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.

Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch

When Mattie asked if there were any games going on for Friday in my Discord, the temptation to squeeze in one more session for the year--even if I hadn't planned on running anything--was too much. I grabbed my copy of MORK BORG, put the call out, and gathered three interested players to run through the "Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch" adventure from Heretic. This was the first time playing MORK BORG for everyone involved, including myself, so I might also do a review of the game as whole later on.

The Characters

Kutz, a Gutterborn Scum, played by Michael

Daeru, an Esoteric Hermit, played by Mattie

Graft, a Heretical Priest, played by Andrew

Akhenaten, Kutz's small but vicious dog

Jude, Graft's pet monkey

The Premise

"East of Lake Onda in the Slithering Swamp is the Swamp Witch's ancient sepulchre and an altar of dead roots covered in lost symbols. They say if certain forbidden words are chanted at it, any wish is fulfilled. Even stopping the approaching Doom is not outside the powers of the Swamp Witch's altar. You stumbled on these forbidden words on a murdered messenger wearing mad King Fathmu IX's crest in a ditch. You just need to get past the Strange Serpent Drug Cult lairing in the ancient tomb and reach the altar."

The characters arrived at the Swamp Witch's sepulchre armed with the following rumors: the snakes guarding the entrance are not to be harmed, the cult kidnaps people to use as sacrifices, chanting the forbidden words backwards will raise the Swamp Witch from the dead.

Events

The group found that the entrance to the sepulchre was a partially submerged stone door too heavy to be opened by brute force alone. The party was then addressed by a large, emerald-colored snake perched upon a leaf floating in the swampy water. The snake told them that only those who received its bite were allowed entry into the cult's compound. Graft was the brave guinea pig; once bitten, he found that the world now seemed kaleidoscopically, psychedelically brighter. He saw colors he had never seen before, including jale, dolm, and ulfire. Observing few ill effects in their companion, Kutz and Daeru soon followed suit and let the snake inject them with its hallucinogenic venom, and the the stone door raised like a portcullis. 

Inside the first cavern chamber, the group encountered members of the serpent drug cult cooking gator meat over a fire. The cultists assumed that Kutz, Daeru, and Graft were new recruits. (They were also pretty high on serpent venom, so their guard was definitely down.) When questioned about the whereabouts of the Swamp Witch's altar, the cultists said they weren't allowed to talk about that. The party then ventured further into the compound to find it on their own.

Eventually, the group stumbled into the cult's "worship hall," which proved to be little more than a number of filthy blankets laid on the ground--two of which were occupied by drugged-out cultists celebrating their unholy rites in disturbingly carnal ways. Also present in the room were three large cages, each of which held some starved-looking prisoners. Guarding the cages were cult members with forked tongues and snake-like scales creeping up the sides of their faces. When asked about the location of "the altar" (the group wasn't specific in asking for the Swamp Witch's altar) they were directed to a nearby chamber.

In this chamber there was a stone altar, clearly stained with blood, overlooking a pit of skeletal remains and flesh-hungry serpents. Assuming this was the altar they sought, Graft and Kutz bum rushed the cultist who was busy throwing meat to the snakes below. The cultist toppled into the pit, but a large emerald snake similar to the talking one they had encountered outside emerged from the pit to question them as to what the hell they were doing. Melee broke out at this point and Kutz was riding too high on snake venom to keep ahold of his shortsword, which clattered down into the snake pit. Daeru ended up whipping the emerald snake to death.

When the group tried reciting the forbidden words at the altar...nothing happened. This was not the altar they were seeking.

Exploration continued. In a room filled with luminescent plants, Kutz found a large trident made of an unknown, alien metal. The trident was so large that he had to wield it with two hands, but it made for a nice replacement for his lost sword. Graft also scored a ruby ring, which he promptly gave to his pet monkey to wear. Among the human remains, the group discovered stranger skeletons that belonged to massive, three-eyed bipeds.

The group wandered into a room in which hundreds of colorful moths were endlessly swirling. The moths emitted a sound like a multitude of human voices engaged in a slow-motion, high-pitched scream. The moths were circling thirteen obelisks, in the center of which was an open sarcophagus. Tentacles of light emerged from the sarcophagus and waved slowly in the air. Kutz threw a bomb into the room, attempting to clear away the moths; the moths dispersed momentarily, which gave the group a glimpse of what else was in the room: a woman hovering two feet off of the ground, her head a whirling mass of smoke, a humongous zweihander chained to her back.

Not ready to deal with her, the group cut down another corridor and found an altar made of tangled dry roots. Surrounding the altar were a number of man-shaped wooden figures scattered on the ground. Kutz decided to say the forbidden words and sacrifice Akhenaten, his small but vicious dog, but the sacrifice was rejected and Kutz was slammed into the ceiling by a mysterious force. 

To glean more information on how to get the altar to grant their wishes, the group decided to confront the Swamp Witch. "Luckily" she had sensed the failed sacrifice and was on her way to the altar chamber. She told them that only an unwilling human sacrifice would be acceptable. 

A plan was hatched: they drew one of the forked-tongued fanatics into an isolated room in the sepulchre and ambushed him. The fanatic fought for his life, nearly killing Daeru--who was saved only by fate intervening to spare her. Kutz knocked the guard out with a mighty blow from the trident, but using the item changed him. He now found that his eyes were bulging and his skin was green and coated with slime. 

Dragging the unconscious guard atop the altar, Kutz brought the trident down again, ending his life. Arcane light flared, and Kutz's wish to suspend the approaching apocalypse was granted. However, using the trident again turned his flesh rubbery--providing him with some natural armor as he further transformed into something other than human.

Deciding that the guards were too formidable, the group lured three more standard-issue cultists into the chamber and sacrificed them one by one. Further wishes were granted: Daeru was granted a hot spring in her hermit's cave, Akhenaten was brought back to life to assuage Kutz's guilt, and Jude was given the ability to talk. (Jude immediately asked his "boss" if he could have a pipe because he always liked the idea of smoking.)

Although their wishes were granted, using the altar had several other strange effects. The Swamp Witch was greatly weakened and fled the chamber. A magically barrier holding back an army of frog-demons was ruptured, allowing them access to the cult's compound. The fallout from these events was evident when the party made their way to the sepulchre's exit: the Swamp Witch had been killed, and her zweihander was left laying on the ground. (Graft scooped it up to add to his inventory.) The remaining cult members were now in a pitched battle against the frog-demons and were clearly losing. 

Using the chaos of the battle as cover, and relying a bit on Kutz's new resemblance to the frog-demons due to the trident's corruption, the group left the Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch. Ultimately, they had forestalled one apocalypse and possibly initiated another: the frog-demons would soon take over the immediate area and rampage throughout the world.

Would our "heroes" survive? Daeru might retreat to her hermit's cave, never to be seen again, waiting out the tumult in the newfound luxury of a hot spring. Kutz, destined to become a frog-demon due to the trident's taint, might one day come to be king of the demonic invaders. And Graft, in his mighty armor and wielding the Lunar Zwiehander, might wander the world, pushing back the chaotic horde.

Fixing the Misprinted IKHON Booklets for MORK BORG

Back in January of 2021, I backed MORK BORG kickstarter for Heretic and IKHON. IKHON sounded especially cool to me. The gimmick, and it is a gimmick in the truest sense of the word, is that you would have a black box containing four small booklets. Each booklet was supposed to represent an "Old God." When a player called upon one of these Old Gods for aid, they were supposed to randomly pick one of the booklets, roll a die, and whatever the result was according to the booklet--that's what happened.

Unfortunately, the printer who made IKHON didn't understand the assignment; the booklets were each supposed to have a nondescript black cover so that picking one was truly random. Instead, they flipped the covers inside-out, which made it extremely obvious which Old God each booklet corresponded to. Which, of course, defeats the whole point of the gimmick.

Oh, dear.

As you can see from the picture below, the name of the Old God is spelled out at the top of the "cover" page of the booklet.





It was awful nice of Free League Publishing to offer to reprint the IKHON boxes and send out "corrected" copies to backers who got misprinted ones at no cost. Unfortunately it appears that if you live in the US you got send another misprint.

However, if you have a longarm stapler, you can fix them. I mean, I could wait to see if Free League will send me a another, actually correct box, but my experience contacting them has indicated that they might not be the most responsive company operating in the rpg space. 

So, longarm it is.




The problem we're correcting is that the "cover" pages are supposed to be interior pages. The plain black pages are meant to be the cover. Simply take the staples out and reverse that page for each booklet, then re-staple with the longarm.

The above is what each booklet should look like when you turn to the first page.

Note that this won't be a seamless process. For example, this one pictured below wasn't quite tough enough to be unstapled, refolded, and stapled again without the "spine" breaking down a bit.

I put some washi tape on the "spines" to reinforce them and make them uniform. I put a little craft glue down before adding the tape for extra adhesion. I also painted some glue overtop to prevent future "fraying."

 

Now they look identical enough that a player could choose one without knowing which Old God they'll be invoking. The gimmick is now functional.

Although IKHON came with a craft project I didn't really want, I can at least get some use out of them at the table. Hopefully, the above will give you some ideas on how to fix them yourself if you have a need for it.