true loyalties are to Chammady and Eccardian Drovenge, who have promised him great wealth and power if he assists them with their planned coup. His shadow-beasts will never impede them or their minions (including the Bastards of Erebus) unless this would make his disloyalty obvious to the Hellknights, and when the coup comes he will merrily unleash them upon the general population. He is currently living in a fortified house in Westcrown along with his lover, Silana, who is forbidden to leave the house, and is consequently so bored and frustrated that she'd happily betray him if she thought she could get away with it. Long-term exposure to Ilnerik's shadow-energies mean that Silana is no longer quite human, her skin and hair permanently infused with living shadow, but she's OK with that. The Goth look suits her.

Delvehaven: This was the headquarters from which, in life, Ilnerik planned and organised his various journeys of discovery. His transformation into his current quasi-living state released shadow energies which turned Delvehaven into a magical disaster zone, and it was magically sealed by the city authorities shortly afterwards. The Children of Westcrown strongly suspect that Delvehaven contains clues which might help to end the Shadowcurse, but it's widely known that only Mayor Arvanaxi has the authority (or the means) to open its magical wards. Anyone trying to get in without the key (which is hidden within Abirian's Folly) will have to deal with any number of magical traps along the way.

Inside, shadow-beasts - like those called by the Shadowcurse, but much more powerful - roam the corridors, and the main hall has become the lair of an animated triceratops skeleton, which Ilnerik brought back from one of his voyages and was animated by the shadow-powers he accidentally unleashed. The vaults beneath it contain all manner of trophies and treasures, including the Morrowfall - the other half of the relic which Ilnerik so catastrophically divided. Wielded, it can be used to conjure blazing light to burn undead, destroy shadow-creatures, and blind the living; and if combined with the Totemrix, the powers of both halves are neutralised, ending the Shadowcurse. Anyone who carries the Morrowfall around for more than a year without also carrying the Totemrix will be consumed by its energies and transformed into a being of living radiance, just as Ilnerik became a creature of living shadow.

The Morrowfall.

Mayor Arvanxi: The current Mayor of Westcrown, Arvanxi is a local aristocrat installed by the occupying forces. The Hellknights approve of him because of his willingness to enforce their edicts; the aristocracy tolerates him because at least one of their own is still notionally in charge of Westcrown; and the common people hate him, but no-one cares what they think. He's a fan of the so-called 'Theatre Mortrescci', or 'murderplays', in which actors suffer real pain and violence onstage - his favourite examples are little more than thin excuses for extended scenes of sadism, interspersed with real life-and-death battles with skeleton warriors raised for him by his 'chaplain', Vestus Svaska. (Exactly which god Vestus is a cleric of is a question best not delved into too closely.) Murderplay actors and directors are regular guests at his official residence, Aberian's Folly, where he hosts frequent banquets for the local aristocracy.

Robahl Nonon: Westcrown's leading murderplay director. He owns a theatre which also stages more conventional dramas, but he's always on the lookout for people hardy or desperate enough to agree to various on-stage tortures in exchange for a pile of gold; once he's rounded up enough of these unfortunates to put on a play, he gets in touch with Mayor Arvanxi and organises a performance as soon as possible, with the surviving actors always generously feasted and rewarded by the mayor afterwards. Very few people are willing (or physically capable) of performing more than one murderplay, so PCs looking for an opportunity to meet the mayor, or to infiltrate Aberian's Folly, only need to sign up as 'actors' in Robahl's latest spectacular. You don't mind acid burns, do you? There might be quite a lot of acid burns...

Aberian's Folly: This sprawling mansion is the official residence of the Mayors of Westcrown. It is one of the city's most famous landmarks, renowned for its magical conveniences: ever-burning torches, temperature-controlled rose gardens, hot and cold running water, and so on. What very few people know is that these are powered by a demon, Liebdaga, who has been bound beneath the mansion and used as a power-source. The day-to-day running of the manor is handled by the mayor's majordomo, Crosael. She is secretly a tiefling, but has so far managed to keep this hidden from everyone - until recently.

One regular visitor to Aberian's Folly is Chammady Drovenge; and when she brought Eccardian as well, for once, his unearthly senses soon allowed him to detect both Crosael's true nature, and the presence of the demon bound beneath the house. Chammady subsequently blackmailed Crosael into letting her brother into the mansion's basements, where he communed with Liebdaga, offering to free him in exchange for his assistance in their coup. They then forced Crosael to 'hire' an agent of theirs, a tiefling named Sian, as a maidservant. Sian has been surreptitiously weakening the bindings restraining Liebdaga ever since, causing erratic failures in the house's magical systems which annoy Mayor Arvanxi hugely. (He finds it especially embarrassing when they fail in front of guests.) He's tasked Crosael with finding the source of the problem, but even though she strongly suspects Sian is behind it, she can't move against her without risking exposure. Crosael deeply resents being blackmailed by a fellow tiefling, and would double-cross them in an instant if she thought that she could get away with it.

The key to opening Delvehaven is in a chest hidden in the mansion's attic, guarded by demons who step out of enchanted mirrors hung on the wall to slay anyone who attempts to take it. (These mirrors, like everything else in the house, are powered by Liebdaga, and will become increasingly unreliable as his bindings weaken.) The chest also contains a stack of corpse candles (which, if placed on a corpse and lit, allows communication with the spirit whose corpse it is, whose face appears in the flame), and the severed head of a demon, which mostly just screams and swears at people.

Liebdaga: This powerful demon is trapped under Aberian's Folly, where its supernatural energies are tapped to power the mansion's various amenities. If Sian is allowed to continue her sabotages for long enough, then the binding will start to malfunction in increasingly spectacular ways: less minor glitches in the temperature control systems, and more obliterating blasts of random hellfire. At this point Mayor Arvanxi will abandon his home and beg for help from anyone he can find, even if it means confessing to random adventurers that he's had a demon locked away under his house all along.

Liebdaga is imprisoned within a network of magical machines, collectively called the Nessian Spiral. These machines are tended to by a work gang of Tiefling slaves, the Tunnel Rats, who are never permitted to leave. If the bindings start to break down, the Tunnel Rats will make a desperate attempt to escape before they all get incinerated with hellfire. Repairing the machines without their assistance - willing or otherwise - will be extremely difficult. If the machines break down entirely and Liebdaga escapes, he'll initially be very weak and vulnerable after being subjected to so many years of energy siphoning, and PCs who track him down quickly enough should be able to defeat him. If he survives long enough to regain his strength, however, he'll return to Westcrown, ready to fulfill his side of the bargain by obliterating anyone standing in the way of Eccardian's rise to power.

The Children of Westcrown: This rather amateurish resistance movement is trying to fight back against the occupation of Westcrown. They're mostly composed of young idealists who dream of restoring their city to its former glory. In a straight fight the Hellknights would crush them like insects, but the Children specialise in hit-and-run ambushes in the mazelike alleyways of the old city. Their leaders, Janiven and Arael, are strong on good looks and charisma but weak on practical long-term strategy. They've had a run of good luck recently, but their organisation is rudimentary, and if one of their leaders were to be captured then the Hellknights could probably roll the whole conspiracy up within a week.

Janiven, trying to look cool. Again.

The Devildrome: This ruinous amphitheatre in the ruined districts of Westcrown has now been taken over by Rance Lucca, a member of a minor and impoverished noble house. He uses it to run exotic bloodsports, in which demons summoned by his hired conjurer, Mantrithor Thrax, fight either against human gladiators or each other, while the audience pays for admission and bets on the outcomes. There aren't a lot of people willing to fight demons for money, so he'll be eager to hear from any PCs who want to take part. PCs who manage to win big will earn the attention of Chammady Drovenge, who is a regular visitor to the Devildrome. Robahl Nonon also frequents the place, as the kind of people who are willing to fight demons for money are often also the kind of people who can be persuaded to consider trying their hands as 'actors' in a murderplay...

The Sisterhood of Eiseth: This all-female order of devil-worshippers have existed covertly in the city for years, although their numbers have declined along with its waning fortunes, and they are now little more than a street gang with a fancy gimmick. They fight with bladed scarves, and operate out of a crematorium in the poorer part of town, which they use to dispose of the bodies of their victims. The ossuary under the crematorium contains hundreds of urns in which are deposited the ashes of all those they've killed over the years, meticulously labelled and dated in Infernal script. Before their decline, the Sisters were Westcrown's premier assassins, and their ash-library contains the remains of many notable figures from the city's past, including individuals involved with the foundation of the Council of Thieves, the binding of Liebdaga under Aberian's Folly, and even the expeditions of Ilnerik and the sealing of Delvehaven. PCs who obtain the corpse candles from Aberian's Folly can use these to commune with their ghosts, gaining information about any or all of these events

The Hagwood: This forest stands a short way outside Westcrown, and is the home of the Mother of Flies, the witch responsible for Eccardian's conception. She lives in the Maggot Tree at its very heart, served by murderous redcaps and giant insects and vermin of many different kinds. Because she is the only person other than Vassindio Drovenge who knows about Eccardian's true parentage (and thus that he has no real right to either the Drovenge name or the hereditary leadership of the Council of Thieves), Eccardian has dispatched a force of cutthroats into the Hagwood to find and kill her - but they're city boys, and the forest is huge and hard to navigate. If and when they locate the Maggot Tree, they'll lay siege to it as best they can.

PCs could potentially learn from any number of sources that a whole bunch of Westcrown ruffians have been coming and going from the Hagwood recently, even though everyone knows there's nothing of value out there. If the PCs assist the Mother of Flies in getting rid of them, she'll happily tell them the truth about Eccardian's birth, and even suggest (correctly) that the original demonic contract she made his father sign is probably still stashed away somewhere in Drovenge Manor. Publicising this document would be enough to get Eccardian disowned by his family (although not by Chammady), and possibly murdered by the Council of Thieves.

Probable Course of Events:

• As soon as the PCs arrive in Westcrown, they will hear about the Hellknight occupation and the Shadowcurse.
• Investigating the city will soon alert them to rumours about the Devildrome, the Slave Barge, tiefling thugs raising hell in the slums (i.e. the Bastards of Erebus), resistance fighters struggling against the Hellknights (i.e. the Children of Westcrown), and undead monsters stalking the ruins (i.e. Irimeian). 
• PCs who dig deeper may also hear about bands of cutthroats roaming the Hagwood, the mysterious sealed building in town (Delvehaven), the recent malfunctions in the mayor's magical mansion (Aberian's Folly), and an all-female gang out in the slums who used to be hardcore assassins back in the day (the Sisterhood of Eiseth).
• PCs who start to make a name for themselves are likely to be approached by Janiven and Arael (who will try to recruit them for the Children of Westcrown), Paralictor Chard (who offers to hire them to assist the Hellknights in dealing with the city's many problems), Rance Lucca (who will want them for the Devildrome), and/or Robahl Nonon (who will want them to 'act' in one of his stupid murderplays). 
• After a few weeks, if Sian hasn't been stopped, the malfunctions at Aberian's Folly will become so dangerous that Mayor Arvanxi will flee his home and beg for help from anyone, including the PCs. If the infernal machines beneath the mansion aren't promptly repaired, then the Tunnel Rats will mine their way out and flee for their lives, and shortly afterwards Liebdaga will burst from the flaming ruins and flee into the wilderness.
• If Liebdaga is still alive a week after his escape, he returns to Westcrown at the head of an army of Eccardian's demons and starts wrecking everything, aided by Ilnerik's shadow-beasts, Irimeian's undead, and the Bastards of Erebus (assuming they're all still active). Eccardian will seize the opportunity to have his various minions murder Vassindio Drovenge, Vuiper Ghivel, Paralictor Chard, and Mayor Arvanxi, seize control of the Council of Thieves, and attempt to stage his 'rescue' of the city.
• If Liebdaga doesn't escape, or escapes but is killed before regaining his strength, Eccardian will try the same plan with whatever assets he still has.
• If Eccardian's position is so weakened that his plan is obviously doomed to failure, he'll just unleash everything he has on Westcrown in the hope of doing as much damage as possible, probably alienating Chammady in the process.
• After all the craziness dies down, a massive force of Hellknights marches into Westcrown. If anyone - even some random outsider like one of the PCs - seems to be in control and doing a decent job of maintaining order, then they'll appoint them Lord Mayor on the spot and then leave. If all they find is chaos, then they'll simply start smashing things until either the problem is solved or the city no longer exists. Either one works for them.