Sonja Barbarez

Veil’s most powerful villain is Sonja Barbarez, a demoness who gathers an army at Hell’s behest. My thought with Sonja Barbarez was that the setting needed a) a major villain who is a demon and b) a major villain who is militaristic and warlike. The notion of a monstrous army sweeping out of the north, which is where Veil is located on the map, is a classic campaign framework--and Sonja Barbarez and her Storm of Malebolge will get you there if you'd like that to be the flavor of your Krevborna campaign.

Sonja Barbarez

Sonja Barbarez is a diabolic soldier serving the demon known as Legion. She has come to Veil to recruit warriors to her army, the Storm of Malebolge, a force capable of subjugating the land and unitinge it under Legion’s banner. Sonja keeps a close eye on Veil’s gangs and the most violent members of its outcast population, always looking for promising conscripts. To Sonja, “promising” means a combination of discipline, sadism, and brutality. 

Sonja has taken the ruins of a former army barracks in Veil as the Storm of Malebolge’s headquarters. Once their numbers are sufficient, they will seize Veil as their own and begin to build larger battalions—ranks Sonja hopes to swell with summoned devils and other enslaved monstrosities who will march in Legion’s name.

    • Appearance: Broad-shouldered and imposing, Sonja is demon wearing the guise of an amazonian warrior woman only a fool would trifle with. 

    • Personality: She is a conqueror who brooks no dissent, which is why her fastness is surrounded by a forest of impaled corpses.

    • Motive: She wishes to see all of Krevborna annexed by the tide of her diabolic army.

    • Flaw: Sonja would rather die in battle rather than retreat.

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.