Treacle & Crouch's Pie Shop and the Wormwood Star

Two more adventure locations in Piskaro! One is my obvious Sweeney Todd riff, the other was inspired by my study of French Decadent literature.

Treacle & Crouch’s Pie Shop

Treacle & Crouch’s Pie Shop is an eatery serving meat-stuffed pasties in Piskaro. It is frequented by the working class because the meals on offer are both cheap and filling. 

    • Some residents of the city suspect that Lovetta Treacle and Bartram Crouch, the shop’s joint proprietors, supplement the filling in their pies with rat meat, but the truth of the matter is much worse: both are serial killers who commit murder and use the flesh of their victims to make the pies they sell in their shop.

    • Bartram and Lovetta are former sailors who sought the aid of a demonic force to help them escape the barren island they had been shipwrecked on once they ran out of the corpses of their fellow mariners to eat. 

    • The demon lord Baal promised to save their lives and usher them into prosperity—if they would make a pact with it and pledged themselves to furthering the practice of cannibalism through nefarious means. 

      

The Wormwood Star

Operating out of a defiled and defaced chapel of the Holy Blood Church, the Wormwood Star is a salon catering to Piskaro’s decadent dandies. 

    • The Wormwood Star openly sells a number of exotic stimulants—both those imported from foreign shores and those alchemically concocted by the Skarabasca.

    • The intoxicant that has brought a measure of infamy to the Wormwood Star is a special absinthe made on site.

    • Some patrons of the Wormwood Star experience an uncanny visitation while in the grips of the absinthe served on the premises: they hallucinate a vision of the Green Fairy.

    • The Green Fairy is a capricious fey being who is as apt to offer startling delirium and artistic inspiration as she is to send the imbiber on an ill-fated quest. 

Graves Left Wanting in Bloat

We had a gap in the rotation of who was running the weekly game, so I ran a one-shot of MORK BORG. For this adventure I cobbled together two things from the Heretic supplement: "Graves Left Wanting" and "Bloat."

Characters

Vagal, Heretical Priest, wants to kill Silas the vagabond

Agn, Fanged Deserter, wants to kill Silas the vagabond

Merkari, Wretched Royalty, accompanied by the jester Poltroon, wants to rescue missing villagers

Karg, looking for a new home maybe there's one in the graveyard

Graft, looking for a new home maybe there's one in the graveyard

Events

The characters found themselves at the top of a hill, looking down at a vast, jumbled graveyard of crowded tombstones. Next to them on the hill was a large tree with corpses hanging from its bare limbs. From their spot on the hill, they could see a stone landing below. Vagal climbed the steps going up the trunk of the tree and peered into the stinking hole at its top. He dropped a caltrop inside, but did not hear it land. He did, however, find a rope strung up inside the tree that, when pulled, caused the limbs of the tree to bend and make it look like the corpses hung from them were dancing like marionettes. 

The group decided to pick their way across the field of gravestones to the landing. The landing was covered in debris and at one corner was a throne made of garbage. Sitting upon the throne was a dirty, bearded bastard holding a whip. Kitten-sized roaches scurried at his feet. He introduced himself as the Roach King and explained that he wasn't allowed in the village anymore. He didn't know where Silas was, but he did offer to take them all to the undertaker's house.

On the way to the undertaker's house, they heard the disturbing sound of something human breathing in their left ears. Suddenly, four rotting ravens descended from the night sky and attacked! The ravens were intent on pecking their way through the characters' flesh so they could "nest" inside of them. A few injuries were taken, but the ravens were dispatched with haste. Unfortunately, the Roach King was killed by the birds. They looted his body, but nobody wanted to eat the jerky they found on his person. 

They party decided to turn back at this point, but without a light source or the Roach King to guide them they were soon lost in the tangled cemetery. A soupy fog rose from the tombs and the group nearly stumbled into a plague pit filled with noxious corpses. 

Eventually they found a large stone mausoleum. Inside, they discovered a plain stone sarcophagus standing upright against the back wall. Merkari ordered Poltroon to open the lid, which promptly fell on him--killing him under its heavy weight. RIP Poltroon the jester. 

Inside the sarcophagus was a undecayed corpse whose flesh had the consistency of dough. In fact, when touched, it could be remolded. They also found that the skeleton inside the dough-flesh was made of iron. Removing the corpse revealed a tight passageway down into some kind of subterranean complex. The hole was too narrow for them to fit in while wearing their armor, but they weren't fooled by this puzzle: they simply dropped their armor down into the hole and followed after it. 

The chamber bellow had a fungal stink...and was the home of a trapped ratbadger that needed killing. Once that was accomplished, they cleared debris from the floor and saw that it was covering a mosaic depicting corpulent priests feasting. In fact, all the stone doors they found in this dungeon were carved with similar scenes. 

As they explored, they heard the sound of running water coming from somewhere. Karg ducked through a leather curtain in one corridor and triggered a stone block to fall on his head from above--he nearly had his skull caved in on the spot. The tinkling water sound proved to be coming from a fountain with a statue of a comely woman. The water in the fountain smelled weirdly sweet. Graft drank some of the water and felt invigorated by it; however, the fountain rapidly drained and the flow of water stopped. 

In another chamber they saw a statue of the hated Silas standing in a pool of congealed sewage, fat, and greasy water. A single person knelt at the edge of the pool, "praying" to the statue. (They risked a look over their shoulder at the party and mouthed "help me." This was one of the villagers Merkari had hoped to rescue.) Behind the villager were three ceramic automatons wearing the same priestly miters they had seen in the art throughout this complex. 

Vagal waded through the muck and stole the gem eyes from Silas's statue. Agn was unwilling to leave the villager to these strange constructs, the group battled them. The ceramic automatons were difficult to harm, but when their ceramic bodies were shattered it became apparent that they were filled with fatty tissue. 

In a nearby room, they found Silas--but he had grown to enormous proportions. He was holding a silver fork in one hand and a silver knife in the other. He was now too fat to leave the room he was in. He tried to convince the group to bring him more villagers to eat, but they weren't buying it. When they realized that he couldn't come at them through the doorway, they began lobbing poison and bombs at him. Once reduced to a chunky slurry, they decided to hide out until morning and then head back to the village--approximately five silver pieces the richer.

Karnstein Castle and Our Lady of the Drowned

Two more adventure locations in Piskaro. 

Karnstein Castle is a naked attempt to shoehorn Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla into the setting. Look, if you have the opportunity to include lesbian vampire shenanigans, you leap at it. Also, I've included an in-joke here with Carmilla's origins being "in Styria." That's true to Le Fanu's fiction, but I've also noticed that fantasy novels have a strange proclivity for including Styria among the made-up place names. Why not have a Styria in the world of Krevborna too?

Our Lady of the Drowned exists because I love the idea of creepy nautical rites and monstrous sea goddesses. A lot of this bit of the setting was inspired by the film version of Dagon, but big chunks of it were also inspired by an actual Krevborna campaign that focused the cult's rise.

Karnstein Castle

On the outskirts of Piskaro sits Karnstein Castle, the abode of an ancient vampire posing as a foreign noblewoman who retired to the city for the healthful benefits of its fresh sea air.

    • Carmilla Karnstein purchased the castle to use as her lair; she claims to be a noblewoman from a far-off land known as Styria—though no one has ever heard of such a place.

    • Carmilla plays the part of an invalid stricken with a strange and incurable malady, but this merely disguises the fact that she is a bloodthirsty vampire.

    • As a woman of status and means, Carmilla Karnstein often holds balls, dances, and masquerades to which the well-to-do and aristocratic are always invited.

    • If Carmilla takes an interest in a young woman at one of her parties, the girl is invited to become her companion. 

    • When these companions return to their homes after a stint with Carmilla, they are always curiously anemic, listless, and sometimes lovelorn. 

    • Some of Carmilla’s lady companions are never heard from again.

Our Lady of the Drowned

Our Lady of the Drowned is a grand church in Piskaro dedicated to Scylla, a morbid goddess of the sea, who is in actuality a primordial monster of the depths feared for her bloodlust and fecundity. 

    • The church was built from the remains of ships that capsized, foundered on Krevborna’s shores, or otherwise became less than seaworthy. 

    • The church’s altar is constructed from driftwood and carved figureheads recovered from sunken ships. 

    • The faithful come to Our Lady of the Drowned to pray for the souls of those lost at sea and to petition Scylla for safe passage before undertaking ocean voyages. 

    • The church is presided over by Belle Silvra, the high priestess of the cult of the Lady of the Drowned in Piskaro.

    • Belle Silvra always appears in public wearing a veil that obscures her face.

    • The effective proselytizers for the cult are the Daughters of the Eel, strange “nuns” trained at the Nightsea Priory in the nearby town of Lachryma.

The Hook and Lamb's Boarding House

Two more adventure locations in Piskaro! The Hook is based on an obscure bottle of booze called "Incredible Hook" that my friend Ken produced during a weekend-long D&D fest. The world hasn't been the same since. There's obviously a Lovecraft element to it as well, but that's fitting as Ken is something of a Lovecraft scholar. (But not the terrible apologist kind.) Consider it a tribute from one DM to another. Lamb's Boarding House was inspired by Black Sunday, one of my all-time favorite Euro-Gothic movies. Mario Bava was the absolute master. I'll fight you if you disagree. There's a little Ringu to Lamb's as well.

The Hook

The Hook is a rough sailors’ tavern in Piskaro. It is primarily frequented by folk possessing “the Piskaran look,” an affliction that manifests as pronounced alopecia, bulging eyes, small ears, the complete lack of a nose, and wide, thick lips.

    • In truth, the sailors who drink at the Hook are the children of men and women who have fornicated with the fish-like humanoid creatures who live in the underwater city of Fathom’s Reach.

    • The degenerates descended from the people of Fathom’s Reach drink a special brew served only at the Hook—an algae-green concoction that sickens any human men and women who dare to quaff it.

    • Although other members of Piskaro’s populace are welcome to drink at the Hook, they are expected to ignore the unnerving and inhuman idols carved from black, oily stone that decorate the interior of the pub.

Lamb’s Boarding House

Generations ago, Piskaro went through a particularly pious period that resulted in witch hunts and persecutions. When it was discovered that Anya Lamb—a boarding house owner in Piskaro—was a sea witch, she was executed by her “friends” and neighbors. 

    • Before her death, a demonic iron mask was nailed over her face to mark her status as a condemned sorceress and she was thrown unceremoniously into the well behind her boarding house. 

    • However, when a worker at the recently reopened boarding house cut himself on one of the well’s sharp stone edges, his blood dripped onto Anya’s forgotten remains where they lay at the bottom of the well.

    • The boy’s blood awakened Anya Lamb as a undead witch. 

    • She now stalks the streets of Piskaro, emerging from her well by night to hunt the descendants of the people who cheered at her execution. 

    • Still wearing the hideous iron mask that was forced upon her, she brings a bloody vengeance in her wake.

The Bloody Machinations of Makeen

The Khorne-carved butte

The Friday night group had a gap in between games that needed filling, so I stepped in with a one-shot session. The initial premise was that they'd be playing young barbarians about to be exiled from their tribe. Little did they know that they'd find themselves in a scenario that was half the Doctor Who episode "Face of Evil" and half them being recruited by Warhammer 40k's Inquisition.

I love doing a one-shot with a twist or reveal to it, but to make that work I think you also have to deliver on the premise you presented at the outset too. I promised barbarians vs. dinosaur action, which they got, and then there was a "the fantasy stuff is actually sci fi" and "actually you're facing an AI wargame corrupted by the chaos god Khorne" layer over that.

The Characters

Aldric, an agile warrior

Bru, a brutal warrior

Chika Boom-Boom, a lorekeeper

Abendego, a hunter

Yrsa, a shaman's acolyte

The Premise

This is what the players knew going into the game:

You are youngbloods of the Rokatehm tribe, hunters and gatherers who eke out an existence in your tribal lands. Your people collect fruit from the jungle and kill the mighty thunder lizards who roam the Carnage Zone for their meat and skins. The Carnage Zone lies beyond a line of magical pillars that keep the thunder lizards from wandering into your tribe’s territory. 

The Rokatehm do not live in peace; your people suffer raids from the lizard-headed Eaters, who attempt to drag members of your tribe away to be devoured or enslaved. No one knows where the Eaters hail from–they cross the Carnage Zone to reach your village. Even your great god Makeen does not offer an explanation for the predatory Eaters.

Makeen speaks! Mostly to Gorvus Feld, your tribe’s head shaman, and only when he wears his sacred headdress. Only Gorvus Feld can hear the voice of Makeen–or so you had been led to believe.

One night, drunk on the fermented nectar of the katal-katal fruit, you youngbloods sneaked into the head shaman’s chamber ritual chamber and took turns placing the holy helmet upon your heads. Each of you has heard the voice of Makeen! Makeen has spoken to you!

You were caught during your act of transgression and dragged before the tribal council. No one cared when you claimed that Gorvus Feld had lied about Makeen’s willingness to speak to others. The chieftain sentenced you to exile–you now stand before the mystical pillars, the tribe’s warriors at your back ready to force you from your home and into–the Carnage Zone!

Events

Play began with the characters' gear being tossed beyond the shimmering protective barrier of the pillars. The character crossed into exile willingly, except for Yrsa who had to be thrown past the boundary by the tribe's warriors. The group began to pick their way into the Carnage Zone. Around them, the jungle was alive with the sounds of birds and buzzing insects; as they marched the heat sapped their strength and they were soaked in sweat.

Things went from bad to worse when a few members of the group detected the ground shaking in response to a massive thunder lizard bearing down on them and crashing through the trees. The group ran for it, with most of the party heading left and Aldric heading right in hopes that the monster would pursue the larger group. 

Everyone emerged from the jungle at the same time at the base of a butte. The butte had been carved to resemble some kind of helmet or ritual headdress of unknown origins. The maw of the helmet was actually an entrance to a cave within the butte. The characters rushed inside. From the safety of the cave, they could see that the thunder lizard that had chased them through the jungle was a T. Rex. Fortunately, the cave's mouth was too small for the thunder lizard to squeeze in, though its saliva-dripping jaws did snap and snarl at the entrance.

Inside the cave, Abendego tripped over a skeleton whose remaining clothes marked them as a previous exile from the Rokatehm tribe. Using bits of the skeleton and its rags, he was able to fashion a makeshift torch to explore the rest of the cavern. There was a slopping passage up and a strange, unnatural shaft. The shaft was "decorated" with small blue lights and "vines" of copper metal that were threaded with strands and clumps of throbbing meat. When cut, the meat bled.

With no way to ascent the shaft, the group ventured up the sloping path and wandered further into the interior of the butte. They found themselves in a chamber lined with large glass tubes (though they had no conception of what glass was) filled with murky liquid. They had a bit of a jump scare when they realized that fetal thunder lizards were floating inside the murky liquid. Atop each of the tubes were more of the copper vines and bits of pulsating meat. A metal door with no handle marked one exit from the chamber and a corridor stretching off to the side marked another. There was also a perfectly round hole in the floor of this chamber. Using his torch, Abendego could see a collection of human and thunder lizard bones done below, as well as rats scurrying to and fro.

Their exploration was halted when five of the tubes opened to disgorge fully formed (and hungry) velociraptors. The group attempted to flee down the unknown corridor, but it ended in another featureless metal door. Now they were penned in with no choice but to fight their way past the velociraptors. Axes and swords were swung, arrows were unleased, and Chika was nearly shredded by the teeth of a raptor. The group managed to slay the prehistoric beasts. Bru was particularly effective at carving a swath through the monsters.

Abendego was able to fashion a rope from the copper vines (cables, really) and descend into the bone pit, where he found a slim card that unlocked the doors in the area above. As they explored further, they found a shrine with a bronze statue with the same helm as was carved on the butte's face. Piled around the statue's feet were human skulls that were spattered with dried blood. When Aldric began smashing the skulls, it alerted the lizard-headed Eaters in the next room to their presence in the complex. The Eaters rushed in and again the party found themselves in a life and death struggle.

The Eaters were hardy foes, but once they were vanquished the group found themselves in possession of another card. This one unlocked the most horrifying chamber yet: a room filled with wheezing machinery, curtains of raw meat hung like skirt steak, and undulating organs of alien purpose. Within the room were more Eaters (one of whom was armed with a strange sword whose edge was lined with metal "teeth," yeah, it was a chainsword) and a number of dead-eyed beings who looked like Rokatehm exiles whose flesh had been combined with bits of metal and flashing lights. 

The voice of Makeen rang out as they stepped into the chamber: "Calculating winner, please stand by." The winner was announced, and it was Chika! Part of the unnerving black metal machinery opened, revealing a throne. Chika was told to sit herself upon the throne and receive her "prize," but she refused. Her refusal confused the Eaters in the room, as they could not imagine rejecting the chance to be transformed into a champion of "the Blood God." 

The group heard a sound like the shrieking of a great bird coming from atop the butte. Further conversation with the gobsmacked Eaters was rendered impossible by a woman coming down the stairs from the top of the butte who opened fire on the Eaters with a miraculous weapon. Her white hair was cut in a bob and she wore black armor the likes of which the group had never seen before. (Yes, Sister Talisa was an Adepta Sororitas.) Since she didn't know what to do with the group, she brought them up top where her leader, Inquisitor Mohandas Corrado was busy examining Makeen's "brain."

Mohandas Corrado was a dark-skinned man with a swoop of curly hair covering one eye. He explained that just about everything the group knew about their lives was a distortion of the truth. The Rokatehm tribe were the descendants of the Boom-Boom Rocket Team, a team of suborbital racers who competed across the sector until their ship got caught in a Warp Storm and deposited on the jungle planet. One of the Rocket Team members was a "naughty boy" who had a xenos artificial intelligence wargame system onboard the ship; when it passed through the Warp Storm it was infested with Khorne's demonic energies. That xenos device was, of course, Makeen (machine!) and had been breeding dinosaurs and creating Eaters to carry on the blood-soaked wargame in real time to feed blood and souls to the Chaos god Khorne!

Mohandas asked the group what they would do with Makeen, if they were in his position: would they destroy it or take it away for further study? They hemmed and hawed over this question, but ultimately indicated that they would study it further if that meant putting an end to similar incursions elsewhere. Mohandas agreed and, intrigued by the groups' ability to survive against the machinations of Chaos, offered to take them with him on his gunship so they could be trained as part of his Inquisitorial retinue. 

They agreed that leaving the planet was a capital idea, so they boarded Corrado's gunship and prepared themselves to encounter an entire galaxy beyond their wildest imaginings. 

Drathmoor Asylum and Esperhaus

Below are two adventure locations in the city of Piskaro. It just wouldn't be a Gothic fantasy setting without a horrible asylum to either infiltrate or break out of, would it? Similarly, you can never have enough venues for terrifying, empowered children. Krevborna trivia: the twin sisters in charge of Esperhaus are named after former members of the band Rasputina.

Drathmoor Asylum

Drathmoor Asylum is an infamous place of incarceration for inebriates and the mad. 

    • The asylum gives some lip-service to the notion of being an institution where the afflicted find solace, but the treatments provided there are seldom better than torture.

    • Rumors circulate that some of the procedures pioneered at the asylum have horrifying origins—serving the doctors’ desire to know the inner workings of the mind, rather than tending to their patients’ recovery and treatment. 

    • It is also suspected by many that Drathmoor is used to get unwanted and inconvenient relations out of the way.

Esperhaus

Esperhaus is a sprawling orphanage and foundling hospital in Piskaro that hides a dark secret.

    • The avowed mission of Esperhaus is to clothe, feed, and educate orphans and unwanted children according to a modern, progressive plan.

    • However, the educators of Esperhaus clandestinely test their charges for psychic potential.

    • When they discover a child with latent psychic powers, the boy or girl is subjected to experiments designed to enhance and unlock their extraordinary abilities.

    • Esperhaus is run by Carpella and Agnieszka Parvoska, twin sisters who are both scientists who have been driven to madness by their own psionic powers.

    • Carpella Parvoska is a proficient telepath able to prize secrets from even the most well-guarded mind.

    • Agnieszka Parvoska is a wild-eyed pyrokinetic who can barely contain her violent power.

Best of 2024

Bad Books for Bad People, Episode 82: Best of 2024

Jack and Kate look at what they've read and watched in the year that was 2024 and make some recommendations in the world of books and beyond. The rules of engagement are simple: the hosts each choose one movie, album, TV show, and book that was the best experience of its kind, regardless of when it was actually produced. A little bit new, a little bit old, and a whole lot of weirdness is in store!

Join your hosts for a discussion that ranges from wicked governesses to the relative merits of Italian heavy metal to gothic roadside attractions. Oh, and murder. So much murder.