Magog Station/Old Perdition and Trevania

Two adventure locations in the Vespermark. I love the idea of a "ghost train," hence Magog Station and Old Perdition. Trevania, on the other hand, is very obviously a dark play on Arthurian myth. In various ways, both locations can probably be traced back to my appreciation for Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. Magog Station and Old Perdition also has at least a little inspiration from the Ghost Train set from LEGO's Monster Fighters; that thing ruled. Additionally, the cursed sword Drachenmort is a sentient black runesword as a tip of the hat to Michael Moorcock. 

Magog Station and Old Perdition

Magog Station is a remnant of the Vlaak Empire’s outposts on the western edge of Krevborna. In its heyday, Magog Station was a railway hub for trains entering and leaving Vlaak territory. 

    • Now abandoned and left to decay, Magog Station is the terminus for a single train: Old Perdition, a beast of iron that belches steam and flame.

    • Old Perdition possesses a life of its own; it is unclear whether it is haunted by the specter of a Vlaak engineer, inhabited by a demon, or something even stranger.

    • Those who wish to board Old Perdition must bargain with the conductor for safe passage—to do otherwise is to risk evisceration at the hands of the undead crew and passengers doomed to ride Old Perdition for eternity. 

    • Those who do come to an accord with the engineer invariably find that the train is headed to the destination they desire to travel to; it arrives by night amid mist and fog, lets its living passengers disembark, and then lurches away into the darkness.

Trevania

When an adolescent knight named Nadezhda Olashenko drew the black runesword Drachenmort from the rock in which it was embedded, the people of the town of Trevania rejoiced to see the fulfillment of a foretold prophecy. To the folk of Trevania, this feat was a sign that Nadezhda was the promised templar who would lead an army to liberate Sibersk from the grip of its vampire overlords. 

    • Nadezhda has ignited a zealous and oppressive fervor in the town of Trevania. 

    • Acting under the fell influence of Drachenmort, a sentient blade that seeks to cause discord and bloodshed, Nadezhda’s paranoid dictates incite violence against supposed traitors, spies, and unbelievers. 

    • She is treated as a living saint, but her increasingly manic decrees have led to instances of false imprisonment and public executions in Trevania. 

    • Nadezhda’s proclamations are law in Trevania—very few realize that she is a fallen paladin and a puppet of the insidious magical sword that is always at her side.  

Diremoon Revelator Shrines and Fort Gilead

The following two adventure locations in the Vespermark are meant to emphasis its status as the "wild frontier" far away from the mainstream Church and other loci of authority. "Location" is being used fast and loose to describe the Diremoon Revelator Shrines, since there are many of them dotting the Vespermark, but they were also a great opportunity to introduce a folk religion based on belief in Santa Muerte. Fort Gilead, on the other hand, is a classic convention of Wild West fiction, but I'm also giving it a little bit of gloss from Stephen King's Dark Tower books.

Diremoon Revelator Shrines

The Diremoon Revelators are followers of a folk religion that venerates Saint Vionka, a non-canonical saint, whom they believe intercedes on behalf of mortals in matters of death.

    • The Diremoon Revelators maintain no organized temples or churches—instead, they establish small shrines dedicated to Saint Vionka throughout the Vespermark. 

    • The Diremoon Revelators’ devotional shrines are most frequently found in areas prone to turmoil, violence, and danger.

    • Saint Vionka is depicted as a pale maiden clad in a black dress and wearing a matching lace veil; she is often shown accompanied by crows, ravens, and jackdaws. 

    • The Diremoon Revelators pray to Saint Vionka be to spared from “bad deaths,” such as deaths by violence or at the hands of the evil creatures who roam the land. 

    • The faithful hope that Saint Vionka will guide them to “good deaths” free from pain and strife. 

    • Saint Vionka’s faithful consider the undead to be atrocities; the most fanatical Diremoon adherents hunt undead abominations as a sacred calling.

Fort Gilead

Fort Gilead is a castle stationed on the wild frontier of the Vespermark. Fort Gilead is currently occupied by members of the Knights Labyrinthian, who are using it as their ad hoc headquarters.

      • Fort Gilead is used as a center of trade for the people living on the Vespermark’s plains. 

    • As their tranactions take place under the watchful eyes of the Knights Labyrinthian, traders are expected to be fair in their dealings.

    • The Knights Labyrinthian also use Fort Gilead as a training ground for the young “squires” of their order who have not completed their trials and are not yet recognized as full members.

    • Squires are trained in tracking, wilderness survival, and marksmanship; they are also initiated in the Knights Labyrinthian's mystical teachings and peculiar version of laconic chivalry. 

    • Within Fort Gilead, the Knights Labyrinthian compile information on the Grail Tombs gathered in their travels across Krevborna.

Beltaire and Bordel

Two adventure locations in the Vespermark: a pilgrimage site where something very strange is happening and a frontier town run by a family of nefarious wereleopards people. Beltaire is a product of my fashion with Europe's bejeweled catacomb saints, as well as my love for the video game Blasphemous. Bordel is my Wild West-inspired take on Val Lewton's Cat People. (The name "bagheeta" is from Lewton's short story in Weird Tales that formed the basis of Cat People; it's definitely worth checking out!) There's probably also a little play on "leopards eating people's faces party" in there.

Beltaire

The ruins of Beltaire are a popular pilgrimage destination for the faithful of the Church of Holy Blood, for beneath the village lie catacombs that house the gilded and bejeweled skeletons of venerated saints. 

    • It is unknown who placed these skeletal remains within the subterranean crypts or who has taken pains to dress them in sumptuous religious vestments, but the Church’s adherents consider it an act of faith to anoint the saints’ bones with blessed oil.

    • Oddly, the saintly corpses within the caverns are sometimes found to have changed posture or position—or to have moved to a different section of the catacombs entirely. 

    • The faithful regard these unexplained movements as miraculous, but there is a darker truth to the ambulatory dead of Beltaire; when the sun sets, the unquiet spirits of Beltaire’s former residents stalk the ruins in search of prey.

    • A thriving market peddling fraudulent saintly relics, fake holy water, and other chicanery has taken root just outside the walls of the ruined village.

Bordel

Governed by a scheming brothel madame named Katarina Valdemar, Bordel is a community of swindlers who survive by providing services such as gambling, saloons, and prostitution to travelers in the Vespermark. 

    • The sins of Bordel drain the town’s visitors like parasites, draining their coin before sending them on their way, broken and humiliated by their vices. 

    • Katarina and her family run the town as if it were their personal barony; strangely, those who stand up to their despotism are often found badly mauled as if they had been attacked by wild animals. 

    • These killings are the work of the Valdemars—a family of bagheeta, werecats who turn into hybrids of man and black leopard when angered or aroused, hiding in plain sight as bawds and procurers in Bordel.

The Vespermark

Art by Mike Royal

The Vespermark is an area of Krevborna not detailed in the first-edition book, but it will be featured in the revised version of the setting. I realized I wanted in an area of frontier wildlands, one influenced by the Westerns I grew up on.

The Vespermark

A Nightmarish and Lawless Frontier

The sparsely populated hills and plains west of Krevborna’s nominal bastions of civilization are collectively known as the Vespermark. Small towns, villages, and farmsteads dot the borderlands between the settled areas of Krevborna and the rest of the world. In between these outposts are swaths of badlands and steppes littered with supposedly abandoned keeps, castles, and monasteries.

An atmosphere of vigilante justice prevails in the often lawless Vespermark; its settlements are imperiled by unholy beasts and predatory outlaws, and it lies beyond the protective reach of the Church of Holy Blood. The lonely homesteads and towns of the Vespermark are encircled by perimeter walls meant to keep out monsters and bandits. 

Most settlements in the Vespermark practice their own forms of self-governance, but some are oppressed by local tyrants, hereditary boyars, mercenary bands, or cult leaders. For example, the wilds of the Vespermark are a safe haven for the Yezhuli—a forbidden sect of the Church of Holy Blood that practices polygamy.

People who live in the Vespermark are protective of the lives they carve out of the desolate landscape. They are often regarded as standoffish, justifiably so, as they often have good reason to be distrustful of strangers.

Hallmarks

The following elements and aesthetic notes define the Vespermark:

    • The Vespermark is the sparsely populated borderland between Krevborna’s “civilized” areas and the neighboring countries.

    • The settlements of the Vespermark are self-governed, when they aren’t oppressed by local strong-arm rulers.

    • Strange cults that would otherwise be stamped out by the Church often take root in the Vespermark.

    • Brigands, highwaymen, and monsters prowl the badlands and prey upon the Vespermark’s farmsteads and towns.

    • Unusual flowers, their scent both sickly sweet and redolent of rotten meat, grow in the wilds of the Vespermark.

The Nightside

The Nightside is one of the additions to the revised Krevborna setting book that I'm most proud of. The idea of a dream-like realm of aestheticized horror has its appeal as a point of contrast from Krevborna's more standard Gothic atmosphere. Inspired by things like Thomas De Quincy's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and films like Jean Rollin's Fascination and Jim Henson's Labyrinth, the Nightside offers a change of pace where you can explore the thin boundary between the real and the unreal.

The Nightside

Among other more mundane intoxicants, Veil’s sordid drug dens peddle midnight bell, a greenish-gold, magically enhanced opium that allows the user to travel to the Nightside—a phantasmagorical dream of Veil as it was in better times. 

    • When midnight bell is smoked in Veil, one’s mind leaves their body behind as an inert and insensible husk in the "real" world as their spirit is clothed in new flesh to wander and explore what the town’s residents call the Nightside. 

    • The Nightside is an endless aesthetic dream; in the Nightside’s version of Veil, it is always the height of wondrous night, the stars emit their luster in the darkened sky, the city is lit by thousands of paper lanterns, and the shining outline of the Shadow Moon presides over all. 

    • Where the real Veil is a land of poverty and deprivation, the Nightside is a world of glamour, decadent pleasures, and thrill-seeking.

    • Nothing is ordinary in the Nightside—everyone is beautiful, fashionable, and stylish. 

    • Sebastian Lee, an androgynous dandy never seen without his ornate cigarette holder, a foppish hat, and his crystalline walking stick, is the undisputed king of the Nightside’s electrifying nightlife. 

    • “Sebastian Lee” is a guise adopted by the Goblin King of the Unseelie fey.

    • Nightmarish monsters are born from the hazy smoke of burning midnight bell, which hangs in the air as a persistent miasma always fraying the edges of reality. 

    • The Nightside is entrapping; nothing but a yawning void exists beyond the forest that encircles the Nightside’s dream-like fantasy.

    • Smoking midnight bell is a vice known colloquially as “tolling the bell.”

    • Those who partake of midnight bell always eventually awaken from the Nightside’s lurid fantasia and must seek enough coin for another dose if they wish to return.

    • Few can resist the allure and mystique of Veil’s illusory echo, and those who try are wracked with the pains of withdrawal. 

    • If a mortal expires within the dream of the Nightside, their body also dies amid the squalor of its “real” iteration. 

The Gang Wards

I feel like too few Gothic Fantasy settings really do much with the fear of criminality and banditry that suffuses much of the early Gothic canon. Veil is, of course, filthy with criminal activity, and the city's gangs form the largest locus of power in the city. The following gangs draw inspiration from The Witcher, Dishonored, Gangs of New York, various Batman comics, and Fallen London.

Also, that time that juggalos were deemed a gang by the feds wormed its way in there.

The Gang Wards

Four gangs ruthlessly compete against each other for territory, wealth, and power in the fallen city. Unfortunately, the people of Veil are often caught in the crossfire as the gangs make war against each other. The following gangs hold multiple wards of the city under their control:

The Butcher Boys

    • The Butcher Boys are dwarven thugs feared for their use of violence, terror, and intimidation. 

    • The Butcher Boys operate protection rackets and offer their services as bodyguards. 

    • Members of the Butcher Boys are immediately recognizable by the bloodstained leather aprons they wear.

The Firebrands

    • The Firebrands are a gang involved in the production and sale of patent medicines of dubious efficacy, the operation of brothels, burglary, and arson. 

    • The Firebrands are notorious for hurling flasks of flaming oil in combat and setting their blades alight prior to engaging in skirmishes. 

    • The boss of the Firebrands is Jackdaw, a ruffian who claims to have once been a surgeon of repute.

The Harlequins

    • The perverse Harlequin gang are motley-clad miscreants who run gambling houses and fighting pits throughout Veil. 

    • Their leader, Cyprian Wilde, is a disgraced nobleman who uses his inheritance to bankroll the gang’s criminal ventures. 

    • They disfigure the faces of those who cross them.

The Seamasques

    • Veil’s river and its stretch of coastline is dominated by the Seamasques, barbarous pirates and smugglers.

    • They also sell their services as mercenaries.

    • The Seamasques are led by Gretha Sigurdsdottir, who is in turn guided by her lover Iska Gaskill, a Polnezna fortune teller with the gift of foresight. 

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.

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.

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.

Old Sepulcher Road and the Seven Citadels

Two more adventure locations in Krevborna's Silent Forest. Old Sepulcher Road is my attempt at practicing what I preach: I think they idea of a "treacherous and/or haunted road" is under-utilized in world building. Part of the inspiration was passing a road called Hungry Hollow Road in my travels and being taken aback by how menacing that name was. The Seven Citadels is my nod to putting a little something into Krevborna for the sword & sorcery fans.

Old Sepulcher Road

Old Sepulcher Road cuts through Vargovishta Pass in the Karthax Mountains, stretching from Hemlock Hollow to the Silent Forest. 

    • The road is the hunting ground of the Bloody Bishop, a dullahan searching for his severed head. 

    • In life, the Bloody Bishop was a defrocked priest turned bandit who offered his victims no mercy. 

    • When he was captured by a local militia, he was tortured and decapitated—as an undead rider astride an undead steed, he  continues to terrorize the living.

The Seven Citadels

Seven tribes of heathen savages live within the Silent Forest. Each barbarous tribe’s territory centers around a tower of black stone that they both fear and protect from adventurers who wish to plunder the relics and ancient treasures within them.

    • The members of barbaric tribes decorate their skin with swirls of blue pigment; they practice cannibalism and ritual human sacrifice. 

    • The tribes’ territories encircle the black citadels, but even the most foolhardy tribal members never venture inside them to explore. 

    • Each citadel is the prison of one of the Fallen Lords—witch queens and princely warlocks who now exist only as shadowy wraiths lost to madness and despair.

Lynbury

The adventure location described in this post about Krevborna's Silent Forest takes British "hauntological" works such as Children of the Stones and The Stone Tape as its point of inspiration.

Lynbury

Lynbury is a small village on the outskirts of the Silent Forest. It is surrounded by a circle of eldritch standing stones inscribed with druidic runes and sigils. 

    • Once the circle of standing stones has been breached, is is impossible to leave Lynbury; any attempt to leave shunts those seeking an exit back into Lynbury.

    • The people of Lynbury are unfailingly polite, kind, and welcoming. They encourage newcomers to make themselves at home and to consider settling down permanently.

    • Amiable companionship is used as a lure; those who enter the Lynbury Circle find that the populace of the village coax them to join in nights of drinking and singing at the village pub and offer to induct them into the village’s troupe of folk dancers. 

    • Any unattached visitors will discover that an attractive and attentive villager has set their eye on them as a romantic prospect.

    • The villagers of Lynbury are happy, but only because all other sentiments and emotional responses have been drained from them by horrid sorcery. 

    • Lynbury is a snare for the unwary and weak of will: Simon Glaston, Lynbury’s country squire and unofficial magistrate, taps into the magic of the standing stones to siphon away his fellow villagers’ emotions and feelings to feed an ancient pagan god.

    • This “god” is actually an eldritch entity from the Outer Dark known as Crom Cruach—also referred to as the Crawling King and the Conqueror Worm. 

    • If an outsider probes too deeply into the nature of the standing stones or the villagers’ unnatural happiness, Lord Glaston hunts them down with monstrous worms gifted to him by Crom Cruach.

    • The only way to escape Lynbury is to slay Simon Glaston and offer his blood to the standing stones. 

    • Although killing Lord Glaston will allow visitors to escape the confines of the Lynbury Circle, it does not banish evil from the village; once the current squire is dead, a villager will be elevated to his position and begin his malign work anew. 

Aeldentree and Camp Lovelorn Lake

Today we've got two very different locations within Krevborna's Silent Forest: a hidden city of insurgent fey and Gothic fantasy take on the slasher genre, complete with an unstoppable (???) masked killer. Aeldentree adds a bit of morally gray political terror (and terrorism!) to the setting. Camp Lovelorn Lake is, obviously, inspired by the Friday the Thirteenth franchise.

Aeldentree

Magical wards keep the once-proud city of Aeldentree hidden from the world. The city is built among the boughs of massive white birch trees and is home to a confederation of elves, goblins, and fairies from both the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. 

    • Aeldentree’s populace are descendants of fey who were victimized by human pogroms and usurped from their ancestral lands in Krevborna.

    • Aeldentree is a sanctuary, kept secret from the prying eyes and vicious intent of mankind.

    • The most militant of Aeldentree’s citizens belong to the Wild Hunt, a secretive cabal of insurgents.

    • The Wild Hunt fights a guerrilla war against mankind in Krevborna, hoping to one day reclaim the land as their sole dominion.  

    • The Wild Hunt ventures forth from the safety of Aeldentree to raid human settlements and wage a war of terror against humanity.

    • Powerful fey such as the Erlking, the Green Knight, and Baba Yaga support the Wild Hunt.

Camp Lovelorn Lake

Beside Lovelorn Lake, a placid pool of crystalline water in the Silent Forest, sits an eponymous campsite consisting of wooden cabins, a dilapidated dining hall, several fire pits, and a small jetty. A hand-carved sign hanging above the entrance of the site reads “Welcome to Camp Lovelorn Lake.” 

    • The cabins are well-constructed, but they show indications that they have witnessed violence in the past, such as aged bloodstains and the tell-tale marks left behind by a fearsome woodman’s axe.

    • Something unnatural in Camp Lovelorn Lake calls to teenagers on the cusp of adulthood, exerting a pull that draws them to come and stay during the golden months of summer—even if that means shirking their responsibilities.

    • The campsite is, of course, a trap; anyone who stays at the camp will be hunted by a demonic, mask-wearing killer who is bound to the site by a lingering curse. 

    • The masked killer believes that every soul he claims from a murdered victim furthers the goal of resurrecting his dead mother—whose decaying head he keeps in a woodland shrine deep within the Silent Forest.

The Silent Forest

From Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" to Robert Egger's The Witch, "the woods" are a place where the laws of man--be they temporal, spiritual, or moral--are suspended in the wildness that resists the forces of civilization. If you want to have a Gothic-influenced setting, you need a dark forest where savage elements lurk in the untamed bosom of the natural world. The Silent Forest fills that role in Krevborna.

(art by Tenebrous Kate)

The Silent Forest

Forbidden and Accursed Woodlands 

The Silent Forest is a deep woods of misshapen trees whose limbs resemble clawed, skeletal appendages. True to its name, the forest is ominously quiet. Old burial grounds—their headstones cracked and the names upon them effaced by time and the depredations of nature—are slowly consumed by the green hell of the Silent Forest. 

Villages lurk at the edges of the Silent Forest, but the villagers warn their children not to enter the woods, as it is believed to cursed. When night falls, the malign creatures within the forest grow stronger, faster, and more ravenous. 

However, the Silent Forest is not wholly uninhabited. Those who live in proximity to the Silent Forest report that elves, goblins, and fairies possess a secret enclave deep within the woods, hidden from the eyes of human kind. Tribes of wildlings, regarded as cannibals  prone to scalping civilized folk who intrude on their enclaves, also make their homes among the Silent Forest’s twisted trees.  

Hallmarks

The following elements and aesthetic notes define the Silent Forest:

    • The forest is an accursed and unholy place; many sects of the Church forbid their parishioners from entering it.

    • Elves, fairies, and goblinkin maintain a hidden city in the Silent Forest.

    • The trees of the Silent Forest are often blackened and ominously shaped.

    • Woad-painted wildling tribes live deep inside the woods.

    • A family of bandits known as the Ulvarg clan hide within the Silent Forest.

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. 

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.

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.

Piskaro

We're moving from the Karthax Mountains down to Krevborna's coast, stopping for a while in Piskaro--Krevborna's second-largest city and busiest port. Piskaro is the gateway for nautical horrors in the setting, but it also has variety of other Gothic nonsense going on.

Piskaro

A Dangerous Seaport Fallen From Grace

Piskaro is a densely populated port city of teetering buildings crowded together like crooked teeth atop canals at the mouth of the River Krev. Piskaro is a center of thriving maritime trade and a haven for pirates. Its wharves bustle with the lading and unloading of full-rigged ships, prison hulks are moored offshore, and dangerous quayside taverns are frequented by cutthroats and whalers who call exotic ports home. 

Piskaro is governed by whichever pirate captain has recently intimidated the others into submission. The exercise of law and order in Piskaro falls on parish beadles and constables. Piskaro's authorities turn a blind eye to the activities of the buccaneers operating out of its wharves, but the city’s pirates do make examples of those they consider traitors—as the number of gibbeted skeletons hanging wharfside attest.

Perhaps because of its proximity to the strange and unknowable sea, life in Piskaro is subject to persistent oddities. Those who sleep in Piskaro often find their slumber disturbed by hallucinatory nightmares, prophetic dreams, and foreboding omens. The deformed and reeking remains of unnatural aberrations occasionally wash up on shore. Sigils and runes are scrawled onto the sides of buildings with chalk to ward off violent crime. Also, it is obvious to all that some of Piskaro’s native population possess bulging eyes, a marked lack of hair, and fish-like visages that hint at an inhuman heritage.

Hallmarks

The following elements and aesthetic notes define Piskaro:

    • Piskaro, Krevborna’s largest port, is controlled by pirate captains and their crews.

    • The city sits atop a labyrinth of canals, bridges, and islands at the mouth of the River Krev.

    • The city smells of the briny deep and the sea’s unfathomable secrets.

    • Many of the seafaring folk of Piskaro place their faith in the Lady of the Drowned, a cruel sea goddess regarded as a grim heresy by the Church of Holy Blood.

 • The taverns near Piskaro’s wharves are notoriously violent.

Sanctum Sabbathi and Valpurga

Today's post contains two more adventure locations in the Karthax Mountains. The first is the lair of Krevborna's foremost criminal syndicate based on the fabled mountain dwellings of the Order of Assassins. The second is an eldritch library presided over by the legendary nosferatu.

Sanctum Sabbathi

Sanctum Sabbathi is a concealed fortress used as the headquarters of the Skarabasca criminal organization.

    • Sanctum Sabbathi is veiled by powerful illusions—only those who hold one of the magical keys to the fortress can perceive it. It is otherwise invisible.

    • Within Sanctum Sabbathi are vast alchemical laboratories used to create the magical intoxicants that the Skarabasca’s agents peddle throughout Krevborna.  

    • The alchemists of the Skarabasca are not adverse to dipping into their own supply; the members of the Skarabasca at Sanctum Sabbathi exist in states of paranoia, mania, and heightened aggression.

    • Sanctum Sabbathi is also home to the many seers, oracles, and diviners that the Skarabasca use to spy upon rival criminal organizations.

    • The inner chambers of Sanctum Sabbathi contain the summoning circles the Skarabasca rely upon to conjure the demons they employ as supernatural assassins.  

Valpurga

Valpurga is a lonely clock tower constructed from a weathered material that appears to be stone, but is in fact the petrified flesh of a sleeping eldritch creature. No matter the state of the weather, the tower’s “stone” is uncannily warm to the touch. 

    • The interior of Valpurga is dominated by floor after floor of library shelves, all of which are tightly packed with rare and ancient tomes. 

    • Valpurga is a repository of knowledge that has been preserved for posterity via magical means. 

    • Valpurga is also decorated by a startling amount of grandfather clocks, each of which is actually a portal leading to a different location within Krevborna.

    • The surest way to find what you seek in Valpurga is to consult Count Orlok, the librarian residing within it; Orlok is a nosferatu who is only lucid for a few hours after he has fed on fresh blood.

    • Count Orlok’s arms and legs are laden with heavy iron chains as a sign of his devotion to the otherworldly entity known as the Chained Scholar.

The Mote of Sycorax and the Needle of Golgotha

Two adventure locations in the Karthax Mountains. In this installment of our tour of the mountains things are getting eldritch and strange. Of course, both the artificial sky-island and sinister obelisk described here are connected to the Vlaak.

The Mote of Sycorax

Hidden behind the perpetual cloud cover surrounding one of the Karthax Mountains’ highest peaks floats the Mote of Sycorax, an artificial island held aloft by eldritch machinery.

    • The Mote of Sycorax was created by the aberrations who once kept the inhuman Vlaak as slaves.

    • Sycorax was created as a monitoring station meant to analyze the Vlaak Empire’s rise and eventual fall.

    • The Mote of Sycorax contains magical and technological marvels unseen in this or any age.

The Needle of Golgotha

The Needle of Golgotha is a magical obelisk erected by the Vlaak.

    • The Needle of Golgotha is a narrow, towering pillar of unnatural black stone; embedded within its surface are a multitude of yellowed Vlaakish skulls.

    • Cultists of the otherworldly abominations of the Outer Dark believe that the Needle allows direct communion with the eldritch monstrosities they serve. 

    • If the Needle of Golgotha truly allows for contact between the “eldritch gods” and their cultists, it is theorized that the use of certain obscure rituals performed at the base of the obelisk may enable travel from the mortal plane to the nearest reaches of the Outer Dark.