Third Novice Advance

We did another "level-up" session for the ongoing Krevborna game. Here's what the players grabbed for their characters:

Anastasia took the New Power edge, gaining Relief and Dispel (and Smite from studying the Book of Carrion Winds)

Dario took the Formation Fighter edge

Johanna increased her Agility to a d8.

Ulu took the New Power edge, gaining Environmental Protection and Arcane Protection (and Smite from studying the Book of Carrion Winds)

Varro took the Sweep edge

Morwenna took the Arcane Background edge, focusing on Magic, gaining the powers Mind Reading, Bolt, and Corpse Sense

 

Morwenna was taught the rudiments of magic by Cassie Mabcrowe as the group traveled from Hemlock Hollow to Chancel, where they hoped to track down a man named Ratibor Bron--who had some kind of connection to Yavor Mikalek. Cassie also gifted Morwenna a deck of bird-themed tarot cards and taught her how to use them to scry.

Speaking of scrying, Ulu asked Cassie to try to gain more information about Krusikal's sundered heart. The group had been operating under the belief that Varro's sword may have been half of Krusikal's heart, but Cassie didn't think that was true. Varro's sword was connected to something dark and unfathomable, but it wasn't Krusikal. 

Left to think on what they might have brought back with them from Ustalecht, they hit upon an interesting idea--what if Commander Kaul's body itself hid the weapon?

They also asked Cassie to scry the location of Raenessa's missing adult children. Alduin was currently somewhere in Veil. Alyndara however...was deceased. The group did not relish having to break that news to their alchemist.

Yes, you can do emotional terrorism even in a level-up session. It's legal. 

Total Skull: July, 2026

Things that brought me delight in July, 2026:

 

Neurosis, An Undying Love for a Burning World

I honestly wasn't sure we'd ever get another album from Neurosis, but An Undying Love for a Burning World is a worthy addition to their lengthy catalog. The band's signature sludgy, doomy, post-metal heft remains intact, but the record also displays an incredibly varied textural palette; everything from earthy, warm tones to moments of electronic ambience have their place in the overall soundscape. Also, despite being an album that is firmly "of the current moment," there is a hopefulness to An Undying Love for a Burning World that feel so crucial, so absolutely necessary to our survival.

 

Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Certain Dark Things

Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Certain Dark Things is the best Vampire: The Masquerade book not officially part of Vampire: The Masquerade's spotty fiction line. (And let's be honest: this novel is too good to be tie-in fiction, but it should appeal to fans of that particular game.)

We've got rival vampire clans (each with different powers and cultures) in Mexico City, fighting over control of the narcotics trade. The protagonist belongs to the native vampire clan and is on the run from a European colonial vampire clan that brought a horrible vampire disease to Central America. Certain Dark Things combines urban fantasy with a big dose of noir and action thriller--an extremely fun mix.

 

Tarja, Frisson Noir

Touted as Tarja Turunen's (formerly of Nightwish) return to symphonic metal, Frisson Noir is a surprisingly heavy and extremely theatrical record. If the goal was show that she still has the chops to deliver a strong Gothic metal album, well--mission accomplished. And yet, Frisson Noir doesn't really play it safe or rely on retreading past glories; Frisson Noir feels pretty vital and unique.

 

Heather Parry, Carrion Crow 

Heather Parry's Carrion Crow gives a fresh, and sometimes devastating, view on the Gothic "madwoman in the attic." Consigned to an attic in her family's crumbling house by her controlling mother, the protagonist is being "prepared" for life as a wife in Victorian England. Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management stands in as a kind of Necronomicon, full of eldritch truths, eroding the main character's sanity page by page. And there is a lot of erosion here--of the mind, the body, the sense of self...of personal history and identity. Carrion Crow is definitely a clever book; it reminded me a bit of J.-K. Huysmans's A Rebours, but where a male aesthete makes the choice to seclude himself in a world of his own design, a woman of the same era finds confinement to be an entirely different experience.

 

The Long, Hot Summer 

With a plot stitched together from multiple William Faulkner fictions (and a good dose of Tennessee Williams, as well), The Long, Hot Summer finds a handsome vagabond with a reputation as a barn burner ingratiating himself with Will Varner, the big boss of a Mississippi town. Ben Quick, the vagabond who is full of masculine swagger and a predator's ethical laxity, seems to represent the solution to many of Will Varner's problems: he looks to be a good replacement for his somewhat spineless son in the family business, he could be a virile match for his spinster-at-twenty-three daughter, and he looks to be his best bet for revitalizing the Varner family line with lots of grandsons. But Quick's reputation dogs him, and the familial psychodrama is tangled. I wasn't expecting the surprisingly light-hearted ending, but this was definitely a fun Southern Gothic film.

 

Moonspell, Far From God

I wasn't really expecting Moonspell's newest album to be a full-on goth rock record, but here we are. And I'm not exactly mad at it, as the results feel strangely fresh and vital even if it is taking on a sound that now irrevocably feels "retro." Things do get heavier on the second half of Far From God, but even the chugs and grittier vocals don't really feel too far afield from the heavier moments of, say, The Mission or Fields of the Nephilim.  

 

The Vampire Lestat 

Even though my memories of Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat novel have been dimmed by the passage of time, it was clear to me that the AMC adaptation was not strictly true to the source material. And that's fine by me. What I can't figure out, however, is if this show is a brilliantly weird re-imagining of Rice's second foray into the world of vampires or if it's a deeply stupid, meandering take on her Vampire Chronicles. That, in itself, is impressive. I watched the whole thing, and I still don't know exactly what I think about it or how I feel about it. That's probably a triumph of some sort.

 

Queen of the Damned

To keep the Anne Rice adaptation train rolling, I watched Queen of the Damned--which I had never seen before and, frankly, had avoided for years because it doesn't exactly have a great reputation. I thought it was fun, though I'd struggle to call it "good." It's such a strange beast--for a big-budget feature, Queen of the Damned often looks impressively cheap; what's with the horrid special effects? Who found these absolutely wooden actors? Whose decision was it to make the film all beginning and end, with no middle to speak of? Also, I will never get over Jonathan Davis's voice coming out of Lestat's mouth every time he sings. Amazing.

 

Luke Dumas, A History of Fear 

I enjoyed Luke Dumas's The Paleontologist a few years ago, so when a friend recommended I also check out his A History of Fear I put it on my list. It's time has come. Either I didn't know it or forgot in the intervening months, A History of Fear is a riff on James Hogg's classic Gothic novel Confessions of a Justified Sinner, specifically incorporating Eve Sedgewick's argument that the main character's flaw is an ability to navigate homosocial bonds and homosexual desires. (Curiously, I haven't seen Hogg's novel mentioned in any of the copy written about the novel. Why hide that? Feels like stolen valor, in a way.) In any case, Dumas's book is very much a strong modern Gothic, with the haze of vagueness surrounding whether the murderous grad student at the heart of the tale was motivated to kill by the Devil or suffered a mental breakdown due to sexual repression. 

 

Double Door

Pre-code films are almost always a treat, and Double Door was originally a theatrical production that was dubbed "the play that made Broadway gasp." (In fact, two actors from the play version reprise their roles in the movie adaptation.) Double Door is a fun little Gothic family drama about a new bride who has to contend with her husband's insane spinster half-sister and the sinister hidden vault within their NYC mansion. I love how tight and concise Double Door is; it gets in, delivers on plot and theme, and gives you a satisfying comeuppance in the bargain.

 

Elizabeth Harvest 

I went into Elizabeth Harvest with admittedly low expectations, but the cinematography and cast are amazing. Seriously, it's impossible to take your eyes off Abbey Lee as the protagonist, and Ciaran Hinds and Carla Gugino always enliven a film. Elizabeth Harvest is a Gothic sci-fi riff on Bluebeard, but that added to the appeal for me. I can imagine a viewer for whom Elizabeth Harvest has at least one too many plot twists, but it delivered what I often hope an A24 movie will be (and just as often fails at): a visually striking movie with an actual story, and themes that aren't rooted in pop psyche theories of trauma.

 

Blackwater Holylight, Not Here Not Gone

Blackwater Holylight is a new band to me, but their mix of shoegaze and sadgirl doom really hit the spot in late July. Not Here Not Gone feels like an album the band has been building up to for quite some time, especially in terms of heaviness, but the songs on this record never really lose their essentially ethereal, mist-like quality. 

 

The Witch's Mirror 

The Witch's Mirror is here to teach you an important lesson: even if you hate your wife, it's a bad idea to murder her if her godmother, who is also your housekeeper, is a witch with a magic mirror that acts as a direct hotline to Hell. The first half of the movie is a "using black magic to torment the doctor and his new wife" Gothic romp, but the second half unexpectedly weaves in elements of body snatching and medical horror--a bit like a Mexican Eyes Without a Face. Maybe a little less ethereal and a good click more earthily gory.
 

Consummate Graveside Manner

I had planned to make a mix a month for all of 2026, but nobody seemed to listen to the mix for last May, so I fell off on that. Some projects get left by the wayside. 

The Tower of the Black Prince

The Friday night Krevborna campaign continued, this time with a special guest joining for the evening.

Characters

Dario Diego Durant, swashbuckling swordsman

Doctor Anastasia Nadya Strahov, a gun-priest

Ulu, the party's urska mom

Varro, a young snow elf bearing a magical sword

Morwenna, harpy devotee of St. Vionka

Johanna, lycan bard and fallen noble 

Routh, cauldronborn servant of the Graymalks

 

Events

The Charnel Hounds arrived in Hemlock Hollow after weeks of traveling. They found the Graymalk's sprawling, city-block sized house easily; after knocking on the door, they were ushered into a conference with Vandra Graymalk, a witch with a particular focus on herbalism. She offered terms for treating the hideous plant growths that had taken root in Anastasia and Morwenna: she would cure one of them now and other later, and in return the Hounds would retrieve an item lost in the Hellwar that the Graymalks wanted. Vandra also planned to send her cauldronborn servant Routh with them to keep the group on task. (And to facilitate her plan to betray the group, but of course they didn't know that.)

After accepting her terms, the group was led into the labyrinthine basements of the Graymalk house until Vandra unlocked an iron-bound door that opened into utter darkness. The item they were meant to retrieve, which she would not name, was hidden somewhere in the Tower of the Black Prince's Corruption...in Hell. 

By stepping through the portal, they literally entered Hell.

They walked across a red plateau until they saw a strange tower in the distance. The tower proved to be made entirely of flesh--scabby, puss-leaking flesh. Morwenna flew to the top of the tower and spotted a wound large enough to enter, so she ferried each Hound up to the top one by one. 

The tower's internal wounds acted as tunnels leading downward through the mass of flesh. They encountered pools of blood and puss, as well as a stained glass window depicting an angel in flight embedded into the "skin" of one room. They also encountered demons trying to fish a dead Graymalk witch from a vast puddle of bodily fluids--they charged in, defeated the devils, and looted the witch's purse as their prize. In another "chamber," they surprised a number of shovel and pickaxe-wielding demons hard at work digging tunnels into the flesh below their feet. After fighting the vulture-like overseer, they let the demons creep off as they clearly weren't looking for a fight once their leader was dispatched.

In one of the tunnels heading deeper into the tower, they saw something large and reptilian scuttling in the shadows. They choose another tunnel that eventually brought them to a large brass door. A sentient man mad of shadow lurked nearby. Morwenna approached him--and he proved to be the shadow of the Black Prince, the first necromancer the world had ever known. Contrary to their suspicion that he was there to prevent them from opening the door, he wanted  them to do it--it would allow him to slip out of Hell to pursue his terrible goals in the Mortal World once more. 

Opening the brass door suddenly didn't sound like a good idea. However, he also assured the group that the item they sought was beyond the door. The only catch was that someone had to speak the Enothian words etched on the door as it was opened, and the Black Prince was unable to say such holy words. Seeing no other way forward, they group did what was necessary and--

--found themselves in an uncanny approximation of Creedhall, the color palette reduced to red-on-red and the twisted street they were on leading up a hill to where a dark mansion sat. From one of the skeletal trees flanking the manse, they could see a bag made of human skin hanging from a branch--and they knew that was the mysterious item Vandra had sent them for. Unfortunately, as they made their way up the hill the doors of the mansion opened and a veritable army of the undead trooped out to meet them. In the lead was their commander--a lizard-headed woman missing an arm.

The battle to gain the bag was fierce. Routh was nearly killed by the army's leader, and when Anastasia ran to heal Routh she was cut down in turn. Only quick strategizing (and the initiative cards falling in their favor) prevented a death in the party. Morwenna swooped in and grabbed the bag; rather than fight until every last foe was defeated, they ran for it.

Strangely, when they again crossed through the brass door it did not lead them back to the Tower of the Black Prince's Corruption. Instead, they realized they were inside a large tent with a campfire burning at its center. The tent's occupant introduced herself as Cassie Mabcrowe. Cassie was the friend that Serafina contacted on their behalf because they wanted information on Yavor Mikalek and the otherworldly entity known as Krusikal.

Cassie was happy to provide the information they sought, but she had a deal of her own she wanted to strike with the Charnel Hounds. She explained that the Graymalks planned to kill them as soon as they handed the bag over to them, and that Routh would be commanded to aid in the betrayal. Cassie offered them better terms--she would heal the remaining Hound afflicted with the unnatural plant, free Routh from the Graymalks and bestow him with free will, and give them the name of someone who could help them find Yavor. All in return for what was in the bag, of course.

Knowing a bargain when they saw one, the characters accepted. 

Dragonwyck

Bad Books for Bad People, Episode 95: Dragonwyck

Anya Seton is a grande dame of historical fiction, a reputation earned by novels like Dragonwyck, her 1944 gothic romance. Join Jack and Kate as they explore the dark corridors and even darker history of a 19th Century Hudson Valley manor home.

What are some warning signs that you’re in for a rough ride with a romance protagonist? How many times will our hosts mispronounce Ms. Seton’s name? Does breast size (once again) hold the key to understanding this book’s female characters? All these questions and more will be explored in this episode of the podcast. 

Cauldronborn

Since these guys have popped up a few times in the current Krevborna campaign, I thought I should add them to the world-building blog posts. If it wasn't obvious from what follows, the cauldronborn are Krevborna's answer to the idea of "orcs."

 

Cauldronborn

As a last-ditch tactic in their war to push mankind out of their territory, the aelvani submerged their human prisoners of war in magical cauldrons gifted to them by Baba Vasaga, the Hag-Queen of the Autumn Court. When these captives emerged, they were the first of the cauldronborn—a race of transmogrified warriors who were stronger and more savage than the raw material that created them. When it was obvious that they had lost the war against humanity, the aelvani freed the cauldronborn from servitude. Only small pockets of cauldronborn remain in Krevborna.

Cauldronborn are hulking and brutish in appearance; they often possess gray or greenish skin, sloping foreheads, and jutting teeth. They tend to be physically imposing, strong, and resilient.

 

Suggested Stats: I just use the orc stats from the Fantasy Companion for cauldronborn. 

Ornamental Women Bookmarks

Ornamental Women, my debut Gothic Fantasy novel, has been out for just about two months now, so I'd like to offer a little something to everyone who bought a print copy: a silly bookmark drawn by yours truly. (If you bought an ebook copy, I still love you, but you won't need a physical bookmark for that, right?) Anyway, here's the bookmark:

 

The bookmark is a doodle depicting Serafina, the "Angel of the Graves," main character of Ornamental Women. Since Sera is a dangerous grave robber, she's shown with dagger and shovel in hand.

Want one? Here's how to get it: send a pic of your print copy of Ornamental Women to me at totgad AT gmail DOT com with your mailing address and I'll get one out to you. (Or a copy of your receipt or order history or whatever--I do not need to see your credit card details, obviously!)

If you haven't bought a copy yet--there's still time! I made a bunch of these, so while supplies won't last forever I should have enough if you want to purchase a copy soon. Consider that your incentive!