Umberwell Reviews

Not gonna lie: I feel like my recent releases on the Dolorous Exhumation Press imprint are doing pretty well. Some kind soul recently gave Umberwell five stars on DriveThruRPG, it was kicking around the top of the Hottest Small Press list, and reviews of have stated to come in. Thus far people I respect have had nice things to say about it:

Well-Met in Umberwell, by Trey Causey at From the Sorcerer's Skull

Review: Umberwell, by Aaron Griffin at Twisted Cities

And although this isn't a review, it was very cool to see Anne Hunter at DIY & Dragons take the book's Neighborhood Generator for a spin: Two Neighborhoods in Umberwell.

Lastly, although this isn't a review, check out this thread on Giants in the Playground inspired by my Cinderheim book. I lovelovelove that the author started off thinking something like This is a weird book; it seems too shot for a setting book but ended up here instead: "after a while it really warmed on me because I couldn't really point out any pieces of information that felt missing." Even better: the format and focus seems to have inspired them to get some work done on their own DIY setting content. Perfect.

So, yeah, it's been a good year for me putting my stuff out there again. If you review one of my books, let me know! (And maybe consider posting the review on the product page at DriveThru as well.) And if you use any of my stuff in your game, or if it inspires you to do something new with your games, let me know about that too! 

Trust me, I don't do this for the money. The real payoff is hearing about the fun times.

A Giant is an Accumulation of Ambitions

Campaign: The Excruciata (Umberwell, 5e D&D)

Characters: Raymondo Cortiz (human assassin rogue); Grumli Fellhammer (dwarf path of the ancestors barbarian); Nina Kessler (genasi way of the frozen fist monk); Hiroshi (human samurai fighter); Wexel (goliath college of valor bard).

Events: The Excruciata tracked Doctor Nymenholt down into the basement of the clinic, where they discovered a hellish industrial laboratory. Unfathomable machines spit galvanic arclight across a field of corpses on metal tables--a horrific charnel factory. Nymenholt was ready for the group; behind him stood a giant whose body was stitched together, obscene.

Nymenholt cackled madly, and spoke: "Do you know what a giant really is? A giant is nothing less than an accumulation of smaller men's ambitions." Nymenholt waved his hands, gesticulating wildly to the giant that lumbered and glowered behind him. Then, the Excruciata saw it as it really was, and Nymenholt was right: the giant was not just a monstrosity of flesh, bone, and hate; it was revealed to be comprised of men and women, harnessed together with sutures and hellish surgery to form something larger than each minuscule individual, their bodies thrashing together with the syrupy sick sound of sweat-coated skin striving against other sweat-coated skin.

The amalgamate giant charged the party. Grumli, Hiroshi, and Wexel met the charge and engaged the giant in melee, while Raymondo and Nina attempted to cross the laboratory to get to Nymenholt. The giant hit like an avalanche, its fists pummeling the crew. Nina and Raymondo's sprint toward Nymenholt was halted by the rise of the corpses laid out on the metal tables. 

Nina became a whirling engine of destruction, taking down zombie after zombie. Raymondo tried to break away from the horde to reach Nymenholt, but was felled by the monsters he was trying to evade. By the time Nina fought her way to him, Raymondo had been torn apart by the zombies. Nina began to climb the room's uncanny machinery to get out of the reach of the things, all the while throwing bolts of radiance at Nymenholt as he struggled to find cover.

Meanwhile, Hiroshi, Wexel, and Grumli were slugging it out with the giant. Grumli was knocked prone by the giant's meaty fist, and then he was trampled underneath its feet--crushing him utterly despite his barbaric dwarven resilience. Moments later, Wexel cut the thing asunder, spilling the bloodied bodies that made up its bulk like ropes of offal falling to the floor.

Hiroshi's bow put an end to the cowering Nymenholt, and his remaining animated dead were duly put to the sword. Down two long-standing members, the Excruciata ransacked the clinic quickly, locating Nymenholt's collection of spellbooks and occult tomes for their cultist allies. 

Crime pays dividends in violence, and the Excruciata had held up their end of the bargain with the Church of the Outlander. They would have the magical backing they needed to go into the production of magical gunpowder for sale in the criminal underground.

* * *

Deaths over the course of the campaign: Ramondo Cortiz, Grumli Fellhammer, Zanna Cobblestop, and Erron Halethorpe.

* * *

Other installments in season one of this campaign:
Enter the Excruciata
Aboard a Blood-Hunting Ship
Rumble in the Urban Jungle
We Kidnapped Your Son, Sell Us Dragon Blood
The Dark of a Tavern in the Cemetery

Misery and Death Have Their Own Staccato Rhythm

Stay tuned for Season Two!

Misery and Gain Have Their Own Staccato Rhythm

Campaign: The Excruciata (Umberwell, 5e D&D)

Characters: Raymondo Cortiz (human assassin rogue); Grumli Fellhammer (dwarf path of the ancestors barbarian); Nina Kessler (genasi way of the frozen fist monk); Hiroshi (human samurai fighter); Zanna Cobblepot (gnome wild magic sorcerer); Wexel (goliath college of valor bard).

Events: The gang tracked Doctor Nymenholt to the medical clinic he runs in the Chandler's District. Zanna posed as a patient needing an examination; Nina came with her playing the part of a concerned friend. The rest of the group sidled around to the back of the clinic to enter surreptitiously through a window. Unfortunately, the break in went wrong from the start--Raymondo, Hitoshi, and Grumli made too much noise breaking and entering and were promptly attacked by nurses who turned out to be more than medical personnel--nurses generally don't cast spells that make the walls bleed and cause slashing claws to form out of the ether.

Meanwhile, alerted to the intrusion, the nurse who was attending Zanna in an examination room turned on her, slicing at her with a scalpel. Nina, reading a broadsheet in the waiting room, failed to hear the melee until it was too late...Zanna stumbled out of the examination room only to crash to the floor in front of Nina, dead. 

And that's where we took a break so Zanna's player could make a new character.

The game resumed with the gang's sorcerer falling dead at Nina's feet. Now alone and besieged by a murderous, magically proficient "nurse," Nina fought for her life--and won. Upon examining the corpse of the nurse, Nina discovered that the woman bore the Adversary's mark. It was now apparent that the Church of the Outlander had enlisted the Excuciata in a war between two cults as the condition of their alliance--the Church of the Outlander were hoping that the gang could take out their occult rivals.

Nina fled deeper into the Nymenholt Clinic to find the rest of the Excruciata. She discovered them in a pitched battle with other members of the clinic-cult. After dispatching the "nurses" the gang debated whether to press on with their mission to assassinate Doctor Nymenholt or bail in light of Zanna's untimely death. Misery and gain have their own staccato rhythm; the remaining members of the Excruciata decided to press on and take blood for blood.

As they explored the now shockingly silent clinic, they discovered a patient--a goliath musician name Wexel--hiding in a janitor's closet. Wexel explained that he had come to the clinic hoping to beat his addiction to snowleaf, but had discovered that Doctor Nymenholt and his nurses were implanting the patients with unholy parasitic lifeforms. He had tried to make his escape during the chaos of the Excruciata's entrance into the clinic, but he hid in the closet when he saw the doctor appear suddenly and take the elevator down into the basement.

Wexel decided that there was safety in numbers. Grumli armed Wexel with a spare sword and he was duly deputized as an auxiliary member of the Excruciata. The gang quickly located the elevator that Nymenholt had been spotted entering, and took it down into the basement of the clinic.

The Dark of a Tavern in the Cemetery

Campaign: The Excruciata (Umberwell, 5e D&D)

Characters: Raymondo Cortiz (human assassin rogue); Grumli Fellhammer (dwarf path of the ancestors barbarian); Zanna Cobblestop (gnome wild magic sorcerer); Nina Kessler (genasi way of the frozen fist monk); Hiroshi (human samurai fighter).

Events: Having secured a source of kraken blood, as well as the sulfur and charcoal needed to make black powder, the Excruciata now needed to find someone crazy enough to add arcane power to the mixture so it could be sold on the black market for enchanted weaponry. Spreading a little coin around in the occult underground netted the gang an interesting piece of information: just south of the Tarnished Ward in a shanty town outside the city's walls, there is a cemetery in which a cult devoted to the Adversary meets by night--and that cult might be capable of providing the kind of power the Excruciata was looking for.

Venturing into the shanty town, the group found the cemetery--a sprawling mass of shallow graves and hastily erected monuments in the center of a sprawling mass of lean-tos and shoddily constructed shacks. Oddly, in the middle of the cemetery was what appeared to be a ramshackle pub bearing no visible name. Ducking inside, all eyes turned to the gang. The drinkers within were dressed in furs and the sober clothes of scholars; the Mark of the Adversary was etched on the flesh of everyone in the tavern and worn openly in defiance against the religious prohibition against dealing in arcane ways. The interior walls of the pub were covered in mounted antlers draped with magical wards and charms.

Raymondo decided to keep things on the level before any trouble started; he explained in clear terms that he represented a criminal organization looking for occult aid. An especially black-eyed pureblood woman named Freya stepped forward and explained that the group was a sect of the Church of the Outlander, an apocalyptic cult devoted to the study of occult texts. A possible alliance was discussed, but the Outlanders wanted some assurances that they were aligning with a gang that could get things done. 

A series of trials--something like the cult's version of a job interview--were proposed. First, the diminutive Zanna had to face off against one of the cult's younger adepts in magical combat. A circle was formed around Zanna and the adept as they brandished wands and traded spell for spell. Zanna's unpredictable chaos magic carried the day; no one expected that one of her dweomers would send a ripple of necromantic magic through the assembled crowd that instantly healed the wounds Zanna's foe had inflicted on her. (Even Zanna didn't expect that.) The thought of having to face a newly rejuvenated foe was too much for the adept; he yielded the victory.

The second trial was simply a ritual signifying a formal alliance. Raymondo was placed in the awkward position of having to marry Freya as a way of symbolically linking the Excruciata gang and this sect of the Church of the Outlander. The ceremony was performed in the Adversary's name; the ritual befouled the air--everything stank of dark magic. The marriage was not official as far as the state or normative religion would recognize, but Raymondo felt like it had been sanctified by a far older and viler power. He was also surprised to find that her could now hear his new "wife" speak to him inside his head.

The Outlanders had one last trial to pose to the Excruciata; to cement their business agreement the Excruciata would need to assassinate a physician named Doctor Nymenholt, and make off with his collection of occult tomes.

We Kidnapped Your Son, Sell Us Dragon Blood

Campaign: The Excruciata

Characters: Raymondo Cortiz (Human assassin rogue, former entertainer);  Grumli Fellhammer (Mountain dwarf path of the ancestors barbarian, former tribesman); Zanna Cobblestop (Forest gnome wild magic sorcerer, former urchin); Nina Kessler (Air genasi way of the frozen fist monk, former spy); Hiroshi (human samurai fighter, former knight).

Events: Having made a tidy profit selling gunpowder that had been magically enriched with sea dragon ichor, the Excruciata were keen to capitalize on their economic momentum and corner the illicit trade in enchanted black powder. Unfortunately, since no new source of already prepared arcane gunpowder was in view, they decided that it might be best to procure their own method of creating it. A little research in the criminal underworld turned up a new ally: a man named Hiroshi, a disgraced bodyguard to an aristocratic family living in a country far, far away.

Hiroshi had previously taken a few jobs providing muscle for Antoine Saulk, a wealthy man who owned a prosperous sea dragon ichor refining plant in Umberwell Docks. The Excruciata made a legitimate appointment with Saulk in hopes that he would be willing to sell them ichor they could use to enrich gunpowder, but during the meeting it quickly became apparent that he viewed the gang members with obvious distaste. As a man of rising fortunes, he had no wish to do business with a pack of obvious ne'er-do-wells.

Artby flaviobolla

Plan B was to escalate the situation. Since Saulk was unwilling to deal with them due to their obvious criminal enterprises, they decided to show him exactly how villainous they could be. Hiroshi knew that Saulk's mansion was situated at the edge of Umberwell Docks and Sartorial Square; Nina was able to adopt the guise of one of Saulk's lovers to get access to his social calendar through his secretary. Picking a night that they knew Saulk would be at the opera, they put there plan into action: break into Saulk's mansion, and kidnap his son.

The Excruciata entered the house by breaking into a storm cellar that led into a storage area of the basement. They made as much use of stealth as they could, but when that failed they brought violence into the house of Saulk. They tried to keep casualties to a minimum, particularly among Saulk's innocent servants, but a few guards within the house had to be sniped and killed from a distance. The gang managed to find the boy's room and steal away with him from the mansion. A letter was sent to Saulk the next morning, informing him of his son's abduction, and the Excruciata's willingness to return him for a favorable rate on sea dragon ichor.

It only took enclosing one of his son's fingers with the letter to provide proof that they were serious.

A source of sea dragon ichor now secured, now all the Excruciata had to do was find someone mad enough to use it to enrich a store of gunpowder...

Rumble in the Urban Jungle

Campaign: The Excruciata

Characters: Grumli Fellhammer (mountain dwarf path of the ancestral guardians barbarian) and Nina Kessler (air genasi way of the frozen soul monk)

Events: Rumor had reached the Excruciata gang that their rivals, the Red River Jezebels, were planning on reprisals in return for the poor treatment they had received previously. Looking to get ahead of the storm, the Excruciata approached the Jezebels with a challenge: pit your champion against ours, in public, and we'll see whose gang is tougher.

The Jezebels accepted the offer, and terms were agreed upon: the fight would take place at a rented boxing ring in neutral territory; admission would be charged for this spectacle; the winning gang would receive seventy-five percent of the profits from the door and the losing side would have to make do with twenty-five percent; both sides would be free to take bets from the punters in attendance.

The Excruciata knew that the Jezebel's chosen champion would be Erin Lindstrome, a much feared pugilist who had served under one of the roughest commands in the Empire's navy. She was an absolute mammoth of the ring, and it was unlikely that any one member of the Excruciata could take her on one-on-one. But they had a plan.

The night of the event found Maximo's Gymnasium a hotbed of boozy excitement; the crowd was looking forward to a little sporting bloodshed. The heavily muscled, tattooed ruffian that is Erin Lindstrome entered the ring to the sound of cheers, shouts, and the stomping of feet. No one entered the ring on behalf of the Excruciata; rather, Grumli Fellhammer merely stood outside the ring and began to taunt Erin Lindstrome with a variety of well-chosen barbs about her mother, the lack of genetic variety to be found in her family tree, and the possibility that she served the navy best on her back. 

Fed up with the harangue, Erin left the ring and attacked Grumli. Grumli has no particular skill for fisticuffs, but his inner rage served him well--Erin's blows rained down like iron bludgeons, but he withstood the assault and managed to land some solid, anger-fueled punches of his own. Unfortunately, the experienced Red River Bruiser's expertise eventually wore him down and left him unconscious amid the peanut shells and discarded orange rinds.

Erin Lindstrome returned to the ring, expecting to be announced as the winner of the bout. To her surprise, she discovered that the scheduled match was yet to begin: Grumli was not her opponent for the evening, but had merely been a gambit to tire her out before the real fight. Into the ring leaped Nina Kessler, an unlikely opponent given her wispy thinness and obvious concern for her appearance. But Nina's martial arts training soon became evident as she demonstrated a quick series of strikes and kicks to warm up, so to speak. Nina gave Erin the universal hand motion for "Come get some" before encasing her fists in ice generated by her ki.

Erin was the superior fighter; she was stronger, more practiced, and hardier, but she was also winded and bruised from her previous brawl with Grumli. Nina was quick and agile on her feet, but took a hellacious beating from the former sailor. Nina backed off, then surged forward like a gale, her ice-encrusted fist catching Erin full in the face. Erin went down; she realized, just before slipping into unconsciousness, that her nose was broken.

Nina was declared the winner by knock out, and a message was sent to the Red River Jezebels from the Excruciata: we here, expect us.

Elsewhere: While the Red River Jezebels were distracted with the bout, the remaining leaders of the Excruciata--Raymondo Cortiz and Zanna Cobblestop--raided the Jezebel's treasury. It was guarded by a powerful sorceress in their pay and her lackeys. They didn't manage to kill her or her henchmen, but they were run off the site and the Excruciata made away with some choice loot.

Aboard a Blood-Hunting Ship

Campaign: The Excruciata

Characters: The Excruciata are a new gang rising in the Tarnished Ward of Umberwell. They are looking to get in on the action of stealing, smuggling, and selling illicit goods. The current members of the gang are: Raymondo Cortiz (Human rogue, former entertainer); "Count" Erron Halethorpe (Human paladin, former soldier); Grumli Fellhammer (Mountain dwarf barbarian, former tribesman); Zanna Cobblestop (Forest gnome wild magic sorcerer, former urchin); Nina Kessler (Air genasi monk, former spy).

Events: In the last session, the Excruciata gang had tracked down a cask of gunpowder that had been magically enriched with sea dragon ichor. The gunpowder was still aboard the Hexencrux, a blood-hunting ship that had smuggled the cask into the docks of Old Scar. If the Excruciata could somehow board the blood-hunting ship and steal away with the gunpowder they would have a very valuable commodity with which to make their entrance into the black market.

The gang's initial casing of the blood-hunting ship turned up a member of the crew, Carson, who was unhappy with his lowly duties aboard and was liable to being turned against his mates for a cut of the proceeds. Carson was duly bribed, and was able to do two things for the Excruciata. First, he revealed that the crew of the Hexencrux had been infiltrated by a cult devoted to the Adversary; the cult leader had alchemically altered the gunpowder with sea dragon ichor because the empowered munitions that could be created with it somehow figured into the Adversary's plans to foster instability within Umberwell.

Second, Carson was able to secretly hang a rope ladder over the side of the Hexencrux so that the Excruciata might approach by boat under the cover of darkness and climb aboard the blood-hunter unnoticed. As the gang climbed aboard, they noticed that the ship stank of butchered sea dragon. Luckily, they were able to get below deck without being noticed. There were some tense moments as the members of the Excruciata were almost spotted as they sneaked down into the ship's hold, but they managed to find the cask of ichor-altered gunpowder--which was strangely unguarded.

The cask was placed in a waterproof canvas bag and...touching it activated the invisible sigils that had been branded into the wood of the cask, summoning a pair of one-eyed, grinning aberrations from the Emptiness that immediately attacked the gang. A hasty retreat, with occasional attempts to hold the creatures off by force, ensued. Unfortunately, this retreat through the ship was very loud and fraught, which brought the ship's cultic crew also into pursuit of the purloined cask.

Once the Excruciata reached topside, they realized that climbing down the ladder without reprisal...so they decided to forgo escape by boat and instead chose to leap into the water and swim to shore. The crew of the Hexencrux manned the anti-dragon weaponry and opened fire with the ship's Gatling guns; the already injured "Count" Erron Halethorpe was caught path of a storm of bullets, and was cut down before disappearing beneath the waves in a red mist. 

The rest of the gang managed to make it to shore and escape back to their lair. The canvas sack had done its job; the ichor-infused was perfectly dry, and promised to fetch a nice profit for the Excruciata.

Enter the Excruciata

Campaign: The Excruciata

Characters: The Excruciata are a new gang rising in the Tarnished Ward of Umberwell. They are looking to get in on the action of stealing, smuggling, and selling illicit industrial goods. The current members of the gang are:

Raymondo Cortiz
Human 
Rogue
Former entertainer (knife thrower)

"Count" Erron Halethorpe
Human
Paladin
Former soldier

Grumli Fellhammer
Mountain dwarf 
Barbarian
Former tribesman

Zanna Cobblestop
Forest gnome
Wild magic sorcerer
Former urchin

Nina Kessler
Air genasi
Monk
Former spy










Events: The Excruciata had heard through the criminal grapevine that someone had smuggled a cask of gunpowder infused with sea dragon ichor into Umberwell. The fact that the gunpowder was not available for sale on the black market was curious, so the gang leaned on their contacts to learn more about this situation. Reymondo learned from his old partner in a knife-throwing carnival act, Matteus, that the Red River Jezebels, a rival gang in the Tarnished Ward, knew something about the location of the gunpowder, and that they were interested in it but did not yet have it in their possession.

The Red River Jezebels ran a protection racket in a few neighborhoods in the Tarnished Ward; the Excruciata knew that the Jezebels were throwing a "party" that the business owners they were protecting were expected to attend. Sensing an opportunity to get the information they wanted from the Jezebels and shake their "clients" confidence in their ability to provide protection, the Excruciata decided to crash the party.

Crashing the party entailed a two-prong assault. Grumli, Erron, and Zanna entered the tavern where the Jezebels were holding court and immediately started a brawl with a few well-placed insults. Meanwhile, Nina and Raymondo sneaked in the back way to corner Essie, the Jezebel's captain. As the melee raged at the front of the tavern, Nina and Raymondo had their hands full with Essie--who proved to be a proficient swordswoman. Grumli, Erron, and Zanna were quickly outmatched by the marshaled forces of the Jezebels, and beat a hasty retreat when the Umberwell Watch arrived to quell the disturbance. Essie was subdued in the nick of time by a blow to the head, and dragged through the back door to a boat waiting on the river.

A few patrolmen of the Watch gave chase to Grumli, Erron, and Zanna, but the trio managed to give them the shake. Raymondo and Nina were stopped by the Marshals Tributaria but managed to talk their way out of having their "cargo" (the unconscious Essie) searched. Back at their hideout, the members of the Excruciata got Essie to tell them the whereabouts of the gunpowder: it was still secreted aboard a blood-hunting ship docked at the Old Scar. If the gang could steal aboard and make off with the gunpowder, they could put it on the market themselves and reap a tidy profit.

Essie expected to be assassinated by her kidnappers, but they instead blindfolded her and took her on a merry ride before dropping her off in an out-of-the-way neighborhood. Will she appreciate being left alive or has the Excruciata kindled a desire for revenge in her breast?

Next time: Aboard a blood-hunting ship.