Lubek Crodescu and Winter D'Averoan

My philosophy for creating NPCs for Krevborna is simple: I want them to be streamlined, boiled down to an essential thrust that lets a prospective GM know exactly what these people are about and how they can be used in a game, without an excess of history and detail. Plug-and-play NPCs, so to speak. You can't need to know Winter's favorite color, for example.

Below, you will find a plague doctor turned plague spreader and a fortune teller trying to find an heir to Krevborna's vacant throne to please her father.

Lubek Crodescu

Once a selfless plague doctor who worked tirelessly to cure and comfort the afflicted, Lubek Crodescu’s worldview changed when he contracted a fatal illness that began to slowly kill him. In his desperation, he turned to an evil power to save his own life—he prayed to the demon Pazuzu, and his prayers were answered. He now acts as Pazuzu’s agent of destruction, spreading pestilence throughout Krevborna. 

    • Appearance: Lubek was formerly judged a handsome man, but his face is marred by pustules and buboes; he hides his visage behind a plague doctor’s mask.

    • Personality: He is a deeply embittered man.

    • Motive: Lubek has been hollowed of any recognizable human wants or goals; he merely seeks to spread contagion.

    • Flaw: Part of him wants to die to end his misery; his death wish could be exploited. 

Winter D’Averoan

Winter D’Averoan is a young half-Polnezna woman who is the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman named Jeremiah de Cote. The de Cote family is pledged to the cause of the Hounds of Velun. When her father realized that her oracular abilities could be harnessed to find a true heir to Krevborna’s vacant throne, he brought her into his household and set her to the task. 

Winter is never without her velvet-edged deck of tarot cards. She uses them as a focus for divination and can conjure strange magics from the occult imagery depicted on the cards.

    • Appearance: Winter’s mess of dark curls frame a face that is perpetually caught in a scowl.

    • Personality: She is only loyal to those who are loyal to her; she is protective of her half-brother Jean de Cote.

    • Motive: She hopes that if she finds an heir for the Hounds her father will formally recognize her as his daughter.

    • Flaw: She views the Church as a hopelessly corrupt institution and is not shy in her criticisms of it.

Angolstad Cathedral and the Convent of Saint Rivka

Today's post features two dangerous religious sites within Veil. Angolstad Cathedral is inspired by the rumors that circulated about the Knights Templar during their downfall. I was absolutely obsessed with the Templars during my teenage years; I even wrote a term paper on the dissolution of the order in college at one point. The Convent of Saint Rivka was my excuse to add nun-based horror into the setting. The movie The Nun isn't good, but it was probably an influence in there. A much better influence I can cite is the story of the Bleeding Nun in Matthew Lewis's The Monk.

 

Angolstad Cathedral

When heavily armored warriors calling themselves the Knights of Saint Othric emerged from badlands north of Veil and entered the city, they immediately seized the abandoned Angolstad Cathedral and made it their keep. 

    • The knights make every attempt to portray themselves as Veil’s benefactors, providing food and medicine for the needy and unwell.

    • However, the knights secretly worship the demon Baphomet in the maze-like catacombs beneath Angolstad Cathedral.

    • Their unwholesome rites involving trampling and spitting upon icons of the saints.

    • Baphomet has commanded the Knights of Saint Othric to search Veil’s ruins for an extremely powerful artifact—the Spear of Longinus.

The Convent of Saint Rivka

Although Veil harbors many heretics and apostates among its population, it is also the home of the Convent of Saint Rivka, a religious community of female penitents who have chosen to withdraw from the world to repent of their sins. 

    • Despite the convent’s pous reputation, it holds a secret: it is haunted by a murderous ghost named Sister Agatha.

    • In life, Sister Agatha was sent to the Convent of Saint Rivka against her will.

    • Her parents, enraged at having caught her in the act of eloping with a mere miller’s son, brought her to the convent in chains, where she was forced to take the veil. 

    • Within the year, Sister Agatha had died of a broken heart.

    • The truth of Sister Agatha’s death was covered up; unable to handle the melancholy of being separated from her lover, Sister Agatha took her own life by drowning herself in a fountain on the convent grounds. 

    • After her death, Sister Agatha rose again as a specter devoted to murdering lovers—she emerges from the convent at night to kill any trysting couples she encounters in Veil.

The Cherry Pit and the Bargain

Bad Books for Bad People, Episode 84: The Cherry Pit and The Bargain

It’s time for Jack and Kate to explore their vintage paperback piles and trade tales from the yellowed pages of the past. Jack wades through the sweltering psychosexual Southern Gothickry of Donald Harington’s 1965 sex comedy (?) The Cherry Pit while Kate learns what happens when Hitler faces off with Dracula in Jon Ruddy’s 1990 shock-horror masterpiece (?) The Bargain.

Will we encounter the worst Van Helsings of all time? Why don’t the cool madams in exploitation novels get their own books? What are “big dinners” and how often will “big dinners” be referenced? All these questions and more will be explored in this episode of Bad Books for Bad People.

Veil

The time has come to turn our eyes to the lawless sanctum of outlaws and heretics in Krevborna: the ruined and ruinous city of Veil! 

It took me a long time to figure out what Veil was really all about. It wasn't until I stumbled on the idea of a city given over to gang warfare coupled with Silent Hill aesthetic notes that things really got cooking for this area of the setting.

Veil

A Fallen City of the Downtrodden and Outcast

Once regarded as one of the jewels of Krevborna, Veil was originally a pomenysh city renowned for its beauty. Today, Veil is a shadow of its former self. Generations ago, the thriving city of Veil was put to the torch by the Church of Holy Blood’s Inquisition to flush out the blasphemous blood cult that had overrun it. It now consists of hastily repaired houses, looted ruins, and ramshackle shelters made from scavenged materials. The stout walls that protected the city in ages past are broken and in dire need of repair.

Greatly diminished from its golden age as a metropolis, Veil is haunted by the ever-present reek of smoke, soot, and ember, as the fire that razed it still burns in the tunnels beneath its streets due to the strength of a desperate man’s dying curse. Noxious fumes leak from cracks in the ground, and cold fogs obscure the city's ruined wards.

Veil is currently a haven for outlaws, heretics, and those who do not want to be found by the world at large. In Veil, the strong dominate the weak. It is expected that those with power will abuse it and that those without must suffer under oppression.

Hallmarks

The following elements and aesthetic notes define Veil:

    • Veil was once a grand Vlaak city, but it has since fallen into ruinous decay.

    • Veil is a vile den of crime and heresy; many of its residents are apostates and outlaws hiding from justice.

    • The city is dominated by criminal gangs who wage war against one another for territory and ill-gotten wealth.

    • A mercenary general has recently taken up residence in a former barracks; she is raising an army for an unknown purpose.

    • A strange, opium-like drug known as midnight bell is peddled in Veil; using the intoxicant allows entry into a dreamlike portion of the city that is otherwise inaccessible. 

    • The smell of smoke predominates throughout Veil due to a curse that keeps a fire raging beneath the city streets.

Superhero Comics as RPG Fodder: The "Good Stuff" Versus Trash-Tier

I've got capes on the mind as I'm currently playing in a very fun superhero game. This is the result. Forgive me. The results may, in fact, be applicable to other genres, but this is what is rolling around in my head currently.

I have a theory about the difference between mining ideas from "good" superhero comics (I'm thinking high-minded stuff like Daredevil: Born Again, Watchmen, Seven Soldiers) and mining ideas from trash-tier superhero comics: trash-tier comics actually make for better rpg idea-mines than the good ones.

My thought is that the intricate clockwork of a densely plotted superhero comic would likely fall apart at the table because of two factors:

A) The randomness of dice rolls in most game systems

B) Players inevitably making insane choices that throw the whole schemata out of whack because that's just what players do

Ideas gleaned from trash-tier comics, on the other hand, are already surprisingly resilient to dumb rolls and dumber decisions because they come from a place of inspired stupidity. They roll with the punches, they bob and weave like a drunkard, but ultimately they get the job done.

If anything, I think superhero rpgs are potentially the place where dumb comic ideas go to be redeemed and born anew.

Ivahn Katavarg

The Silent Forest’s most powerful villain is Ivahn Katavarg, a feral lycanthrope bandit.

Ivahn Katavarg and his clan were inspired by the crimes attributed to Sawney Bean. Plus, I knew I wanted a werewolf villain available in Krevborna, so this is how I fit that in--perhaps in a semi-novel way.

Ivahn Katavarg

Ivahn Katavarg is the patriarch of a clan of inbred werebeasts who prey upon travelers of Krevborna’s roads. The Katavarg clan’s victims are robbed and often eaten. Some are taken back to the Katavarg’s lair, a primitive haven within a trap-laden cave complex in the Silent Forest, to serve as slaves and future meals.

Each member of the Katavarg family bears a curse that makes them transform into a werebeast a night. The curse takes a variety of forms; werebears, wereboars, and wererats all number among the clan. In his bestial form, Ivahn is a gray-furred werewolf.

Among his family, Ivahn Katavarg lives like a king. He keeps the choicest riches taken from the family’s victims for himself, and treats his many wives and children as servants and playthings. His base desires and sensual appetites are both colossal and monstrous.  

    • Appearance: He is a slovenly man, stout as a barrel but as strong as a beast—even in his human form.

    • Personality: His manners are coarse and he spares little thought for the wants and needs of others. 

    • Motive: He believes that growing fat upon what be pried from the fingers of others is preferable to honest work. 

    • Flaw: His love of secrecy is contested by his desire to be infamous and feared.

The Wychbog Cottage and Yrd Dolma

Below are two more adventure locations within Krevborna's Silent Forest. The first is an expression of fairy tale horror: a forboding cottage in the woods where a coven of three hags trade supernatural healing for the flesh of live children. The second is a more mystical area inspired by my love of the old Robin of Sherwood show and, oddly enough, Dark Souls.

The Wychbog Cottage

A tumble-down cottage perched atop creaking wooden supports emerges from a flooded fen in the Silent Forest; the cottage’s occupants, the Wychbog Sisters, are three ancient crones who can miraculously restore the health of those who dare to visit them.

    • The Wychbog Sisters are named Yubella Greentongue, Old Vasaga, and Mother Malaryn. 

    • All three sisters are corpulent and wear ragged dresses made of human skin, though they disguise their terrible natures under palatable illusions. 

    • When their aid is sought, the Sisters make their visitor a poisonous offer—they will cure whatever ailment besieges the sufferer, but in return that person must bring them a living child as payment. 

Yrd Dolma

Within an obscure clearing in the Silent Forest stands a circle of weathered gray sarsen stones known as Yrd Dolma. 

    • In the center of Yrd Dolma, a sacred bonfire is kept burning by blind pagans of the old faith. 

    • The druids give credence to a prophecy that states that a great warrior will one day willingly sacrifice themselves to their holy bonfire; this martyr will die upon the flames and be born again, emerging from immolation as a sacred undead champion.

    • The druidic priests of Yrd Dolma believe that their ordained champion is fated to free Krevborna from the grip of supernatural evil.