Abrigor's Triangle and The Annalise

Two adventure locations in Krevborna's Judas Sea.

Abrigor’s Triangle

Abrigor’s Triangle is an expanse of the Judas Sea regarded as its most dangerous and mysterious region.

    • An unusually high number of ships disappear without explanation in Abrigor’s Triangle.

    • Superstitious sailors attribute the treachery of the triangle to numerous causes: a demon named Abrigor who pulls ships to the bottom of the sea, magnetic and temporal anomalies that render traditional navigation methods useless, or a preponderance of sea serpents and krakens.

    • Many vessels that travel to or from Krevborna via the Judas Sea go out of their way to avoid Abrigor’s Triangle, even though it lengthens their voyages to skirt its edges.

The Annalise

The Annalise is an infamous ghost ship crewed by the undead that prowls the Judas Sea.

    • Legend has it that the Annalise was a pirate ship captained by a greedy cutthroat, now known only as the Phantom Mariner, who betrayed a coterie of buccaneer captains he was partnered with.

    • He absconded with the ill-gotten wealth meant to be split between them, leaving them to be captured and executed at the hands of privateers. 

    • The gold and jewels the captain hoarded did not serve him well; when a sudden storm cast its net over the sea, the Annalise was too heavily laden to maneuver to safety.

    • The Annalise sank with all hands on board dying amid the thrashing waves. 

    • However, during storms at sea, the Annalise is spotted cutting a ghostly path through rough waters; bathed in ghastly green light and crewed by the barnacle-encrusted dead, the Annalise attacks other vessels who stray into its path. 

    • The accursed captain of the Annalise is compelled to add to the wealth that doomed him to a watery grave.

Wombs and Teeth

This adventure was the completion of the previous week's scenario. This one had the potential to have a much more involved and tense combat encounter or two--but they avoided one by not picking that fight and the other ended absurdly early due to two extremely lucky rolls by King Beebo's player. That's something that just happens with systems with exploding dice; you can't be mad at it! Live by the exploding die, die by the...exploding die.

Characters

Aria, a paladin struggling with her true nature

Panthalassa, a necromancer with a missing arm

Daytona, a dhampir gunslinger fresh from Hell (again)

Garazi, a beautiful young witch with a bird familiar

Willard Corn and King Beebo, a farmer and his monkey (?)

Events

Daytona arrived back in Hemlock Hollow after his harrowing adventure in Hell. As he walked through the night market, he was hailed by the snow elf Eshrevaal, who was talking to a Graymalk witch he did not recognize. The witch was introduced as Ivara Graymalk, one of the daughters who was present for the rest of the party's dinner with her mother Helena. When Daytona asked where he could find his friends, Ivara offered to take him through the Forest of Loss to where they were. Daytona agreed, and they set off, with Ivara plucking a Halloween mask from a passerby and handing it to Daytona. The townsman balked at the theft at first, but when he realized who he was dealing with he apologized and scurried away.

The pair were quickly enveloped in thick gray mist within the Forest of Loss, but as they emerged from it they found that there were before a farmhouse from which Daytona's friends were now emerging--expect Heck was no longer with them. When Heck's absence was discovered, they ventured back inside the farmhouse and discovered that Kestra had snatched him from the cellar and was keeping him as "collateral" until they got her her womb back.

And so the group returned to the House of the Maiden to attempt to get Sadira to give up the womb. Sadira was not pleased that they had returned empty-handed without her teeth, which Kestra still had in her possession, so attempts to intimidate and persuade her into an exchange fell on deaf ears. Eventually, Sadira became enraged and her monstrous nature became apparent: massive spider legs burst from her sides and an arachnid head emerged from the other side of her head. She attacked the group by enwrapping Garazi in threads of sticky spidersilk. Daytona cut Garazi free, but it was King Beebo who settled the matter decidedly: he fired both of his pistols into Sadira, putting her down like a mad dog before the other prostitutes in the brothel could even think about joining the fray. 

The patrons of the House of the Maiden fled and the women of the brothel made themselves scarce, giving the group time to ransack the building in search of Kestra's womb. Daytona found a safe hidden in the wall behind a painting, and Panthalassa was able to crack it. There were gold bars and bags of coins inside the safe, as well as a large stained leather sack. Dumping the sack onto the floor revealed its contents to be an extremely large--and terrifyingly fresh--womb. Pondering its size, Ivara was able to determine that Kestra had been warped by anger and grief into a "gargantuan"--a monstrous, physical ghost of prodigious size. This probably explained why Kestra never left the dark of the cellar; she was too big and too solid to exit the lower floor.

With the womb stuffed back into the sack by the bravest of the adventurers, they returned to the farmhouse to give it back to Kestra. Aria really wanted to force Kestra into trading the womb for the teeth--on the presumption that Sadira would "come back"--but the rest of the party just wanted to be done with the vile task and get their reward. Garazi and Aria got into an argument about it--and Kestra didn't help matters by rattling the tin can she kept Sadira's teeth in to taunt her. Ultimately, Aria said something unkind about witches in Ivara's presence. Ivara used her diabolic magic to force Aria to her knees and whispered in her ear that she didn't want to hear that kind of talk.

The rest of the group decided to venture down the cellar steps and give Kestra the sack. Horrifyingly, they could hear her inserting the organs back into her body. She did, however, keep her end of the bargain--she sent a very dazed and bewildered Heck out of the darkness, a fistful of tickets to ride the last "iron beast of the Vlaak" clutched in his hand. 

She also made good on providing "one secret known only to the dead." The group asked her if there was a way to restore a revenant to life--and told them that that occult secret resided in a Grail Tomb within the corrupted bayou known as the Stain. 

As Ivara led the group back through the mists to the Forest of Loss, things came to head within the party and Aria stalked off on her own after arguing again with Garazi and threatening to kill to Ivara. The party is now hunkering down to figure out their next move, but a plan is in the works to lure their foe Patchwork Jack into an ambush to deal with him once and for all. But...there's a wrinkle or two there they don't anticipate so we'll see what happens when the campaign resumes.

Capitalism: A Horror Story

To be fair and spell out one of my biases at the outset of this post on my thoughts about Jon Greenaway's Capitalism: A Horror Story, I've long been skeptical of the idea of "Gothic Marxism" for a reason this book does little to dispel: it seems like either an attempt to make Marxism "sexy" or to align someone's taste in entertainment to their avowed political ideology. Perhaps it tries its hand at both at the same time. The concept of Gothic Marxism often feels like a manifestation of the impulse to rebrand your politics as "cool" and to politically justify your fandom.

The book's vision of "the Gothic" mellows and becomes diffuse as it proceeds, eventually transforming into a catch-all category for the various horror films and texts it analyzes. However, Capitalism: A Horror Story doesn't excel at illustrating how the Gothic, or horror more generally, is necessarily a Marxist mode. This is an especially vexing omission in light of several authors under discussion being notably not radically left-wing in their politics yet somehow still existing under the book's political purview. For example, Ann Radcliffe was a champion of the middle-class bourgeoisie; the polite moralizing of her "Gothic Romances" and her status as an upwardly mobile middle-class woman whose ascendance was deeply entwined with the rise of capitalism evidences that. As another example, despite his belief in home rule for Ireland, Bram Stoker was a monarchist and supporter of the British Empire--two facets difficult to reconcile to claims of Marxist potential within Gothic authorship. In general, the linkage between "Gothic" and "Marxism" does not feel natural or self-evident.

The book's desire for Gothic Marxism to possess a transcendental, utopian political value also strikes me as odd and feels like something that can only be conjured by avoiding the material conditions that made the Gothic, and horror more generally, a viable commodity in terms of cultural production. This seems like something a Marxist account would want to explore in detail, but those concerns are largely left dangling. 

My biggest complaint with the book is stubborn insistence that horror is essentially a "hopeful" genre. I have taken a screenshot of a relevant paragraph so that you can judge the book's rhetorical position for yourself. This desire for a hopeful utopian turn does, in fact, cause problems when the book tries to use the cited fictions as political examples. You can read the ending of Dracula as hopeful--but it is hopeful about the continuation of British patriarchal power. Dracula features a collective that defeats evil--but it is a collective of elite imperial agents reinscribing Western superiority over foreign otherness. 

On the other hand, the ending of Frankenstein is hard to read as anything but Romantically bleak; it is far more apocalyptic than utopian in both tone and intent. 

However, the chapter on witches best illustrates the major flaw in the book's utopian argument: it dearly wants figures of monstrosity to be positive, nearly messianic, figures of resistance to capitalism, but as such it is ill-equipped to deal with the actual monstrosity of the figures it valorizes. Take its analysis of The VVitch as an example. It reads the witches in the film as liberatory and the ultimate event of Thomasin joining the coven as a political act, which may be, but it does not--and perhaps cannot--grapple with the fact that the witches in the film are actually figurations of evil by almost any standard. A baby is stolen and is mashed up into a flying ointment by one of the witches; another child is seduced in the woods and returned only so that he might die a horrible death in front of his helpless family. The climax of the film also problematizes the anti- capitalistic reading of its context. What is it that Thomasin is offered by the Devil? Butter, a pretty dress--she is offered commodities. I somehow think Marx wouldn't approve.

What this means is that many textual elements have to be ignored to get where the book intends to go. The same problem occurs in the offered reading of Frankenstein; the monster's body is a "site of politics," which again is certainly true, but that site of politics is fraught and contradictory because the monster puts its body to use by killing the innocent. I suspect this complication is uncommented on because that would countermand the hope of utopian change through the symbol and cypher of monstrosity. 

Capitalism: A Horror Story ultimately leaves the reader empty-handed. The utopian project of the book wants us to believe that there is revolutionary hope in monstrosity, in horror, in darkness--but even if that is an unmined possibility, what are we to do with that epiphany? As with other books of this style, there is no roadmap forward provided. 

This is particularly galling because in one of its chapters two horror film franchises are criticized for being unable to move beyond the ideological confines of neoliberalism to imagine something better. And yet, this presentation of Gothic Marxism similarly suffers from an inability to realize its utopic dreams in anything approaching concrete terms. How does an embrace of the monstrous usher in a much-deferred revolution? What praxis flows from the disturbed burial ground of the Gothic? Where does the "radical imagination" touted on the book's move from dark dream to attainable action? By the end of the book, questions such as these remain unanswered. 

The Horror of Hook House

As part of this year's Halloween gaming offerings, I ran Kids On Bikes for folks on my Discord. I used the scenario in the second-edition rulebook, but I swapped the setting out for something Edweirdian: the kids were all residents of an orphanage looking into the disappearance of one of their fellow foundlings--a boy named Hieronymus. They knew he had been dared to enter Hook House, an abandoned home on the hill thought to be haunted. 

Here's what they had gathered before setting foot in the house: twenty years ago the house was owned by the Hook family, who were prominent back in the day. However, when the town's mines closed they went broke and had to live in this smaller house on the hill. The family consisted of a mother, son, and father, but there were always rumors of another child--who may have been hidden away due to being mad or deformed. The family was killed by an intruder or intruders--and the murderers were never caught. 

Characters

Pellinore Bonnet-Price aka Pell-Mell

Vincent Lazarus

Artemsia Grimmsby

Flossie Greenspurn

Cedric Mortimer-Shaw aka Ceddy

Lester Mire

Events

The kids abandoned their bikes on the front lawn of Hook House as a thunder storm threatened to break overhead. They found that the front door was unlocked, so they stepped inside into the foyer. The air smelled stale; dust coated every surface. They took note of the closet in this room, as that is where Mister Hook was supposedly found--beheaded. They also found a scrap of fabric on the floor that was embroidered with a large H. They recognized this to be part of Hieronymus's rucksack. 

Suddenly al the doors in the room slammed shut and their flashlight began to flicker. Gathering their courage, they opened the closet. One of the floorboards inside was cracked; wedged into the gap was a small iron ball--pitted and rusty. 

Through the glass in the door leading to the next room, they could see a family portrait of the Hooks, a roaring fireplace, and stately objets d'art, but when they opened the door the room proved to be empty. In this room they acquired a poker, an ash shovel from beside the fireplace, and a cryptic note. 

The dining room was scarcely better, as there was a rotten food smell wafting from the kitchen. Using the cryptic note as a guide, the kids spent some time figuring out which chair each family member sat at to take their meals. When they stood in the spots the family members had occupied, they could feel an icy grip on each of their necks. 

The kitchen was a room of damp, crooked cabinets, mold, and flies buzzing around a sludge-filled sink. However, they were able to recover the three cups the family used in life--a cracked wineglass, a chipped teacup, and a broken child-sized glass. Using the poker, the kids could tell that there was something hidden in the sludge in the sink, but the poker wasn't up to the task of dredging it out. A dented pot, the last of the family's cookware, proved useful for bailing the sludge out so they could retrieve the item--a key!

Before they left this floor, Vincent, Ceddy, and Artemesia arranged themselves so that one kid was standing in each family's members spot at the dinning room table, each holding that family's member's favored drinking vessel. This caused them to be momentarily possessed by the ghosts of the family, each of whom vented their anxieties about what happened that fateful night.

The key from the sink allowed they to unlock the door headed up to the next floor. When they passed a broken widow in the staircase they could see that the world outside was lit by broad daylight. Since the house looked down upon the town, it was in full view--but it appeared that they were looking at the town as it was twenty years ago. They also noticed clumps of fur snagged on the windowsill. 

They decided to explore the door with a sign on the handle proclaiming it to be "Harrison's Room." This was clearly the son's room, as the rug was strewn with wooden horse toys and lead soldiers. The mattress had been slashed open as if someone had searched for something inside of it. They also noticed a nail in the window frame, around which was tied fishing line that snaked outside. They pulled something up by tugging on the line, but could not see the object through the window. Inside of simply opening the window, they smashed it and hauled the tin pail attached to the line inside. Vincent cut himself in the process. 

Inside the pail was a rubber ball, some jacks, and a diary marked "Top Secret." The diary had several entries detailing Harrison's adventures with a friend named Charlotte; however, toward the end of the diary the writing became frenzied and frantic until it devolved into crude symbols. In fact, the symbols lifted from the page and resolved themselves in the air, forming a knife, a series of cubes, and a small key. 

They went to the water closet next. A cracked mirror hung over the sink, which clouded up--and caused Cedric to have a phantasmagorical hallucination. They could also hear a young girl's voice seemingly coming from the drain; she said, "It’s dark down here" and "I’m lost and hurt." They confirmed that the voice was Charlotte's; she claimed that the Hooks had put her down there because "bad men" from "the other place" were coming to the house--when they got there, these bad men killed the Hook family. The kids were justifiably skeptical of this account. When Flossie got mouthy with Charlotte, water erupted from the tub and knocked all the kids from the room and back down the stairs. 

Once they recovered and ventured back upstairs, the kids explored the parents' bedroom. There was a strange curio cabinet in this room holding a variety of elements on little stands with placards. Pell-Mell deduced that if the elements were placed in the right order, they would spell out KNIFE CUBES. (Groan.) When they did so and closed the cabinet's door, all the elements dissolved, ran together, and reformed into a small key. In his haste to get his hands on the key, Vincent burned himself on the still-hot metal. 

This key allowed them to open the trapdoor in a closet to pull down the stairs and ascend to the house's attic. However, when they entered the attic they found that they were no longer in the house at all--they were in a rainy, gray park they knew well from in town. The stairs had also vanished behind them. Since they already knew the park's layout, they knew they were near an infamous well in which a child had drowned years ago--for some Edweirdian reason, the well had never been sealed. 

They went to have a look at it and saw that Hieronymus was curled up in the fetal position beside it. Unfortunately, as they approached to wake him, thick ropes of wet hair emerged from the well, entangled them, and pulled them into the watery depths. 

When the kids awoke, they found themselves shivering and sodden in an unfinished basement. Their was a Victorian washing machine--the kind powered by a hand crank--from which Charlotte's voice emerged. She begged them to turn the crank to release her from the machine. They did so, and from the machine a thin sheaf of skin, hair, and fabric slopped down into the tub. Charlotte reformed herself and emerged from the machine. 

The door to the basement washroom began to thump and rattle as something on the other side was trying to break down the door. Whatever it was did not have proper hands to simply turn the door handle. Their act of altruism paid off, as Charlotte agreed to aid them to get past the creature--which Charlotte confirmed was one of the beasts the "bad men" had used to kill the Hook family. 

Lester had a very bright idea--since they knew from their misadventure in the attic that Charlotte could conjure illusions, they had her use her power to create an illusion of the kids standing against the far wall. They opened the door, giving the creature a nice look at the illusory kids. While it hurtled past to get at the false kids, they ran down the now-clear corridor, with Charlotte in the lead to show them the door out. 

Traversing the doorway felt like pushing through a veil of cold water--indeed, they saw fish made of teeth swimming in the "other place"--but when they exited it they found that they had just left the front door of the house. Gathering their bikes, they rushed to the real park, where they found Hieronymus huddled by the well. They gathered him, and Charlotte, and snuck back into the orphanage--a plan to get Charlotte taken on as a foundling already brewing in their heads.

Krevborna Threate Film Festival

This fall I did a Krevborna Theatre Film Festival for the folks on my Discord, streaming about one movie a week through September and October. To add a little fun to the proceedings, I made Krevborna's resident goth queen, Serafina, the "horror host" for the event. I had fun writing up little pun-laden teasers for each of the movies in Serafina's voice. I even drew a little picture of Serafina that I could slap on top of a Gothic backdrop to announce each movie in advance.

The only criteria for selecting a movie for Krevborna Theatre was that it had to have atmosphere similar to the setting. For posterity's sake, and so I don't repeat any movies if I do this again next year, here's what we watched:

Hands of the Ripper

Brotherhood of the Wolf

Captain Kronos--Vampire Hunter

I Sell the Dead

The Pit & the Pendulum

Black Death

Blood From the Mummy's Tomb

The Ghosts of Gallhart

We're back to our Savage Krevborna campaign with a Halloween-themed session!

Characters

Aria, a paladin struggling with her true nature

Heck, an affable revenant looking for answers

Panthalassa, a necromancer with a missing arm

Garazi, up and coming witch with a bird familiar

Willard Corn and King Beebo, a farmer and his monkey (?)

Events

With the departure of Daytona, and the relative safety afforded by Hemlock Hollow, the party had a bit of downtime to rest, recuperate, and run various errands. Garazi went to Adrian Vergara's house to return his calling card case and ask for a favor. She was surprised that her knock on the door was answered by Ilyona, the girl who had been melded with a tree outside of Borza. Ilyona explained that Adrian had offered her a job as his maid; when Garazi took her aside and asked if Adrian was a good master, the girl appeared genuinely happy with her current employment.

Over tea, Garazi brought up the compendium of death gods and grave spirits that they had found and needed translated. Adrian felt confident he could make a workable translation; Garazi directed him to focus on the entry for the Nightmother and the entry about revenants. She also produced the sheet music for the Hymn of the Nightmother but, being an unmusical sort, Adrian could not make heads or tails of it. As he walked her to the door, Adrian promised to visit her family's farmstead when he had a translation in hand.

Meanwhile, Panthalassa and Aria visited the Ushers to return the two masks they had recovered from the cemetery. This time, they were met at the door by a stoop-backed old woman who seemed blind. As before, they were lead to a parlor--but this one was littered with poorly maintained taxidermy. Panthalassa asked again whether the Fraternitie du Cadavre could have any motive for stealing her arm in particular. This Usher had a theory: if the Fraternitie was intent on creating an avatar of the Nightmother capable of raising the long dead, they would need specific body parts for its construction. Specifically, the woman said that six different arms would be required: the arm of "Everyone's Child," the arm of "The Grandfather" the arm of "The Soldier Boy," the arm of "The Preacher Man," the arm of "The Spinster," and the arm of "The Wretched." Additionally, such a working would require the "heart of The Widow," the "teeth of the Concubine," and the womb of The Mother."

The old woman assumed that Panthalassa's arm was the arm of "Everyone's Child."

Panthalassa was concerned about the sustainability of the Usher's vigil over Madeline, especially since the Usher woman they were talking to kept coughing up things that squirmed in the handkerchief she expectorated into. Panthalassa attempted to link her mind with that of the "sleeping" Madeline Usher; she saw a vision through the other woman's eyes--walking the halls of an ancient school where the instruction was presided over by a devil.

On the night before Halloween, Heck and company had been invited to dinner by Helena Graymalk, the matriarch of the Graymalk clan of witches. They were shown in by Ivara Graymalk, one of Helena's many daughters. Unlike her sisters, Ivara dressed very primly, more like a school marm than a witch. Some members of the group noticed that Ivara seemed to be searching Heck's face for something.

Understanding that Heck's condition as a revenant meant he had significant gaps in his memory, Helena told him that he had once been a powerful warlock in his own right and had been the leader of a coven adept at converting pagans to the worship of the Devil. Heck had met his demise at the hands of Grigori Trask and his witchfinders; Helena suspected that a member of Heck's coven had betrayed him. When asked about revenants, Helena admitted that most revenants returned to the grave once their vengeance had been attained, but also dangled the intriguing notion that some revenants persisted in their second life if they found a reason to continue living. 

Additionally, Aria's questions about her status as a creature made of song were answered by Helena as best she could. She conjectured that Aria may want to seek the Needle of Golgotha in the mountains, a structure said to enable communication with the elder gods of the Outer Dark.

Beebo announced that he wanted to go to the Skarnesti Circus. What on Earth could a monkey want at the circus?

During the course of dinner, Helena commended the group on the services they had provided by springing Coraline for Kholograt and saving Lorelei and her sisters from death in Borza. As such, she felt that she owed the group several favors. One of those favors was cashed in immediately: the group asked Helena to scry to the locations of Grigori Trask and Panthalassa's missing arm. Helena asked them what their plans were for Halloween night. Since they seemed to be in search of answers, she offered them a possibility: they could venture into the Forest of Loss, a popular place for suicides where the boundary between the living and the dead was especially thin on Samhain, because many people had reported finding the answers they were in search of in that unhallowed stretch of woods. Helena told them that if they did venture into the Forest of Loss on Halloween they should be wearing masks so that the spirits of the dead would not recognize them as the still living.

Upon venturing into the Forest of Loss on Halloween night, the group was quickly surrounded by a fog that separated them from the other groups in the woods. When they emerged from the fog, the found themselves cresting a hill overlooking a small village lit by jack o' lanterns and carved gourds. The first building on the path leading into the village was an eatery serving soup and dumplings. From the way the dumplings fell through the faces of the two elderly people "eating" at a table outside--only to plop back into their bowls--the group correctly ascertained that they were now among ghosts. The proprietor of the shack, a woman named Danila, knew that she was deceased, though she cautioned that not everyone in village was aware that they were specters. 

She also informed them that the town was caught up in a conflict between two vengeful women--Kestra at the old farmhouse and Sadira of the House of the Maiden. There was a third woman, the Widow, but she had somehow escaped being trapped in the cursed village of Gallhart. According to Danila, all three women were brought to Gallhart by a sorcerer named Valton Blakely. Blakely intended to sacrifice the women and use their body parts to construct an avatar of the Nightmother to--all to resurrect one of Krevborna's tsars. This eerily reflected the supposed goal of the Fraternitie du Cadavre. 

The group decided to explore the Widow's house first. They found it dark, but the front door was unlocked. Inside, everything was neat and tidy. There was a family portrait above the fireplace showing a man with dark hair parted in the middle, a tall woman with blonde hair and a beatific smile, and a young boy whose looks favored his mother. In the attic, they found trunks of clothes belonging to the man and the son; presumably, both had died and their things had been put out of sight.

The Widow's cottage was near a pagan shrine, so the group decided to poke around in there as well. The shrine had been vandalized; the altar was purposefully smashed, the ceiling was staved through, and the place had clearly received no visitors for many years. 

The party's next stop was the House of the Maiden. The building smelled of incense and was lit by a number of paper lanterns glowing with a macabre green light. The door of the House of the Maiden was answered by a slim woman whose hair was held in place by lacquered hair sticks. There was a series of pigeonholes behind the desk in the entrance room; each pigeonhole held a single cloth doll. Nine of the dolls were turned to face the back of the cabinet--only three faced forward. From this detail, the group correctly guessed that the House of the Maiden was a brothel and that the dolls signified which girls were currently "occupied" and which were currently available.

Abetta, the House of the Maiden's procuress, showed the group into the common room. The most notable "fixture" of the room was a nude woman suspended from the ceiling by fine thin threads. A woman with straight black hair, wearing a gossamer robe decorated with chrysanthemums, was playing a balalaika. This woman was introduced as Sadira. Sadira reiterated the facts of her conflict with Kestra at the farmhouse; the crux of the matter was that Kestra had stolen her teeth, a fact she underlined by removing her dentures. She had no real reply when asked why she and Kestra did not join forces against Blakely, who seemed to be the real cause of their woes. Ultimately, the group agreed to venture into the farmhouse and steal back Sadira's teeth with the reward of "a secret only the dead know" hanging in the balance as their payment. 

Kestra's farmhouse was surrounded by a metal fence, the gate of which creaked as they opened it. Similarly, the porch's boards moaned as they traversed them. There was a pitcher, its glass surface dotted with condensation, on a small table by the door. Aria tasted it and confirmed that it contained sweet tea. Garazi sent her familiar into the house to scout around; the bird reported that there was a strange sliding metal door just off the living room. 

The group crept in; predictably, the metal door made an awful racket as Heck slid it open. Just then, one of the other doors in the house crashed open and two figures, one a man in stained overalls and a pumpkin obscuring his face and the other a woman in a babydoll dress wearing a goat head mask, came barreling toward them. The man bore a sledgehammer and the woman held a cleaver in one hand and a butcher's knife in the other. The battle that followed was fraught, especially when a third participant--this man clad in Napoleonic uniform and his face painted like a clown--entered through the front door and began firing a pistol and swinging a cutlass. A few members of the party were injured, but ultimately they were able to kill their foes--even after a botched spell from Panthalassa briefly reanimated one of their attackers!

They then searched the house. The room beyond the sliding metal door was an abattoir, complete with human torsos hanging from hooks. They found the personal affects of their three attackers, including four unlabeled glass vials full of unidentifiable liquids. The darkness in the cellar proved impenetrable by the light of their lantern, but they could see two large yellow eyes shining in the shadows. They had found Kestra.

Kestra admitted that she had Sadira's teeth in her possession, but was equally uninterested in the question of why they hadn't joined forces against Blakely. However, Kestra added that she hated Sadira because the woman had stolen her womb--which she wanted back. In fact, she made an offer of her own: if the group got her womb from Sadira, she would give them a secret known only to the dead and tickets to ride the last "iron beast of the Vlaak." 

We'll see how they resolve this next time. 

DEAD GIRL SUPERSTAR

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is back with a new supplement called DEAD GIRL SUPERSTAR that's full of thrills 'n' chills just in time for Halloween!

(You gotta have the "adult content" filter on at Drivethru for that link to work, homie.)

 Here's the blurb:

Welcome to a special midnight showing of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER. Get yourself a soda, a bucket of popcorn, and some Mike and Ikes from the concession stand. Then put on a poncho ‘cause you can expect a hefty blood spray this time around! Inside these pages, you’ll find a bunch of horror-themed Shticks, some bad guys to throw into the meat grinder, big pimpin’ villains, and a bunch of random tables for shit like Martian invasions and dumb Monster Mash crap like that. Viva la Wolf Man, bitches!

Inside you'll find:

• New character types like Spooky Scary Skeleton, Unnatural Symbiote, and Werewolf Heartthrob!
• New monsters like Hungry Hungry Himbos, Sheet Ghosts, and Wet T-Shirt Sirens!
• New Bad Guys like Bellatrix Lugosi, Guantanamo Bae, and Otto von Jizzmark! 
• Other crap for your game!

Get it today, it's spooktacular! And often really reprehensible and gross!

Fascinations of the Flesh

I like to run a few horror one-shots in October when I'm able--baring illness like the one I had last year that derailed my plans! For the following one-shot, I offered the players their pick from a bunch of pregens; all they knew about the game in advance was that a) it was going to be a horror game b) the premise was that they would be playing the cast and crew of a horror film called Fascinations of the Flesh that was being filmed at a historic castle in the Swiss Alps and c) they would have a brief description of their characters' abilities and their dark secret.

They did not have character sheets for their characters. They did not know what game system we would be using. And most importantly, they did not know that the scenario was taking place in the world of Clive Barker's Hellraiser.

Characters

Aurelia Swann, fx artist

Maurice Ivanov, drug dealer

Vincento Lombardi, actor

Roland Schrader, camera operator

Quentin Markov, producer

Events

We opened with the group traveling in Quentin's car, winding their way up the mountain to Kargen Castle, where Yann Cramling's Fascinations of the Flesh was being filmed. Cramling was well known for his erotic Euro Gothic films, but an indiscretion of some sort--no one could agree as to what it was--had marred his reputation, so Fascinations of the Flesh was to be his comeback film. 

Oddly, when they arrived at the castle, they didn't see anyone milling about despite the fact that a number of other vehicles were parked at the side of the fortress. The castle's main doors were out of reach behind a lowered portcullis. Embedded into the stone of the wall beside the portcullis was a brass plate bearing a strange design. After examining the plate, it was determined that it had four quadrant pieces that could be moved and a dial that could be turned in the center. After fiddling with the plate, the portcullis raised--and they heard the tolling of a distant, ominous bell.

Again, they did not see or hear anyone within the castle, even though they kept calling out hoping for an answer. They did managed to locate the castle chapel; the room was initially awash in gem-like blue and red tones from the light filtering in through the chapel's stained glass windows. Strangely, there was no cross on or near the altar. The altar was made of stone and, upon further inspection, they saw that there was another brass plate embedded into its surface. This plate had a large central circle that could be turned. Once manipulated, the circle slid upward as a cylinder, rotated, and descended back into place with a loud click. The room was immediately plunged into darkness as if the sun outside had been extinguished. 

The group rushed to look out into the courtyard to see what was going on, but they found that the world outside had been plunged into the darkest night. Despite the darkness, they perceived a beam that was darker than the gloom around them that swept the grounds at regular intervals. The beam's origin proved to be a massive octahedron on the horizon that rotated in place. 

While they were looking at the shape, they also noticed that blue light was now filtering from the mortar between the bricks of the castle's walls. A section of the wall opened like a door, from which emerged a humanoid figure. Their skin was so white that it appeared to be tinged blue. The skin of its cheeks had been peeled downward and pinned in place with iron keys. Its black leather skirt was splayed to reveal the mutilation that sat where its genitals should have been. At its belt was a heavy ring of medieval-looking keys, a curved knife, and an instrument that resembled a hacksaw.  

The creature introduced itself as the Chatelaine. It explained that it was an explorer "in the further reaches of pain and pleasure" and that their interacts with the brass plates in the castle had summoned it. Once summoned, it regarded all within the castle to have requested that it take them to "the Labyrinth" so that they too could experiment with the extremity of sensation. It told them they had four hours until they could be claimed; until that time, they were free to spend their time however they wished.

It then stepped aside.

They opted to spend their time searching the rest of Kargen Castle in hopes of finding a means of escaping the Chatelaine. In one room, the discovered a film projector--which they would return to later. For now, they wanted to return to the courtyard and explore the doors they had passed there. Much to their distress, they saw that there was now a large smear of blood across the courtyard's grass leading from the stables to the castle's surrounding wall. They were reluctant to enter the stables, but when they did they found a pile of fur and skin in each stall--it was as if the horses inside had been skinned and their bones and meat had been taken away.

They then located the room that Yann Cramling had been occupying. Aside from his cot and a pile of Gothic novels, they saw that he had not yet finished the script for Fascinations of the Flesh; the final scene was missing from the manuscript. They also located a number of film reels, but the third reel was missing. Finding that reel, and watching it on the projector previously located, now became a priority. 

Ascending the castle's tallest tower, they found another brass plate embedded into the wall at the top. When its moving pieces were manipulated, a chain ending in a barbed hook shot out and injured Aurelia. Tucked within a crack in the wall was a page torn from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Attached to the page was a post-it note on which someone had written a speculation that the scene where the three brides of Dracula menace Jonathan Harker was based on an encounter with three "cenobites."

In another room, the group found a member of the crew who had chosen to hang herself from the rafters rather than be taken by the Chatelaine. At her feet was a dropped crucifix necklace and a suicide note. 

When they explored the upper floors of the castle, they reached a level that should not have existed given what they knew about Kargen Castle's layout. In one room of the mysterious level they uncovered the missing third reel of film. They also found another reel that revealed Roland's dark secret: he had been party to filming a real snuff scene.

While moving a collection of detritus out of a room so they could reach the door beyond, someone cut their hand--this would become important later. In the chamber beyond, they found the body of a woman, the skin of her face flayed back to reveal a hideous grin, who had been nailed to the surface of a table. They quickly found another body; this one had been opened from sternum to pubis. 

When they attempted to return to the lower level, they found a figure standing between them and the stairs. The figure was human, but their skin had been removed and although their body glistened with blood, they did not seem to have enough meat to be complete. They recognized the person's voice as that of Yann Cramling; he told them that the blood spilled clearing the room had allowed him to escape the Labyrinth--but he needed more blood to fully rebuild his body. Unwilling to give up their blood without a fight, they attacked him. He slashed a few of them with a razorblade, but ultimately they were able to destroy his body. 

Watching the third reel made them uncannily aware that it was footage that documented their every move and every encounter since arriving at Kargen Castle.

With their time running out, Roland had an idea he wanted to try: since the script they had found was incomplete, perhaps writing a final scene could warp the reality of their situation and allow for them to leave Kargen Castle? The Chatelaine now slowly made its way down the hall to the room they had huddled up in. Unfortunately, writing their own final scene had no effect. Roland attempted to bargain with the Chatelaine, offering himself as a candidate for cenobite-dom. The Chatelaine was not interested in what was offered; hooked chains shot from the darkness, stringing Roland up, suspending him in the air, before rending him apart. 

Quentin was the next to be caught by the cenobite's chains; his neck was wrenched backwards by a hook through his lip, killing him. 

Vincento slammed the door shut and the remaining three members of the group waited.

Time passed, and nothing happed. They peeked out into the corridor, but the Chatelaine was gone. All three ran to the courtyard and main gates. 

Unfortunately, they found the bloody bodies of the skinned horses guarding the gate. Screaming the Lord’s Prayer, Vincento sacrificed himself to the monstrous horses to give Aurelia and Maurice time to slip through the gate. The last thing they heard was the sound of a hoof caving in Vincento's handsome face.

Once past the gate, Aurelia and Maurice, both heavily injured and teetering on the verge of insanity, found that the world was once again sunny. They could see nothing unusual in the courtyard of Kargen Castle--even Vincento's corpse was gone. They commandeered Quentin's car and sped away into what remained of the day--forever changed, forever marked.

Hoodtown

Bad Books for Bad People, Episode 80: Hoodtown

Christa Faust’s 2004 novel Hoodtown takes the reader to an alternate universe Los Angeles, where crime drama is brewing in an underground culture populated by masked wrestlers. Skulls will be cracked and butts will be fingered when Jack and Kate get in the ring with this pile-driving mix of murder mystery, romance, and action.

Why is it important to be nice to your local exotico? Does everyone from New Jersey have a gym membership? Is an especially skanky carpet the ultimate heel? All these questions and more will be explored in this episode of the podcast.

The Metal Monster of the Slot Canyon

A couple players in my ongoing Friday night Krevborna game gave me "nights off" by running something in usual campaign's stead. One of those games was Deadlands. My character was Frances D., aka Frances Donner, who survived the Donner Party ordeal but came away from the experience haunted by the ghosts of the eaten and charged with fighting supernatural evil by way of survivor's guilt.

Ironically, when the game started she was working as a camp cook.

The other characters were Alpeena (a conspiracy-theory obsessed gunslinger), Aloysius (a muck-raking journalist), and Sassafras (a kindly ranch hand).

We were headed through Deseret on a stagecoach when we stopped to see the twisted metal wreckage of a train crash. But we observed more than we bargained for; three tied-up folks were being menaced by gun-brandishing villains. Nearby the villains stood a large crate. Well, we couldn't stand idly by and watch these people get killed, so we took on the villains. During the course of the fight the leader of the villains blew a whistle, which caused a gosh-dang nosferatu to break out of the crate and join the melee. The gunluggers were easy enough to take down, but the nosferatu required some teamwork to dig the heart out of its chest.

One of the defeated toughs tried to make a run for it, but I knocked him out and dragged him back by the boots for questioning. After a few threats and a little interrogation, we learned that the group had been hired to steal a pile of ghost rock from the train. They were under the employ of One-Eye Abbie, whose hideout was somewhere in a nearby canyon.

We went into town and gathered more information. We learned that some sort of professor was holed up in the canyon as well. The town's blacksmith was particularly helpful; from the parts he had been asked to make for the boffin, we figured that the professor was building some sort of big metal automaton. That sounded like bad business, so we snuck out there to put an end to it.

We took Abbie and her hooligans by surprise. Aloysius distracted the goons while Alpeena dropped a boulder onto them from above in the canyon. When Aloysius came under fire, I came charging in with cleaver and pistol at the ready. We tried to get Abbie on-side, but she proved truculent and had to be killed as well.

There was some funny business with a big weird tuning fork, but I can't rightly say what that was all about.

However, when we found the professor, he had a sad tale to tell. Apparently the big metal contraption he was building was meant to be a kind of ambulatory life support for his wife--without it she'd die. The big metal body was also intended to be a weapon of revenge against the man who got her in such a sorry state. So, even though we had gone out there to stop him, we had a change of heart. Maybe we're soft-hearted fools--I guess we'll find out when the professor and his wife's deed makes the headlines one way or another.

The Ossuary

Hot--well, somewhat cold--pursuit of the Ushers' missing masks is underway, which means the characters are headed into a little dungeon for some exploration and violence. 

Oh yeah, Beebo the monkey talks now.

Characters

Aria, a paladin struggling with her true nature

Heck, an affable revenant looking for answers

Panthalassa, a necromancer with a missing arm

Daytona, a dhampir gunslinger fresh from Hell

Garazi, up and coming witch with a bird familiar

Willard Corn and King Beebo, a farmer and his monkey (?)

Events

We left off in the last session with the characters descending into the ossuary they had uncovered beneath the cemetery behind the Usher House. The walls and ceiling of the subterranean dungeon were lined with bones arranged in unnerving decorative patterns. Any doors they encountered were stolen from the crypts above; they were merely leaned against the portals they covered rather than being attached in any meaningful way. 

Daytona immediately triggered a spiked log to swing from out of the darkness and crash into the party as he went to inspect a crushed skeleton laying on the ground. In another chamber, Beebo noticed that the chandelier made of bone could be lowered; that also triggered something--but they never figured out exactly what that something was. In yet another room of the ossuary, they found a necromantic lab, complete with a pile of severed arms. They determined that someone had tried to cast a spell to preserve the dead flesh, but had failed. It should be noted that none of the arms were Panthalassa's missing limb.

As the group explored further, they discovered that the "ossuary" part of the caverns was connected to an undecorated system of caves--one of which opened out onto an underground river, complete with a violently swirling whirlpool. Tied to a rock was a rowboat meant for traversing the underground river. 

Another chamber in the ossuary was clearly a devotional room, as it was fitted out with an altar of bone and several pews. The altar cloth showed the symbol of the Fraternite du Cadavre. Upon the cloth were a number of scrolls, which were titled "Lord of Blood," "The Black Prince," and "Hymn of the Nightmother." A member of the party recalled that the Nightmother was a pagan death goddess, who wasn't worshiped so much as placated. She was also depicted as a multi-armed deity. Heck destroyed the altar, hoping to find something hidden within, but alas, now it was just a broken altar. 

Garazi spotted one of the Ushers' skull masks in a corridor, where it had presumably been dropped; Panthalassa put it on, but nothing happened. Meanwhile, a strange red rune briefly appeared on Daytona's forehead. The group determined that someone was trying to teleport him elsewhere. Panthalassa attempted to dispel the runes, but all she got for her trouble is a familiar voice in her head telling her that she was not a match for whoever was casting a spell on Daytona.

The party then examined a statue of the Grim Reaper that was stationed in an alcove. The base of the statue bore the legend "Beyond Death Lies Truth." When Heck moved the Reaper's scythe, the statue slide aside, revealing a small hiding place. Inside was an object wrapped in a cold wet cloth. Inside the cloth was a locked tome that Beebo was able to unlock. The book was titled Compendium of Death Gods and Major Spirits of the Dead, but its contents would require translation.

There was also a great deal of tomfoolery with some chairs sat at the base of statues of various necromantic figures, such as Dracula, Countess Alcesta, Count Magnus, the Grim Reaper, the Black Prince, and an uncouth and unfamiliar figure. Switching out who was sitting in which chair had no discernable effect.

As a change of pace, the group encountered someone who was actually still among the living in a tomb when they stumbled upon a snow elf named Eshrevaal rummaging around in piles of bones, hoping to chance upon repositories of necromantic energies. When they found him, he immediately assumed a defensive stance and drew an ice dagger, but Garazi managed to get him to drop his guard. The front of his shirt was covered in blood, but he explained that the blood was fake--it was intended to make people assume he was dangerous so they'd give him a wide berth. He explained what he knew of the Fraternite du Cadavre, as well as informing them of the presence of a foul-smelling chasm within the caverns, but also told them that he hadn't encountered any of the Fraternite members in the ossuary. The talked Eshrevaal into accompanying them as they finished exploring.

Meanwhile, more runes had appeared on Daytona's body and they were getting brighter.

In one of the caves, they found a number of wheels held aloft on spikes; the wheels had skeletons woven through them. Predictably, the skeletons animated when the group got near and clambered down the spikes with their wheels to roll menacingly at the party. The wheeling skeletons were not difficult to take down, but they kept reforming--even joining together to form new creatures when they were too damaged to continue on their own. Willard and Beebo figured out a novel way to circumvent the skeleton's constant reformation: they grabbed the skeletons' wheels and hurled them down the stairs. 

Some of the wheeling skeletons made a pleasing splash as they fell into the underground river and were swept into the whirlpool. The rest of the group began to follow suit with grabbing and throwing the wheels, but one of the skeletons managed to grab Aria's sword and take it with him into the river. Since that sword is near and dear to Aria's heart, she quickly tied a rope around her waist, handed the other end to her companions, and dove into the river after it. It was a tense moment, but Aria was able to wrest the sword from the skeleton's grasp just before it went down into the whirlpool.

The only thing left in the cavern was the chasm and the small underground lake nearby. There was a severed hand that had been gnawed upon at the lip of the charnal-smelling chasm. There was a small island at the center of the lake upon which stood a thin plinth. Beebo had the bright idea to retrieve the rowboat they had found earlier and use it to cross the lake. This was a wise move as they felt something touching the bottom of the boat as they crossed; if they had tried swimming instead they would have met whatever it was head-on. 

Beebo was able to climb up the plinth and retrieve an item from the top of it--it was a bone whistle on a leather thong. The whistle was determined to be magical. Tired of the dithering about it, Panthalassa blew the whistle; it summoned two monstrous humanoids garbed in ragged hoods from the depths of the cavern. The two figures claimed to have another of the Ushers' masks, but they would only trade it for FLESH. They preferred ROTTING FLESH, as it turned out. Beebo remembered the pile of arms they had found earlier and that made for the perfect exchange. The group now had two of the missing masks in their possession.

Having explored the extent of the ossuary, the group reemerged in the cemetery. Unfortunately, Daytona now found himself surrounded by a circle of runes that threatened to whisk him off to parts unknown. Before he vanished he handed Panthalassa his hat--a sure sign that he would make his way back to the group come Hell or high water.

Where did Daytona go? Read this to find out.

The Knights of the Helsing Vow and the Knights Labyrinthian

Below are two "knightly orders" in Krevborna that are nothing like knightly orders in practice.

The Knights of the Helsing Vow

The Knights of the Helsing Vow are a group of templars, witchfinders, inquisitors, and monster hunters associated with the Church of Holy Blood.

• Though the Helsing Knights hunt all manner of supernatural horrors, they hold a special enmity for the undead and view vampires as the ultimate expression of evil.

• The ultimate goal of the Helsing Knights is to conquer and reclaim the lands of Sibersk.

• Of the Church’s many factions, the Knights of the Helsing Vow are among the most militant, unbending, unforgiving, and secretive.

• One secret that the Helsing Knights zealously hide is the fact that the master of their order, Castor Leonidas, has fallen to darkness and currently serves Countess Alcesta von Karlok as a revenant knight.

The Knights Labyrinthian

The Knights Labyrinthian are a mystical conclave of gunslingers and rangers who are the heirs of a defunct order of knights sworn to protect pilgrims and penitents journeying to sacred sites.

• Although they are now knights in name only, the Knights Labyrinthian act as guards and guides for caravans traveling through Krevborna’s dangerous wilds.

• The Knights seek and study technology left behind by the Vlaak Empire and are particularly interested in the magical firearms found within Grail Tombs.

• Due to their frequent quests into the Grail Tombs, many of the Knights Labyrinthian inevitably fall into madness.

The Judas Sea

The sea off Krevborna's coast only got a cursory mention in the first edition of the setting book, so I'm aiming to change that with the forthcoming revised edition. Here's the starting point for what's going on with...

The Judas Sea

The Terrifying Ocean and Its Hidden Monstrosities

The waters of the Judas Sea are often rough and choppy, and the weather at sea is frequently temperamental. Vicious storms arise without warning and heavy fogs can obscure Krevborna’s coastline. The conditions conspire to make travel by sea to other lands perilous; few can boast of seeing foreign shores.

Hallmarks

The following elements and aesthetic notes define the Judas Sea:

    • The storms that fall on the Judas Sea are tempestuous and unrelenting. 

    • Reports of spectral ships and undead mariners abound.

    • The waters of the Judas Sea teem with monsters such as sea serpents, krakens, and horrible hybrids of man and crab.

    • Sailors mourn their compatriots who were lured into the depths by mermaids and sirens.

    • Legends speak of a city within the sea that is populated by once-human abominations.

The Snow Elves of Eisengraz

Illustration by Alexis Flower
from the comic I Roved Out

The populace of Eisengraz is mostly comprised of snow elves. Snow elves are immediately recognizable due to their alabaster skin and blizzard-white hair. Snow elves share the sharp features and ethereal presence of their kin, but they have the appearance of elves who have had all color leeched from their flesh.

Despite the way their culture endorses rugged survival, the snow elves are not necessarily rabid individualists. They celebrate the power of strong communal ties that enable the survival of the many rather than praising self-concerned individuals whose ascent endangers their fellows. 

To that end, the snow elves count a number of other peoples as members of their confederacy in Eisengraz. They employ urska servants as hunters, trackers, and as the honor guard of Lady Eriandel. In the mines beneath Eisengraz, allied clans of duergar excavate darkiron and craft the fearsome jagged blades prized by the snow elves as weapons of war.

Here are the stats for snow elves in my Savage Worlds game:

ALL THUMBS: Snow elves stick to the tried and true technology of a bygone age.  They have a −2 penalty when using mechanical devices. If they roll a Critical Failure while using such a device, it’s broken.

ENVIRONMENTAL RESISTANCE: Snow elves receive a +4 bonus to resist cold. Damage from cold is also reduced by 4.

ENVIRONMENTAL WEAKNESS: Snow elves suffer a –4 penalty to resist heat. The penalty also acts as a bonus to damage.

LOW LIGHT VISION: Elven eyes amplify light. They ignore penalties for Dim and Dark Illumination.

TOUGH: Snow elves are toughened by the harsh clime in which they live. They start with a d6 in Vigor instead of a d4. This increases maximum Vigor to d12+1.

OUTSIDER: Snow elves are distrusted by most residents of Krevborna. They subtract 2 from Persuasion rolls made to influence those who aren’t their own kind and they have few or no legal rights outside of Eisengraz.

WARLIKE: Snow elves start with a d6 in either the Fighting or Shooting skills due to their culture's emphasis on martial training.

The Decrepitude of the Usher House

This was one of those sessions that was mostly investigation and role-playing. After this one the characters are armed with information that will definitely allow them to start planning their next moves against the dark forces moving in Krevborna.

Characters

Aria, a paladin struggling with her true nature

Heck, an affable revenant looking for answers

Panthalassa, a necromancer with a missing arm

Daytona, a dhampir gunslinger fresh from Hell

Garazi, up and coming witch with a bird familiar

Genevieve, a dhampir alchemist

Events

Before leaving Veil's Nightside, the party made plans with Viktoria and Serafina to meet up with them before they went into hiding at Nightsong's family's inn. For their jaunt to the Nightside, Serafina had called in some favors with the graverobbers and resurrectionists of Veil; using her clout as the "Angel of the Graves," Serafina was able to get their drugged-into-insensibility bodies buried in shallow graves--complete with breathing tubes and signals to ring when they awoke from the effects of smoking the mysterious drug known as midnight bell. 

Serafina and Viktoria had preparations to make for their departure, but before they left they arranged to meet with the party at the edge of Veil. Serafina had an emotional goodbye with Panthalassa--well, as emotional as she's capable of--and thanked Genevieve for saving Nightsong's life. Viktoria had analyzed the samples she took from Heck and Aria and had at least a little information for them both:

Heck was informed that he numbered among the undead; specifically, he was a revenant who had come back from the grave to seek vengeance on the man who slew him. When asked if revenants could survive the act of achieving revenge, Viktoria told him that sometimes that occurred, but she wasn't sure what mechanism enabled them to exist after their purpose was fulfilled. 

Aria was told that she wasn't human either. Her exact categorization eluded Viktoria, but when she listened to the sample of Aria's flesh instead of just looking at it, she heard "the discordant song" of Aria's being. This led her to conclude that Aria was an eldritch creation of an entity from the Outer Dark. Viktoria advised her to seek cultists who served such abominations to learn more.

Viktoria also gave Panthalassa a mechanical doll to try to get to Pendleton so they could communicate over the distance.

Nightsong said her goodbyes as well, and had presents for each member of the group:

• Heck was given a harmonica with instructions on how to play "Man of Constant Sorrow."
• Genevie was given a bottle of miscellaneous pills and the promise that Nightsong "owed her one" for bringing her back from death's door.
• Garazi was given Adrian Vergara's silver calling card case, which she had picked out of his pocket.
• Aria was given two lipsticks--Whore of Babylon and Scarlet Woman were the two shades.
• Daytona was tossed a sack of slot machine tokens for a future trip to Lakona.
• Willard was given a pile of cat comics and King Beebo was handed a dangerous-looking gun.
• Panthalassa was told that Nightsong had commissioned a nude drawing of Thomasina, but she was actually given a daguerreotype of Serafina and Nightsong side by side, their faces tilted toward each other. 

With all parting words exchanged, Nightsong, Serafina, and Viktoria rode off in the direction of the mountains. The group traveled south to Hemlock Hollow.

When they arrived, Garazi went to her family's house on the outskirts of town to prepare them for meeting her new friends the next day. In the meantime, the group decided this was a fine time to spend some of their loot. Unfortunately, Daytona had a run-in with a villain from his past in the form of Wagner Highcross--a gunslinging vampire responsible for more than one massacre. Of course, when Wagner made a crack about Catarina, Daytona lashed out and tried to punch his nemesis. Wagner sidestepped the blow and pushed Daytona to the ground. Daytona went for his gun and shot Wagner, but being a vampire he was not too bothered by that. Besides, that's probably just how he and Daytona say "hello."

The rest of the group came running out of the shop to Daytona's aid, but Wagner wasn't looking for a fight--he even tried to make the group's acquaintance, but obviously they weren't interested. Genevieve did turn on the charm; through her maneuverings, they were able to learn that the reason Wagner was in town was that he was scouting out who was pledging their efforts to which side of the Hellwar on behalf of Countess Alcesta von Karlok. Wagner eventually stalked off, but the group added him to the every-growing list of things to worry about.

The next day, the group descended on Garazi's family for an evening of feasting and the kind of domestic joys they hadn't had the opportunity to be part of for some time. Of course, in the morning, it was back to the business of adventuring.

The group's attempt to meet with Helena Graymalk was stymied, but they were spotted by Lorelei Graymalk, who brought them into a private sitting room for tea. Lorelei did her best to answer their questions in her mother's stead. In particular, they got the lowdown on Grigori Trask, who was using a Church-endorsed assassin named Maxim Lukash, aka "The Lash," to track down the group. Lorelei was also able to tell them that Hemlock Hollow was experiencing a spate of burglaries related to necromantic items of power. Among those she pointed out who might hold such artifacts were Ivy Valerio, a local spiritualist medium, and the Ushers...who Panthalassa already suspected were involved with the attack on her family.

The group was leery of approaching the Ushers, so they went to Ivy Valerio's House of Spirits first. Their questions made Ivy immediately suspicious, but she was happy to take their money and summon the spirits of various folks they had killed, such as Valancourt Carathis, Markos Delarosa, and Darvala Kohn. When the lights dimmed, Ivy was able to summon the specters of the departed within a cloud of hissing smoke and compel them to answer a few questions that were put to them. The group received a lot of intelligence in these seances, but it will be up to them to sift that information in the future.

With no other avenues left open to them, they decided it was time to pay a visit to the House of Usher. The house was dilapidated; some of the upper floors listed to the side, some portions of the foundation had sunken in, and a large crack ran down the face of the house. The man carrying a candelabra who answered their knock was also in danger of collapsing; he was seemingly ancient and, like Panthalassa, he was missing his left arm. He brought them inside and related that the Ushers had recently suffered an attack by hooded miscreants. He told them that the attackers had amputated his arm and made off with it. He also told them that the skull masks used by the Ushers in their necromantic rituals were taken as well. 

Given the timeline of events, it meant that the Ushers were not responsible for the attack on Panthalassa and the Sabbaths; rather, the folks who had stolen the masks from the Ushers were responsible for the attack Panthalassa had survived.

When asked about the nature of the ritual that the Ushers undertake, the man brought them down into the basement. In a sealed chamber they saw a glass coffin holding the body of a red-headed woman in repose. The man explained that the body before them was Madeline Usher and that their rites involving the skull masks kept her in a state of unnatural slumber. Asked why Madeline needed to be kept in torpor, he told them that Madeline Usher was the first to master the arts of magic--and that her mastery had both given her the destructive power of a god and driven her hopelessly insane. If she should awaken, the man believed she would destroy the entire world.

The group now had a reason to find the necromantic thieves and return the masks to the Ushers.

The Ushers had tried to follow the thieves through the cemetery behind their house, but they disappeared without a trace and were not seen emerging from the burial grounds. The group decided to take a look for themselves. In the cemetery, they noticed that many of the gravestones and crypts were marked with the symbol of a compass atop a skull. Genevieve recognized the symbol as the mark of a supposedly defunct secret society known as the Fraternite du Cadavre. When Daytona pulled the left arm of an angelic statue that had the Fraternite's symbol on its base, they heard a rumbling from a nearby crypt.

Peering inside, they saw that a secret passage leading down into the darkness had opened. Lighting a lantern, they descended...

We'll find out what they discover next time.

The Shadow on the Glass

Bad Books for Bad People, Episode 79: The Shadow on the Glass

Outside of your hosts’ beloved Warhammer 40k novels, can tie-in game fiction be good? Jack and Kate aim to find out by discussing The Shadow on the Glass, a 2024 novel that pairs podcast-favorite author Jonathan L. Howard with the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game.

Where are all of London’s fanciest spiritualists and psychics disappearing to? Can an A-team still be an A-team if the “a” stands for accountants and academics? Is there a bit of rugose cone inside all of us, really? All these questions and more will be explored in this episode of the podcast.

The Myrastopol Gala

Last Friday's Savage Krevborna adventure tied up a major arc in the campaign: the characters had been looking for the missing Viktoria Frankenstein and Serafina, and they finally caught up with them.

Characters

Aria, a paladin struggling with her true nature

Heck, an affable revenant looking for answers

Panthalassa, a necromancer with a missing arm

Daytona, a dhampir gunslinger fresh from Hell

Garazi, up and coming witch with a bird familiar

Genevieve, an alchemist with a secret

Willard Corn and King Beebo, a farmer and his monkey

Events

With their invites in hand, the group was off to the Myrastopol Gala in all their mask'd finery with the purpose of tracking down Viktoria and Serafina. Once inside the seemingly endless house, their invitations were taken by a fop called Sebastian Lee, who checked them for authenticity. Sebastian Lee explained that the party beyond the "Limbo" foyer was taking place in eight rooms, each of which was themed after a different circle of Hell. Additionally, Lee gave each of them a key to a private room upstairs should they wish to pursue more clandestine pleasures. 

Nightsong linked the party's minds via telepathy and suggested that they split up to increase their chances of running into Serafina and Viktoria.

Garazi, Heck, and Nightsong went to the Fourth Circle because they had been told that there was a dancefloor in that room and Garazi was dead-set on dancing with a cute boy. This meant that Nightsong was now dead-set on helping Garazi dance with a cute boy. They were in luck; Nightsong spotted someone she knew, though he was surrounded by a knot of women who were clearly tripping over themselves to win his favor. That did not deter Nightsong, who hip-checked and elbowed her way into the circle with Garazi in tow. 

The man at the center of the women was Adrian Vergara, whom Garazi and company had released from a bestial curse. After a little small talk, Nightsong accused Adrian of poor manners because there he was, in front of a beautiful woman like Garazi, and he hadn't even asked her to dance. Embarrassed, Adrian was happy to escort Garazi to the dancefloor. They talked while they danced and Garazi learned that Adrian had spoken to Lady Adele Kincaid, a noblewoman of his acquaintance, but her personality seemed drastically different than what he remembered; where Lady Adele was vivacious and bubbly, she was now deadpan and monotone. Since Lady Adele's physical description matched the disguise they believed Serafina to be wearing, Garazi was sure that Serafina was somewhere in the gala. Garazi relayed this information to the rest of the group.

Over in the Fifth Circle, Willard found himself across a chessboard from Nathaniel "Bear" Farrowhawk, the captain of a mercenary band that the group had fought on the beach of Blyman's Cove. With a little help from King Beebo's advice, Willard was able to snatch a win away from Bear Farrowhawk. While they played, Bear mentioned that he had found some "weird machinery" in an unused kitchen pantry. Willard relayed this information as well, and the pantry was marked as a place to be explored later.

In the perpetual feast of the Third Circle, Genevieve encountered dowager Valtina Wosek, who was reclining in a chair with her swollen feet resting on a footstool. Valtina Wosek gestured for her to approach and requested that Genevieve refill her plate from the foods on offer. Genevieve returned with a plate full of decadent delights, which pleased Valtina enough for her to engage in further conversation. Valtina regaled Genevieve with a story about Adele Kincaid; she said that they had made plans to pray in the chapel, but Adele had not shown up. She also mentioned that Adele showed a strange interest in the crypts below the chapel, even going so far to ask Valtina if there was an available map of the crypts. This also sounded like a disguised Serafina, so the crypts were put on the list of places to check out.

In the Second Circle, Aria saw a number of people engaged in carnal acts or watching other people engaging in carnal acts. She made the acquaintance of Cassie Mabcrowe, a professor at the Malcovat, who reclined on a sofa and was attended by a number of shirtless men who were fanning her, feeding her grapes, and rubbing her feet. Cassie offered for Aria to join her on the sofa and happily shared her attendants' services. As they talked, Cassie revealed that she had recognized Viktoria Frankenstein, even though she was wearing an imp costume. This was also shared with the group and filed away.

Daytona and Panthalassa made their way to the Eighth Circle where they had an unfortunate run in with the hated Erasmus Feist and his currently less-hated sister Severina. After tense words were exchanged, Severina disclosed that she had a piece of information they might want, but there was a price: if they wanted her to spill, Panthalassa would have to dance with Erasmus. Daytona, a true friend and gentleman, turned on the charm and made a counteroffer: he proposed to dance with Severina instead. She agreed, and after their dance she told them that they she had found a laboratory in an empty attic room. The lab was added to the growing list of places to explore.

The group reconvened and then reconfigured who was with who so they could follow the leads they had picked up. Genevieve was able to determine that the laboratory had recently been used to concoct a novel sedative poison. The weird machinery seemed like it had been used to craft arcane communication devices that could be hidden in ragdolls. In the crypts, they found one of the steel caskets that Viktoria had stored her replicated bodies in, but this one was already open and empty.

Meanwhile, someone in a green outfit bumped into Panthalassa and pressed a note into her hand before disappearing into the crowd. The note told her to go to a specific room, alone, if she wanted to see Viktoria and Serafina alive. Panthalassa followed the instructions, but their was no answer to her knock on the door. She ventured inside and then felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed to the back of her neck. Luckily, her ambusher recognized her--it was Viktoria Frankenstein, in the flesh. Serafina emerged from where she was hiding under the bed. What followed was a combination of tearful reunion, exchange of recriminations, and a whole lot of concern over Panthalassa's missing arm.

Viktoria also explained that the empty coffin was due to someone releasing her double prematurely. The double, she reported, was now insane and bent on her destruction. The group assembled in Viktoria and Serafina's rooms, so Panthalassa's new friends got to meet her old friends and Nightsong had her reunion with her partner. The group resolved to help Viktoria kill her double. Returning to the gala, they spotted the double and were spotted by her in turn--she ran outside and darted into an ice maze.

The double led them on a merry chase, but they caught up to her at the center of the maze. The False Viktoria promptly shot the Real Viktoria with a dart gun loaded with the novel sedative, rendering her unconscious. False Viktoria barraged the area with arcing electricity. Nightsong punched Viktoria in the jaw, but was knocked unconscious (and was heavily wounded) by the electrical field that surrounded her. Nightsong was brought back from death's door by Genevieve, who also put in a lot of work keeping the group unfazed by the constant electrical shocks arcing about.

The battle became even more complicated when Church assassins associated with Grigori Trask arrived. These agents were all women who belonged to "The Lash," and they were clad green dresses and armed with bladed fans. Heck was able crush False Viktoria's head between his hands, but they weren't out of the woods yet. Complicating things further, Patchwork Jack burst through one of the ice walls, but he was surprised that one of his mighty blows did nothing to Heck. Serafina threw Heck a syringe; Heck plunged it into Patchwork Jack--the drug inside caused Patchwork Jack to "awake" from the Nightside, taking him out of the fight. The rest of the Lash were then cleaned up. The group learned that Genevieve was a dhampir when she healed her wounds by drinking one of the Lash assassins dry. In recognition, Daytona also drained one of the Lash agents.

The fight over, Viktoria was caried back to their chambers to recover and Nightsong got to be nursed a bit by Serafina. When Viktoria was roused, she took samples of flesh from Heck and Aria to help determine a starting point to explain their strange existences; a sample was taken from Panthalassa so Viktoria could begin growing her a new arm. Garazi squeaked in a few more dances and the group began to plan their next move now that the initial task that had brought them together was now completed.