Review: The Goblin Grinder (Mörk Borg)

The Goblin Grinder is a scenario for Mörk Borg. It is written by Ripley Caldwell, with graphic design and art by Johan Nohr, and editing by the Moonrat Conspiracy (Fiona Maeve Geist and Jarrett Crader).

Johan's cover art is a delightful collage of weapons and body parts splattered with neon pink gore and viscera:

This segues nicely into the scenario's introduction, where we're told that the streets of Galgenbeck (Mörk Borg's "greatest city that ever was") are littered with the "twisted, inhuman" corpses of goblins: "Their mottled, ropy flesh rots but never decomposes; even the oldest skins in the darkest alleys hold their shape to warn passersby of their swiftly approaching end."

Why are there so many goblin corpses in the streets? Well, there is also an infestation of live goblins. It sounds less like they are killing people and more like they are causing Gremlins-esque mischief. They are also afflicting the Galgenbeckians with the dreaded Goblin Curse.

What's the Goblin Curse? To find out, we'll have to check out the selection of creatures in Mörk Borg's core rulebook:

Maybe that's too hard to read (I just love the way monsters are presented in the Mörk Borg rulebook). Try the barebones edition:

When Mörk Borg's goblins attack you, you become cursed. Doesn't matter if the attack hits. The curse turns you into a goblin unless you kill the goblin that attacked you. I love this, because it makes Mörk Borg's goblins unique. I also hate it once I think about it for more than a second.

If a goblin is standing atop a 600-foot cliff and shoots at you with an arrow and runs away, you're cursed now. There is no way you're ever finding that goblin. In one to six days you become a goblin, and nothing can save you. Tear up that character sheet.

I would probably never use this in my game. At most, I'd say the curse is transmitted by a successful bite attack or something. If the goblin gets close enough to bite you and then slips away, at least you have a reasonable chance of chasing it down before you turn.

Anyway, all that is just to say that this scenario, in which Mörk Borg's "greatest city that ever was" is infested with comically-easily-transmitted curse-carrying goblins seems more like an outright apocalyptic event rather than anything the PCs can actually hope to resolve. I've seen Gremlins. I know how hard it was to deal with the gremlins - and the gremlins weren't turning everyone else into gremlins simply by looking at them. The scenario strains credibility immediately. If I'm a player, knowing what there is to know about goblins, I'm not going near that place.

But wait, there's hope! The local alchemist, Nagel Krat, is selling a cure for 40 silver. He's increasing the price each day as demand grows...

SPOILERS for the Goblin Grinder!

The next page after the hook describes "What's Really Going On?" and gives a list of reasons "Why Do the PCs Care About Any of This?"

It turns out that the alchemist Nagel Krat recently inherited both a Medickal Shoppe and a Derelict Mill from his father, Urvan Krat, who recently died of poison from an unidentified assassin. In the mill, Nagel found alchemical supplies and a machine called The Goblin Grinder. 

Nagel came up with a scheme to make goblins out of human corpses using the Goblin Grinder (it is implied but not explicitly stated that the Goblin Grinder turns human corpses into goblins - there is no indication as to what the machine actually is, how it achieves this, or why Urvan had it to begin with). To procure corpses, Nagel hired a gravedigger named Qarg. The corpses are fed into the Goblin Grinder to create corpses. The goblins infest Galgenbeck and curse people. Meanwhile, Nagel uses his alchemical supplies to produce a "cure" which does not actually cure the curse, but delays the transformation. He sells it to everyone and raises the prices every day. Infinite profit!

To rub it in my face a bit, this page has a reminder: "Anyone attacked by a goblin irrevocably transforms into one in d6 days, unless the attacking goblin is killed before then. Any attack is sufficient - it doesn't even need to be a successful hit. Goblins suck."

Yes, they do. 

So, why do the PCs care? There are four options: they're afflicted with the curse and can't keep up with rising prices, Nagel hires them as Medickal Shoppe guards, they're hired by a noble to investigate, or they're hired by a worried peasant. 

If you run goblins by the book, the PCs are certain to be cursed (not to beat a dead horse, but it's trivially easy to become cursed, and the city is infested with goblins), but there's no cure for the curse except to kill the offending goblin. What if a goblin jumps out at them first thing, then runs off into the city streets and eludes them? What are the chances that they find that goblin again? There is no conclusion to this scenario that ends with all the goblins dropping dead at once. It simply doesn't seem fair to me!

If Nagel hires the PCs as guards...what do they do? They just guard the shop against rowdy Galgenbeckians until what exactly happens? There's no actual hook to get the PCs into the meat of the scenario.

If a random peasant who "isn't able to pay, per se" tries to hire the PCs, they're probably going to tell him to buzz off. He does offer to trade a family heirloom in exchange for the PCs' service - it's a "magic" pearl which is hilariously and uselessly cursed. Even if all the PCs know is that it's a pearl, I hardly see this as sufficient motivation.

Mörk Borg is a bleak world inhabited by nasty people. It's not heroic fantasy! If you use the optional tables in the rulebook for generating character traits, you end up with a bunch of PCs who are aggravated, cruel, egocentric, nihilistic, vindictive, cowardly, lazy, bitter, deceitful, and arrogant (to name a few). The world is ending. Why do anything? For money! Even that is a tenuous motivation, considering there isn't that much to buy, but you can at least justify it as flawed people wanting to indulge themselves before the end of the world comes to pass. 

For that reason, I'm using the noble patron every time, and I don't see any reason why this scenario needs a d4 table of mostly useless hooks.

The next page introduces the notable characters:

The Bastard is the goblin leader, and somewhat explains why the goblins don't just attack Nagel Krat. He seems pretty nasty, as he makes the goblins fighting around him tougher and harder to shake. (For context, defense in Mörk Borg is normally DR 12, but is DR 14 against goblins specifically. The Bastard raises it again to DR 16. PCs can get up to +6 to their abilities, but the average character will have +0 unless they've survived a few scenarios already.)

Nagel Krat's description makes explicit the obvious: he killed his father. I'm not sure why the scenario tries to conceal that fact in the "What's Really Going On?" section, which reveals all of Nagel's other secrets. The fact that Nagel runs back to the mill at any sign of trouble suggests a path forward for the "PCs are hired guards" scenario - perhaps some Galgenbeckians attempt to loot the Medickal Shoppe, Nagel flees to the mill, and the PCs have to follow him there. If that is the intention, it'd be great if the hook on the previous page made that apparent.

Qarg is something of a nonentity. The PCs can bribe her to leave her post at the shop (I can imagine a few reasons the PCs might think to do so) or miss a delivery (why? Nagel doesn't really need to keep making goblins, since the nature of the curse perpetuates them anyway). I would simply say the PCs can bribe her to cooperate more generally.

Next, the Medickal Shoppe is detailed. Here Nagel sells the goblin cure (we're told that the price increases by 5 silver each day - props for making that explicit rather than leaving it to GM fiat), flash powder, "healing" tincture, invigorating elixir (basically speed), and apple juice. 

Nagel also keeps a crate of goblins behind the counter, which he releases in case of emergency. If the PCs aren't already suspicious of Nagel, his keeping a crate of goblins in his shop might lead them to consider him a suspect. 

But, I honestly don't see why they would be investigating the shop unless explicitly pointed in this direction by their patron - as far as anyone knows the goblin cure is real, and it wouldn't be surprising to see some ruthless capitalist taking advantage of the situation to their benefit. That doesn't clearly signpost that Nagel is responsible for everything. Maybe the PCs are there for another reason - the "guarding the shop" hook, or to steal as much cure as they can carry - and the goblins are revealed somehow and the adventure propels itself from there.

Still, I'm concerned over how tenuous the whole thing is. Nagel is obviously an unsavory character, but as I mentioned, so is everyone in the Mörk Borg world. Unsavoriness does not warrant suspicion in this setting. The only reason to be suspicious of Nagel in the first place is because he's like, the only character in the scenario. Isn't Galgenbeck "the greatest city that ever was"? Couldn't there be like, an investigation with different characters and locations?

The description of the goblin cure on this page also states: "Not actually a cure, but nobody knows that yet." Oh? So if the PCs only goal is to get a cure (as with one of the four suggested scenario hooks), they could just go and buy the cure, drink it, assume it worked, then turn into goblins in d6 days anyway? So their characters are essentially dead through no fault of their own?

It feels like the only reliable way to run this scenario is to say, "There's a goblin infestation in Galgenbeck. A noble has hired you to investigate and eliminate the source of the goblins. A local alchemist has been selling phony goblin cures, so she recommends you start there." And that's honestly fine with me. It just isn't how the scenario is presented.

Lastly, the scenario describes the Derelict Mill where Nagel keeps the Goblin Grinder. This is a neat little linear dungeon with a bit of time pressure - whenever the PCs linger, Nagel makes a goblin. I would qualify that statement with "If Nagel is here", since he spends a lot of time at the shop as well - although as written there's not much to point the PCs in this direction unless they're chasing Nagel.

The tower's ground floor features an encounter with three goblins and a cannon. They shoot the cannon at anyone walking in. Cool! (Kind of weird considering that Nagel and Qarg both also come through this door, but the goblins are "Given a chance to fire a cannon and are going to take it no matter what.") The cannon kills anyone it hits.

The cannon firing also alerts all of the other goblins in the mill. In the room above are three goblin arches on top of bookshelves. One of them douses the PCs in oil as they climb the stairs. The others shoot flaming arrows at them. Cool!

The next room is a laboratory filled with unstable reagents. Every round, there's a 2-in-6 chance of something bubbling over and causing a reaction. There's also an ooze monster lying in wait. Weapons stick to it and eventually melt. Cool!

Finally, at the top of the tower is Nagel Krat (again, assuming he's here), the Bastard, two goblins plus however many Nagel had time to create while the PCs climbed the tower, and the Goblin Grinder. This has the potential to be a pretty nasty fight, and Nagel can use his smoke bombs to escape at any time.

We still learn nothing about what the Goblin Grinder is or how it came to be here. We learn that it requires a key, fuel, and a human corpse to work. We don't know how it works or how to destroy it. It's also worth noting that even if Nagel and the Bastard are killed and the Goblin Grinder destroyed somehow, none of this solves the goblin infestation in Galgenbeck. The curse is self-perpetuating. There is no cure. The scenario has no resolution.

Ultimately, I was pretty disappointed by this one. The Goblin Grinder is one of the most frequently recommended Mörk Borg scenarios. I'm sure there's fun to be had, but it also feels like there's work to do. Here's what I'd change/make more explicit:

• Goblins transmit their curse via bite. This reduces the infestation to a smaller scale which feels more believable.
• The PCs are hired by a noble to investigate. I would point them towards a specific district in the city which has been quarantined to contain the outbreak.
• The PCs can ask around and learn about Nagel's shop and the mill. The mill makes a lot of noise at night (the Goblin Grinder is loud), but people assume that's just Nagel making cures late into the night, struggling to meet demand. Some people claim to have seen goblins in and around the mill. Others claim that Nagel's cures are phony.
• The PCs can investigate the shop or mill in whatever order. Nagel is at the shop during the day and the mill at night. If the PCs go to the mill during the day, maybe the Bastard is there making goblins? He doesn't do anything else, so I don't see why not.
• If confronted at the store, Nagel releases his goblins and flees to the mill. The PCs can chase him or question Qarg to find out what's going on.
• The PCs can stake out the mill and see Qarg delivering bodies in the dead of night, and see goblins emerging from within.
• The Bastard is keeping all the goblins together. If he's killed, they all run off into Galgenbeck's surrounding lands and eventually into the wilderness.

I feel like those are some pretty big changes from the material as written, but this set up gives PCs a clear motivation and suggests a direction in which to start their investigation, while allowing them freedom to explore and conduct the investigation in the order they like. It doesn't rely on the PCs having a specific encounter at a specific location to point them towards the next location. It has a resolution.

All that being said, I would be remiss not to conclude by praising the art and layout of this one. Johan Nohr's art is, as usual, evocative, stylish, whimsical, and hideous all at once. The layout is as easy to use as many of Mörk Borg's other official scenarios (which is to say, very useable). There are some pieces of information I'd move around or signpost earlier in the text, but it's not a big problem. 

I love a scenario that sticks to one striking color, and the neon pink here looks fantastic. I can't help but compare it to Mothership's A Pound of Flesh, which for some reason uses like, 8 point white font on a similar neon pink background, which is totally unreadable to me in most environments (I sincerely don't understand why Mörk Borg gets so much backlash for its stylistic choices while Mothership is constantly praised for the same, but this is neither the time nor place).

Anyway, that's the Goblin Grinder. I don't love it, but I'll try running it anyway. It's salvageable. It looks fantastic.

You can download the Goblin Grinder for free on the Mörk Borg website (direct link here). 

If you want a physical copy, you have to purchase Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory. I highly recommend it! In addition to the Goblin Grinder, you get rules for traveling between the locations of the Mörk Borg world and hunting its creatures (including a bunch of new monsters), the Death Ziggurat scenario (which I previously reviewed and liked a lot), a d66 table of magic items, four new classes, Dark Fort (the solo game upon which Mörk Borg developed), and more. Get it!

d66 Reasons Why the Castle is Totally Deserted

My most recent foray into using the AD&D DMG to stock a hex map sparked some discussion about the frequency of "totally deserted" castles.

According to the DMG's inhabitation table, each "space" in the wilderness (1 mile according to Gygax, 6 miles according to conventional wisdom - or not) has a 3% chance of containing a "castle" (more accurately described as a fortress or stronghold):

Of those castles, 35% are small, 45% are medium, and 20% are large. In turn, 45% of small castles, 30% of medium castles, and 15% of large castles are "totally deserted":

If my math is right, that means that 32.25% of castles are totally deserted.

What does that mean? Well:

How could this be? We had a discussion about it over on the Prismatic Wasteland Discord. A variety of possibilities were proposed (some of my commentary in parentheses):

• The castle was just invaded and the invaders haven't yet brought their full force over. (But surely the invaders would have left some sort of garrison there to hold the location while they moved their full forces in. Castle Table II already accounts for the possibility of human inhabitation. The notes for that table are clear that the castle "appears empty", so this is an unlikely explanation.)
• The castle is so ruined/old so as to be functionally worthless as a castle unless its completely rebuilt. It's so bad, even monsters won't live there. Now that's saying something!
• The castle is logistically difficult to occupy or supply.
• The castle is no longer strategically significant. 
• The castle is/contains a dungeon. (But again, the notes on Castle Table II state that the castle appears empty upon close inspection. Dungeons contain monsters, tricks, traps, and treasure, so I would not say a castle which contains a dungeon is empty unless the dungeon is empty as well, which brings us back to: why?)
• The castle is inhabited/contains a dungeon, but the inhabitants/dungeon are hidden. (The notes on Castle Table II say only that the castle appears empty.)
• The castle is cursed/plagued.
• The castle is protected by some regional taboo against entering it.
• The castle is intended, from a metagame perspective, to be reoccupied and rebuilt by enterprising player characters.
• Gygax simply liked the idea (perhaps inspired by Middle Earth) of a troubled land where even grand castles lie in ruin due to the insidious influence of Chaos/Evil/Shadow.

Those last two points are key, and I agree with both. The implied setting of Gygax's D&D is post-collapse. This may have simply been Gygax's aesthetic preference, make of it what you will. But that aesthetic preference is then awfully convenient for player characters, most of whom are expected to eventually command a castle - usually by clearing an area of monsters and then building one there. Wouldn't it be convenient if there was some totally deserted castle already built for them (albeit "in disrepair")?

If this was the intention, it also makes sense that deserted castles are mostly small constructions - the player character can capitalize on the convenience of an existing castle, but if they want a big castle, they'll (probably) have to build it themselves (there is only a .09% chance per hex of finding a deserted large castle - meaning there is one roughly every thousand hexes - compared to a .4725% chance of deserted small castle and a .405% chance of a deserted medium castle). 

It's also important not to shut out what the procedure is trying to say. There are castles all over the place (approximately one every 33 miles, if the suggested 1 mile scale is used - meaning you usually can't walk a day and a half without coming upon one). One-third of them are totally deserted. Every castle is constantly under threat of ruination so great that even monsters won't inhabit them. The fact that larger castles are less likely to meet this fate suggests that only the greatest fortifications are likely to withstand this threat, whatever its nature may be.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but when I look at those numbers I think, "Damn, if I'm going to survive in this world, I have to build a castle. And it better be a big one!"

But what exactly am I trying to endure? What happened in this world? What is currently happening to its castles that causes them to become deserted?

WHY IS THE CASTLE TOTALLY DESERTED? (d66)

(11) Ambient Magic. Whatever powerful magic brought the castle to ruin lingers to this day.

(12) Antipathy. The castle is enchanted so as to psychically repel all who would occupy it.

(13) Barren Lands. The land around the castle is not suitable for sustaining crops.

(14) Barrier. The castle is ensconced within a field of force that is yet to be dispelled. 

(15) Conjured Garrison. The castle appears empty, but is defended by magically conjured creatures should anyone attempt to occupy it.

(16) Cursed. Anyone who tries to live there suffers calamity.

(21) Displaced. The castle is out of sync with time or the known dimension, appearing and disappearing at random intervals. It just showed up again. The people who once ruled it didn't come with it.  

(22) Divine Mandate. The castle is forbidden by a deity, who punishes those who disobey it.

(23) Dry. The castle's wells have dried up, and it's too difficult to bring it water.

(24) Forsaken. An atrocity was committed in the castle's past. None inhabit it due to its reputation.

(25) Gateway. All who enter the castle are transported to another world or time.

(26) Haunted. The spirits of the dead haunt the castle, driving out occupants or else driving them mad.

(31) Hidden Dungeon. The castle contains a dungeon, but it is hidden away so that the castle appears empty.

(32) Illusion. The castle only appears empty. A powerful illusion hides its true nature and inhabitants.

(33) Inaccessible. The castle is built in a place which is difficult to reach, and recent circumstances (snow, overgrowth, flooding, etc.) have eliminated the most well-known paths.

(34) Invisible Foe. The castle is occupied, but its inhabitants are invisible or otherwise difficult to find.

(35) Irradiated. Ancient civilizations dropped weapons of mass magical destruction on the castle. Those who attempt to occupy it suffer sickness and mutations.

(36) Irrelevant. The political landscape has rendered the castle's original purpose insignificant, and none wish to occupy or maintain it.

(41) Lost to Time. The castle's original inhabitants perished so long ago that all record of its location has been lost.

(42) Mimic. The castle is no castle - it eats anyone who occupies it!

(43) No fortifications remain. The masonry has crumbled or been melted by dragon fire. It has no defensive value, and to rebuild it would cost almost as much as to build a brand new castle.

(44) Non-Euclidean. The castle's geometry is incomprehensible to human minds, causing those who inhabit it to go mad or become lost forever in its halls.

(45) Omens. The local ruler is awaiting an auspicious omen before reoccupying the stronghold.

(46) Petrification. The castle is populated with lifelike statues. Any who inhabit it are turned to stone at sunrise.

(51) Plague. The inhabitants died of a fast-spreading illness which threatens to infect any who occupy it.

(52) Prophecy. The local ruler is awaiting a Chosen One to come of age before bestowing the castle upon them.

(53) Remote. The castle is too far from civilization to be sustained.

(54) Ruler's Mandate. A local power has forbade anyone from occupying the castle, and frequently sends out patrols to ensure it is so.

(55) Sacred Site. The castle is a location of importance to a powerful religion. It is left unoccupied out of respect.

(56) Storm-Wracked. A change in climate has caused the castle to be constantly assailed by storms, freezing winds, crashing waves, or the like.

(61) Too Cold. It's just too cold there!

(62) Too Hot. It's just too hot there!

(63) Treaty. Two or more competing powers have agreed that none should occupy the castle, lest they risk starting a war.

(64) Unsound. The masonry is unstable and threatening to collapse, and no one has the means to fix it.

(65) Unstable. The castle is built on shifting earth, a sinkhole, an eroding cliffside, or some other dangerous type of terrain.

(66) Vampiric. The castle drains the life of those who occupy it, binding their souls to its halls.

Not all of these entries explain why monsters wouldn't inhabit these castles, but I thought it was more important to answer the question of human desire - after all, these are (mostly) human constructions and represent significant investment on the part of humans. The map as presented at the beginning of a D&D game is only a snapshot of the region at that time. Just because no one occupies a castle now doesn't mean they won't do so later.

There's definitely some overlap here, and not every entry is inspired (I added "too cold"/"too hot" at the end just to get it over with - shoutout Goldilocks fans). The more mundane entries probably fit whatever Gygax's original intention was, while the more fantastic may not. My goal was not to make a perfect table, but merely to demonstrate that there are many factors - both realistic and fantastic - that could result in these locations being abandoned. 

On Discord, we also discussed how having over 30% of castles be deserted is not fun. Hopefully I demonstrated how one can avoid making many of these locations dull. Even if a castle is unoccupied for a totally mundane reason - like a territorial dispute, an inaccessible location, or its sacred status - it shouldn't take much thought to turn that into a compelling scenario filled with intrigue and adventure.

Stocking a Sandbox with the AD&D 1e DMG (Part 2)

I am back to do more sandbox stocking with the AD&D 1e DMG! I'm continuing from Part 1, here.

I start by filling in the terrain in the next ring of atlas hexes using Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design:

I ended up with three more plains hexes, a forest hex, and two water hexes, which was unexpected (water is a "wildcard" terrain for plains). To keep things varied, I'll stock the hexes in this order: plains (SW) > water (NW) > plains (S) > forest (SE) > plains (NE) > water (N).

I start by rolling for inhabitation in the southwest plains hex:

I ended up with two hamlets, a thorp, and another totally deserted fortress complex. 

I determined that the fortress is the former stronghold of a master thief, conquered by invaders. I'm thinking that the bandits to the northeast might have rolled through here, killed the fortress's defenders, and looted the place. Probably a bunch of them died to traps. But I think there are also secret areas the bandits did not find, which contain even greater treasures protected by even deadlier traps. I imagine this dungeon has very few if any monsters, and is primarily a deadly maze of traps and secrets.

I don't like the two hamlets right next to each other, so I'm going to combine them into a single settlement of 500 people. It's too big to be a hamlet, and too small to be a village, so it must be a secret third thing. A villet. A hamlage.

In any case, it has five character-type NPCs: a 2nd-level fighter, a 2nd-level halfling fighter/thief, a 3rd-level fighter, a 3rd-level magic-user, and a 6th-level magic-user. No doubt many of them are here to plunder the fortress to the north. The player characters can seek out lower mid-level spellcasting services here, which is nice.

The thorp is totally mundane, with no character-types. The people there are at risk of being eaten by the lions to the northeast. I'm also pretty sure that the peoples of the hamlage and thorp are within range of predation by the bandits to the northeast (who have something like 100 horses, mind you). The thorp is likely "ruled" by the bandit leader in all but name, with one of the bandit lieutenants stationed here to keep the thorpers under the bandits' heel and collect "taxes".

Next, I determine monster lairs:

I've got a troll hole north of the fortress and an orc den in the forested wetland southwest of the thorp.

There are five trolls in the troll hole. They're definitely capable of getting out to the fortress. If the bandits left any sort of garrison behind after invading the fort, there's a good chance the trolls showed up to carry them off to their lair, and might show up to investigate any adventurer activity in the area. The hamletfolk have probably encountered them as well.

The orc den contains 149 orcs, which includes four leaders, a subchief, a chief, and all their assistants and bodyguards. It probably seems strange that the orc den is right next to the tiny thorp, but keep in mind that it takes an entire day for a humanoid creature to travel from the edge of the forest wetland hex to its center and vice versa The orcs are actually fairly isolated, though they likely carry off the occasional fisherman intruding in their territory.

Overall, this hex gives me another big dungeon for early adventures, a larger settlement with higher-level henchmen/spellcasting NPCs, and two more interesting monster lairs for mid-to-high-level play. All welcome additions to the sandbox.

Moving on to the northwest water hex:

Again, I don't like two settlements right next to each other, so I'll have the village absorb the thorp, giving it a population of 950. It's too big to be a village but too small to be a town. It's a villown. A tillage.

The big village contains a 1st-level fighter, a 1st-level magic-user, a 1st-level illusionist, a 2nd-level ranger, a 3rd-level cleric, two 3rd-level fighters, a 3rd-level magic-user, a 5th-level ranger, and a 5th-level gnome thief. A nice mix of henchman options.

One complication that becomes apparent is that settlements can wind up in strange places, like in the middle of this large body of water. I try to see this as a feature, rather than a bug. Perhaps this village is a conglomerate of boats docked together, or it's situated on an island too small to be represented on the map. The village might be built around an important bridge which spans from one shore to the other.

Continuing along with the monster lairs:

This is a strange one! Two huge koalinth (marine hobgoblin) lairs right next to each other, and one within range of the village. One contains 117 koalinth, and the other contains 101. When I rolled the first one, I thought surely the village was doomed. But, I usually give settlements a militia of 10% their population. I figured a militia of 95 plus the settlement's myriad character-types would be sufficient to hold off 117 hobgoblins.

When I rolled the second koalinth lair, I considered combining them, the way I would two adjacent settlements. However, the Monster Manual description says that tribes of hobgoblins will fight each other unless some strong leader is able to bring them together. I decided the two tribes (the Rippers and the Breakers) are at war over who will reign supreme in the region (fortunately for the village). Perhaps some sort of mercenary third party outsider could unite the tribes or provoke them into all-out war with one another...

To the southeast is a nest for a single giant water spider. It's close enough to prey on villagers who stray too far from their home waters.

Moving on to the south plains hex:

I rolled a lonely single dwelling as well as my biggest settlement yet, a town of 4,500 people. 

The single dwelling doesn't have any character-types, so there isn't much to do with it. Just some isolated homesteaders.

The town has 45 character-types, at which point it's worth asking if it's necessary to determine who all these people are. The town will have about 29 characters levels 1 to 3, nine characters levels 4 to 7, four from levels 7 to 12, and two from levels 9 to 20. I will only detail the ones the players are likely to interact with - the 1st-level ones that will be the first to become henchmen, and the highest-level ones that are most likely to have a great deal of influence in the settlement and that can provide high-level spellcasting services.

There would be around nine 1st-level character-types, which are: two clerics (one half-orc), four fighters (one dwarf), a half-elf fighter/magic-user, and two thieves. There's also an 8th-level cleric, a 9th-level thief, a 10th-level magic-user, a 12th-level fighter, a half-elf fighter 8/magic-user 8, and a 17th-level cleric. Wow!

Next, I roll for monster lairs:

Uh oh. There's a castle full of brigands in the forest. Brigands are just particularly nasty (Chaotic Evil) bandits who are more likely to live in cave complexes and castles rather than impromptu camps. In this case, they live in a castle.

One thing I find weird about this is that when you randomly generate a castle, there's already a chance that it's inhabited by non-character-type humans, one of which can be brigands. So there are multiple ways to end up with a castle full of brigands.

The castle contains 104 brigands. They have a 9th-level leader, an 8th-level magic-user, plus guards, lieutenants, and other 3rd- to 6th-level fighters.

Otherwise, they're not too different from the bandits in the first atlas hex I stocked. They're not in open terrain, so they don't have as many horses. They're more entrenched in their position and they're more aggressive.

They can't bully the town, which has a militia of 450 plus very high-level character-types, but they can easily destroy the single dwelling if they want to. I'm tempted to just turn it into a ruin, but it's probably more interesting if there's just a small group of brigands there forcing the inhabitants to feed and house them. The players could liberate the homesteaders from the small detachment of tyrannical brigands only to get themselves mixed up with the larger faction in the castle.

There's a also a den of fifteen wolves (with just two cubs) right outside of town, which is a bit odd. The den must be very new to be there at all, and they are likely just a nuisance to lone travelers. They are much more likely to prey on the isolated homesteaders than on the townsfolk.

Moving on to the southeast forest hex:

Two single dwellings, a village, and a thorp. I'll combine the single dwellings into one but leave the others, who are far enough apart for me.

Neither the single dwelling nor the thorp have a character-type. Like the last single dwelling, this one is in brigand range and has probably been taken over. They're also potentially lion food, so I guess they picked a bad place to settle.

The village has eight character-types: a 1st-level ranger, a 2nd-level fighter, a 2nd-level thief, a 3rd-level fighter, two 3rd-level magic-users, a half-orc fighter 3/thief 3, and a 6th-level cleric.

Now, I add the monster lairs:

This is great! I have a halfling shire, a leprechaun burrow, and a bugbear cave. 

There are 169 male halflings, which includes eight 2nd-level fighters, three 3rd-level fighters, a 4th-level fighter, plus another 169 female halflings and 101 halfling children. They also have 1d4 dogs per halfling! It's unclear if this is referring to the 169 halflings I initially rolled (the halfling men) or if every halfling man, woman, and child has 1d4 dogs all to themselves. I went with just the initial roll and got a whopping 422 dogs! Safe to say that they are well protected from the nearby brigands.

Leprechauns are either solitary or found in groups of 1 to 20. I rolled d2 and got 1, so I decided that a solitary leprechaun lives here. Leprechauns love to play pranks and steal things, so I'm sure this one causes headaches for the nearby homesteaders. That should be a whimsical little adventure for a party of low-level characters.

Lastly, there's a bugbear lair near the thorp. There are 17 bugbears along with a chief and sub-chief, eight female bugbears and eight bugbear children. The bugbears could likely overwhelm the thorp if they wanted to. In this case I would say that the bugbears are snatching the occasional thorper wandering the forest but haven't launched an attack against the thorp just yet.

Next is my final plains hex:

This hex has a village, a hamlet, and a small, totally deserted "castle" (a friary, in this case).

The village has a 1st-level magic-user, a 2nd-level half-elf magic-user, a 3rd-level fighter, a 3rd-level magic-user, a 6th-level druid, and a 7th-level fighter. The hamlet has a 3rd-level cleric and a 3rd-level thief.

I assume the friary was used by an order of friars, because that's what a friary is. I rolled that it was shunned after being curse by the gods. That's interesting. The PHB has this to say about monks:

I roll to determine the monks' alignment and get Lawful Good. Perhaps these monks lost their Lawful alignment for some reason, and this is why their friary was cursed? Much to think about.

There's another den of wolves, which is nothing to write home about, but there's also a lair of three criosphinxes (a non-spellcasting, goat-headed species of sphinx) and a nest of nine griffons with three fledglings (which sell for 5,000 gold each).

The griffons, of course, fly all over the place looking for horses to eat. There's plenty of settlements in the area for them to prey upon. The criosphinx "lusts after gynosphinxes" and "extorts passersby" for treasure. There are no gynosphinxes nearby yet, so I suppose the criosphinxes are here to collect treasure from the region's inhabitants.

Finally, the north water hex:

Just a hamlet with 100 people. There's a single 2nd-level fighter there.

Onto monster lairs:

Hell yes. I have a lair for the infamous AD&D giant beavers as well as a kopoacinth (aquatic gargoyle) lair. 

There are just 10 giant beavers living at the dam with a like amount of young beavers. No doubt the nearby hamlet has some nefarious trappers who hunt the beavers for their hides (500 to 2,000 gold each) and to sell their children into beaver slavery (100 to 200 gold per hit point, up to 700). The players could get in on the action or stand up for the beavers' rights.

The kopoacinth lair (I prefer 2e's term - margoyle) contains 14 of them. They attack anything they find 90% of the time and love to torture their prey. The poor beavers likely have to contend with them as well as the villagers.

Here is the map now that I've stocked another ring of hexes:

Honestly, this is probably all I would need to run a full campaign. There are four dungeons (all of which could be restored and turned into proper strongholds for the player characters) and a multitude of monster lairs (five of which could sustain proper late game mass combat scenarios - the two koalinth lairs, the orc lair, the bandit camp, and the brigands' castle).

A few things to note. I still do not have a city (every hex has a 1% chance of containing one, so it is statistically likely that I would have one by now). I have just two non-ruined strongholds (only one of which is a proper castle). All of my ruins are former strongholds (I did not roll any ruined villages, cities, or shrines). I have four humanoid lairs (two koalinth lairs, an orc lair, and a bugbear lair), but only one demihuman settlement (the shire). Perhaps most importantly, I don't have a dragon lair yet!

Perhaps I will simply have to continue some other time!

Review: The Death Ziggurat (Mörk Borg)

The Death Ziggurat is "a cosmic necrocrawl" scenario for Mörk Borg. It is written by Carl Niblaeus with editing, graphic design, and art by Johan Nohr.

As always, the art of Johan Nohr is evocative, pulpy, and generally great. The illustrations include a small hex map, an illustrated border around a page of random tables, the death ziggurat itself, and the scenario's primary BBEG - Big Bad Evil (Demon) Girl, in this case. 

The whole scenario has a light blue and yellow aesthetic theme which looks great. If Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch's green and black palette evoked the swamp, then The Death Ziggurat's evokes the frozen wastes.

SPOILERS for the Death Ziggurat!

The scenario takes place within Sarkash, the great northern forest of the Mörk Borg setting. Inside the forest is an unnaturally cold depression. Inside the depression is the ziggurat, where the demon child Akünh was imprisoned long ago. The magic imprisoning Akünh has weakened, and she has escaped to raise an army of undead and, along with her fanatical rot priest followers, ravage the world before its end.

An order of Cretun monks hires the party to investigate and, presumably, thwart Akünh. They tell the party that the ziggurat is "hidden in another realm" and that "the [rot] priests carry keys". 

Apparently the monks are paying the party generously for their services, though the scenario doesn't specify what qualifies as generous pay. Mörk Borg itself never gives any indication as to how much silver is considered a little or a lot, so it's entirely up to GM discretion. Not my favorite, but not terrible either. I went with 200 silver for my game, which in retrospect may have been too much.

The presentation of information is not as elegant as in other Mörk Borg scenarios like Rotblack Sludge and Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch. Information is not organized into bullet points with bolded keywords. Instead, all information is presented as prose, broken up by bolded headings. Names of NPCs and monsters are bolded, as well as the occasional important location or item, but it's rather inconsistent. 

I'm not always crazy about the bullet points and bolded keywords approach, particularly because it favors terseness and at-the-table utility over clarity or thoroughness, however I do wish the writing here was a bit more utilitarian.

The Depression Crawl

The scenario includes an illustrated hex map of the depression. There are two locations outside of the depression: a camp of death-obsessed cultists (not to be confused with the camp of demon cultists that shows up later) and a bloody, rotting mouth which conceals a tunnel leading into the depression. You need to feed it blood for it to open.

The walls of the depression are 150 to 300 feet high, so as far as I can tell the only way to get down is to climb (which seems highly unlikely) or pass through the mouth. I started the players traveling through the forest, with only the smoke from the death cultist camp in sight. The cultists told them about the rotting mouth. The players went there, had a fun social interaction scene with the mouth, and figured out how to open it.

The cultists are kind of a weird inclusion. They are different from the rot priests who worship Akünh. The death cultists and the rot priests both have camps. Perhaps the players are meant to expect that the rot priest camp is another death cultist camp? I don't mind the inclusion of both, but it seems that the players could easily get confused by the two camps of religious people fixated on death.

Inside the depression, there's a cave connecting to the rotting mouth, a frozen lake, a rot priest camp, the Spiral Chapel, and the necropolis and ziggurat, both of which are hidden in the Death Realm.

The hexes in between locations are also filled with ruins. I think all of the hexes that aren't otherwise keyed are supposed to contain ruins, but it's not entirely clear. Some of the hexes obviously contain ruins, but a few look empty, and others may only contain trees. The map isn't super clear.

Random Rules

Once per hex, the GM rolls a random event, which range from nothing happening to an important NPC showing up. Five of the twelve possible results are of the "nothing happens" variety, but the "nothing" is described evocatively: clouds gather and thunder rumbles, everything gets cold and freezes over, or a spiraling galaxy opens up above. I could take or leave these. They're the sort of things that the players will either fruitlessly fixate on or go "Oh, okay. So...we keep walking..."

One result is an undead attack (personally, I'd have them burst out of the snow). Two results are encounters with rot priests (which aren't explicitly combat encounters). Two results are encounters with Sarku, Akünh's former closest advisor who is now a blood-sucking ghost, and who knows that to defeat her, her heart (hidden in the ziggurat) must be destroyed. Best of all, two results are encounters with Akünh herself.

Sarku, unfortunately, doesn't show up anywhere else in the scenario, so there is a chance that the players will miss him entirely. I just decided that he could be found in the Spiral Chapel if the players didn't encounter him elsewhere. I think he's an important NPC to include, and he ended up being quite important when I ran the scenario myself.

The only other random encounter I rolled was with a small group of cautious rot priests, which presented a unique opportunity for the players to obtain the priests' medallions. So that was fun.

There's a table for generating ruin types (short descriptions like "Unholy chapel" or "Basalt mausoleum", not a procedure for running a short dungeoncrawl on the fly, which might have been cool). The party can also take 15 minutes to search the ruins for treasure, but might trigger a trap or another random event in so doing. 

I rolled "overgrown ziggurat" something like three times, which was really funny considering that the party knew only that they were looking for a ziggurat. I explained to them the meta mechanics of searching the ruins (i.e., you can take a bit of extra time and maybe find some treasure at the risk of triggering an encounter), but they weren't interested at all.

The frozen lake is covered in black flowers that have strange effects when crushed, which are tied to a table of hourly, weekly, and permanent effects. The effects are fine. One of them turns the character into a ghoul and the other causes them to age in reverse. The implications of both are left entirely to the GM. The players didn't engage with this location at all.

The rot priests are nothing to write home about. They're fascinated by the metaphysical. They have mouths in their abdomens. They carry medallions that allow them to find the necropolis and ziggurat in the Death Realm. They don't really seem to be doing anything besides two that are summoning horn beasts from a bottomless pit in the necropolis, and a few guarding the ziggurat. I wish the others were a bit more active. My players just snuck by most of them.

The Spiral Chapel houses a little puzzle which, when solved, yields the Spiral Crown. The Crown turns its wearer into a cosmic vessel. The wearer gets three DR 12 Presence tests to remove it, otherwise they are "irrevocably lost to the Cosmos", whatever that means. It sounds like a "Your character is now an NPC, through no fault of your own" situation. I had Sarku allude to the awesome power of the crown, and the players had a nice long discussion about who should wear it. 

Wearing the Crown also reverses Akünh's channeling of the demonic world's power, which she needs to raise her undead army. Reversing the channeling also drains Akünh's health each round, causing her to appear and battle the Crown-bearer. My understanding is that, even if she dies here, one still needs to destroy her heart at the ziggurat to destroy her permanently. That makes the Crown a very useful but dangerous and not necessary tool, which I like. 

I did change it so that passing the Presence test allowed the character to wield the Crown without being lost to the Cosmos, rather than to simply remove the Crown. The character could instead attempt a Strength test at any time during the "attunement" process to remove the Crown. This way, there are three outcomes: wear the Crown but be lost to the Cosmos, remove the Crown before becoming lost to the Cosmos, or master the Crown and retain your personality.

One of the player characters wore the Crown and mastered it. Akünh showed up and tried to kill them. That character had 1 hit point. Fortunately, the party's Fanged Deserter scored a critical hit with their Croaking Trident from Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch, slaying Akünh (temporarily) instantly. Cool! Now, all that was left was to go find the ziggurat and destroy Akünh's heart.

The Death Realm

To find the necropolis and ziggurat in the Death Realm, the party needs a rot priest medallion. Otherwise, they find only a barren waste, concealed by fog or mist, swarming with undead. If the party doesn't have a medallion, they see a funnel of clouds being sucked down into a sinkhole where the ziggurat would be.

At the necropolis, there are some rot priests summoning horn beasts from a bottomless pit. They are seemingly the only proactive rot priests in the whole area. It's unclear if their summoning is tied to Akünh's channeling and whether disrupting the channeling stops the summoning. My players saw the horn beasts crawling out of the pit and asked "Can we sneak around them?" I didn't see why not.

Finally, inside the Death Ziggurat are some rot priests and their horn beasts, guarding a rotten mouth sucking in the cloud funnel. If the party crawls down the wet throat, they'll find Akünh's heart. Destroying it banishes her to the void and instantly triggers a Misery from Mörk Borg's Calendar of Nechrubel.

My players encountered the maximum number of rot priests here. Not good! A battle ensued (one of the characters was still wearing the Crown, so the rot priests instantly recognized them as enemies). As the party's Shedding Vicar summoned a gang of zombies to tilt the numbers in the party's favor, the Forlorn Philosopher slipped past the priests and down into the mouth (they slipped and fell in, actually, barely surviving the fall), where they found Akünh regenerating around her still-beating heart.

Before they could destroy the heart, a horn beast tore the Crown-bearer apart. Akünh's power was restored! Her eyes snapped open. The Forlorn Philosopher stabbed her heart. She screamed in pain and fury and pursued the Philosopher. The Philosopher barely managed to climb back up out of the throat. The party's Gutterborn Scum rushed to put on the Crown, struggling to master it while the rest of the party held off Akünh and her priests and beasts.

Akünh drew the Crown-bearer towards her with her scream, grabbed them, and bit them in half, killing them instantly. But not before the Fanged Deserter once more delivered the killing blow. I described Akünh falling backwards into the mouth-pit, Crown and upper half of Crown-bearer chewed up by her abdomen-mouth. Through the hole in the top of the ziggurat, the Cosmos swirled. A bolt of prismatic lightning shot down from the heavens and smote Akünh in her pit. The priests' morale broke and they fled. The day was won, but not without great cost!

Monsters and NPCs

The scenario's final spread provides details about monsters and NPCs, plus a great illustration of Akünh. There's a lot to like here.

The rot priests have mouths in their abdomens. They try to grab you and stuff you inside. Any damage they cause does not heal except by magic or after resting one night at least a day's travel from the ziggurat (which means characters are unlikely to heal mid-scenario).

Horn beasts are moderately armored masses of horns and bones with lots of teeth that attack twice per round (which is pretty rare in Mörk Borg). They are pretty nasty and, as I mentioned earlier, managed to score the (surprisingly) first player character kill since we've been playing.

Undead are slow. You can always outrun them, unless they grapple you (which is the first thing they try to do). They are weak, but only stay "dead" for one round before rising with 1 hit point. I like them a lot. Unfortunately my players did not encounter any.

The death cultists are not too exciting. The "most high ranking cultists" (the scenario does not say how many such cultists are in the present group of 25) can deafen you for d10 minutes, which doesn't seem like it would be that big of a deal.

Sarku is awesome. He's a ghost that sucks people's blood with his long, sharp tongue (which also stretches the victim's tongue for some reason). He hangs their desiccated husks from trees. He has combat statistics, even though he's immune to physical harm, and I can't see why he would fight the player characters anyway. His goal is to be freed from his earthly prison. The scenario does not suggest how this is to be accomplished, but I imagine that slaying Akünh would do the trick.

Akünh is also awesome. She can scream to magically pull you within arm's reach. She can attack twice with her claws, and if both hit, the target must test Strength or be devoured by her abdomen mouth and die instantly (this is what killed the party's Gutterborn Scum, who's been with us since the beginning). She can shoot lasers out of her eyes, affecting d6 targets. She can also teleport to anywhere inside of the depression, climbing from a rotting mouth eating out of the ground. The scenario is not clear as to how much of this stuff she can do in a single round. When she reaches 0 HP, she resurrects at her heart beneath the ziggurat, though it isn't clear if this is at full health or if she needs time to heal.

Conclusion

All in all, this is a solid scenario. While the information presentation isn't the most utilitarian, and there are some holes to fill and things I changed, this is the most ready-to-run-as-is Mörk Borg scenario I've reviewed yet. It's not setting the world on fire, but it also isn't trying to do too much, which makes the GM's load significantly lighter. 

I managed to run it in just one 3-hour session, which is the quickest we've gotten through any Mörk Borg scenario so far. It was exciting and deadly. I can imagine that multiple playthroughs would be sufficiently distinct to keep me coming back to this one. My favorite Mörk Borg scenario yet. Run it!

Where to Buy/Download

You can get the Death Ziggurat for free on the Mörk Borg website. Here is a direct link to where you can download it from Google Drive.

If you want a physical copy, you will have to purchase Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory, which includes Death Ziggurat and many other adventures and Mörk Borg content (travel and hunting rules, random tables, magic items, new classes, etc.). I can't really recommend it enough.

Review: Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch (Mörk Borg)

I just finished running this scenario for my Mörk Borg group, so I thought I'd do a review while it's fresh in my mind. 

On a purely aesthetic level, the art and layout are fantastic. I love the black and green color scheme. There are multiple full-page illustrations that look really great. The dungeon key is extremely usable. As is often the case, I think the terse keying leaves a lot to be desired conceptually, which I will get to in a bit.

SPOILERS for Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch!

The scenario takes place in the Slithering Swamp, east of Lake Onda, which is itself east of the "sad-but-gaudy" city of Schleswig. The Mörk Borg core book tells us that Schleswig is ruled by the "paranoid, fat, and increasingly mad" King Fathmu IX, who is obsessed with the basilisk Verhu's prophecies and aggressively taxes and raids the surrounding lands.

The scenario begins by describing the Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch, which contains an altar of dead roots. Legend has it that if one chants forbidden words at the altar, any wish is fulfilled. The altar can even stop the Doom foretold by Verhu.

Unfortunately, the Sepulchre is now home to the Strange Serpent Drug Cult, a psychedelic free-love sex cult formed by Ueth the Scalehunter after he was bitten by the Emerald Serpent, causing him to come under the influence of a permanent hallucinogen. Ueth returned to his village, recruited many of the villagers to the Cult, and kidnapped the rest. 

The Cult makes regular sacrifices to "the serpents" (it's not immediately clear if this is the Emerald Serpent, if there are multiple Emerald Serpents, or if these are some other serpents entirely - eventually we learn that this refers to one other Emerald Serpent as well as a bunch of mundane snakes who live in a pit) in exchange for permanent happiness after the world's end.

The party has "stumbled on" the forbidden words that they need to chant at the dead root altar "on a murdered messenger wearing mad King Fathmu IX's crest in a ditch". Was the messenger bearing the words for some reason? Were the words carved into his flesh? Who killed him? Is the ditch in the Slithering Swamp, or somewhere else? Why is the party in the swamp, or wherever they were when they found the messenger?

It's not super important. It framed the scenario by telling the players that they had passed through a nearly-deserted village and that the few remaining villagers begged them to save their children from the sex and drugs snake cult. Sprinkle in that the cult is hiding out in an old tomb with an altar that grants wishes, and even the more self-serving characters might be interested. But the scenario doesn't suggest what the players' motivation might be.

I am beginning to feel that there's something to be said of Mörk Borg's "motivation problem" - that is, in a world so awful, on the brink of Doom, why do anything? It's easy enough to run Rotblack Sludge and say, "You have to do this or you'll be executed," but it's more difficult when the players have to decide they want to do something. Why would they? 

Because we're playing a game and this is what I have prepared, of course, but that doesn't always cut it for every player. Things did not go well for my players in the first session of this scenario, and after narrowly escaping from the Sepulchre once, they asked, "Why are we doing this again?" I said, "To save the children from the sex cult. And get a wish at the altar, maybe." They said, "Well we don't even know what we would wish for. And saving the kids doesn't seem that worthwhile because the entire world is extremely messed up anyway. Something else equally bad will just happen to them as soon as we leave." And honestly, fair enough.

(I think the scenario is trying to imply that the characters are at the Sepulchre to make a wish. The scenario does not at all suggest that the cult members need saving. I added that in myself because I felt the altar motivation was extremely tenuous and I didn't think my players would want to wish for anything. In hindsight, I would recommend simply asking the players: "You've journeyed to the Sepulchre to make a wish at the altar. What is it?" Eventually, one of the players rolled an arcane catastrophe that gave them a magical STD which caused everyone they had sex with to turn into a zombie that wanted to kill them, so they decided to wish that away. That was halfway through the scenario, though.)

The adventure summary includes a d6 rumor table, which is...whatever. There's some foreshadowing about elements of the scenario, but none of the information was especially useful. I just gave all the rumors to the players. More information equals more agency. 

The tomb contains eleven areas. The main gimmick is Emerald Venom, which players can contract from the Emerald Serpent guarding the dungeon's entrance. The Emerald Venom makes the dungeon interior appear differently, gives the affected a penalty to initiative (which I don't think matters at all because presumably all of those inside the dungeon are also affected), an expanded fumble range, and most importantly, it reveals the presence of hidden passages.

Three of the four players allowed themselves to be bitten by the Serpent. The fourth wasn't too keen on that, and started a fight with the Serpent. Surprisingly, he dodged all three of the Serpent's attacks, then killed it. Hilariously, he then attempted to harvest its venom and fumbled, sticking himself with the hallucinogen anyway.

After the players retreated from the Sepulchre the first time, they rested, and the hallucinogen wore off. Then they went back, with clear heads, and noticed no passage where there had been one before. They correctly concluded that certain passages were hidden by illusions, which tipped them off that they had to search every room thoroughly for secrets. That was really neat.

One strange thing about the scenario is that the cultists don't know about the Swamp Witch or her tomb. One of the rooms, the garden, connects directly to both the tomb and altar, and the room is empty of any danger. Ueth "has heard the rumors of the Swamp Witch buried somewhere in here but hasn't gone farther than the garden, where he felt threatened and turned back." This is Rotblack Sludge's "Fletcher hates Lesdy but can't fit through the tunnel and won't send his guards to kill her for some reason" all over again. Extremely hard to believe as a GM, and not at all a conclusion I would expect the players to naturally reach.

To be fair, the garden is a little spooky, with glowing flowers, ancient symbols, and giant three-eyed toad skulls littering the floor, and Ueth is perpetually tripping, but this feels like somewhat lazy writing. The author included too much stuff in too small of a dungeon and handwaved the explanation. It's difficult to justify in-game, and I need to be able to justify it if my players start to ask questions of me or the NPCs.

Another strange element is that Ueth's lair is one of the first rooms the players can go to when they enter the tomb (if under the influence of Emerald Venom). If the party's main motivation is to kill Ueth (as it was for my players), they can try to do that pretty quickly. My players tried to do it, and got close, but were chased out of the tomb by a dozen or so cultists and had to take refuge in the swamp. Admittedly, this is something of a flaw in how I set up the scenario (with one of the two goals being "kill Ueth"), but I did that because the scenario doesn't provide what I feel is a sufficient hook. I felt the need to supplement it with additional incentive, and nearly broke the adventure as a result.

That being said, I appreciate that the majority of the cultists are friendly towards the party if they're affected by the Venom (which they are very likely to be). It allows the party to scope out the area, figure out what exactly they're up against, and then figure out a plan. (Oddly, my players did exactly this in Rotblack Sludge to resounding success, but essentially went in guns blazing in this adventure and made things so much worse for themselves. They eventually regrouped and figured it out.)

There's also the Croaking Trident, a magic weapon that eventually turns its wielder into a chaos frog warrior. That's pretty cool. I made sure the party's strongest warrior found it, and can't wait to see the results.

Eventually, we get to the Swamp Witch's tomb and she's just...floating there. You know, like an NPC in a video game who's just waiting for the player to show up? She wants the players to make a sacrifice at the altar, which is pretty interesting, but it does beg the question...why haven't the cultists found her? 

We're even told that if the Witch dies, the Emerald Serpents and Venom hallucinations disappear, suggesting she is connected to them. The Cult worships the Serpents. The Witch controls the Serpents. The Witch wants people to make sacrifices at the altar. Why don't the Serpents just tell the cultists to go to the altar and make a sacrifice?

I thought I had a good idea for how to get around this. Wishes at the altar only work if the sacrifice is unwilling. Since this is a drug-addled cult, perhaps they're too enthusiastic about being sacrificed for it to work? But no, the Cult has unwilling prisoners, and those are the people they're sacrificing. The scenario also explains that if a willing sacrifice is made, the Witch shows up and fights you with her cool sword. So, none of that works.

The only way to defeat the Witch permanently is to destroy her altar, which can only be done by making an unwilling sacrifice, making a wish, and rolling a 2 on the resulting d6 table. Otherwise, she just regenerates in her sarcophagus if the party defeats her. 

I like that it's difficult to truly defeat the Witch, but it does feel like the scenario will lack a satisfying climax 83% of the time. If the characters successfully make a wish and the altar doesn't break then they just...turn around and leave. And if they get it in their head that they need to defeat the Witch for some reason and haven't lucked into destroying the altar first, then they just fight her over and over until they die or run away.

Lastly, there's a black pit with a magical barrier behind which lurk Srolki and Yaoxl, a pair of antediluvian three-eyed humanoid toads who seek the Croaking Trident. Obviously this is a weapon of their people, but it's not clear why its especially important. After all, allowing it to stay up above will cause those who wield it to turn into chaos frog warriors, which seems like a win for the toad people. If the Witch is killed, the barrier vanishes, and more of the toad people will move into the area following that.

But of course, the scenario is not interested in suggesting what their deal is or what they might do once freed. Are the players to believe that the toad people are worse than the Cult or the Witch? Better? A lateral move? 

None of this really seems to matter. If left to their own devices, the cultists will get high and have sex and sacrifice some people who were going to live miserable, short lives in a terrible world anyway. The Witch will float in her tomb, collecting souls and granting wishes for...reasons. The toad people will stay where they are, or maybe some day be freed, at which point they won't really do anything except call their friends, who will then "appear in the area" and, presumably, do nothing.

The party can come here and make a wish at the altar, which the GM is encouraged to use to screw them over. If they wish to forestall the Doom (which is implied to be the main reason they would come here), it of course only postpones the inevitable next Misery. Obviously, Mörk Borg is something of a masochistic game for nihilists, so this fits the theme, but it could benefit from everything feeling a little less pointless.

Verdict

This is a solid dungeoncrawl with good ideas. It looks like a million bucks. The map, key, and monster stats are all highly usable. Unfortunately, I don't really see the point of it, and the scenario makes no effort to tie together its disparate pieces into any sort of coherent narrative. 

I overhauled it entirely, rethinking the factions and their relationships and motivations.

In my game, the Cult knew about the Witch and her altar, but they saw her as a goddess of love that they had to feed with the souls of the blind - those unindoctrinated into the cult. 

I decided that if someone were to make a willing sacrifice at the altar, it would break automatically, and the Witch would become weakened and vulnerable to being killed. The Witch thus ensured that the Cult only sacrificed the unwilling (either non-cult prisoners or cultists who have lost faith), and stopped anyone intending otherwise. 

The toads knew this information and would have shared it with anyone who talked to them so that they might be freed. They were bad news too, of course (they wanted to carry all of the cultists off to their underground cities and then invade the surface). The player never found the pit, so it didn't come up.

With this setup, the players have to explore and talk to different people to figure out what's going on, then decide what to do about. If they're here just to make a wish at the altar, they shouldn't have too much trouble. If they want to free the cult's prisoners, they'll have to hack through all the cultists. If they want to liberate the cultists (who are people too), they'll have to slay Ueth, the Emerald Serpents, and the Witch. And if they want to defeat the Witch, one of them will need to sacrifice themselves, or they'll need to find an enthusiastic cultist to offer themselves up. Then, they unleash the toad people, and have to decide whether to try to battle them back or surrender the Sepulchre to them.

What ended up happening is that the characters went to the Sepulchre to save the indoctrinated cultists. They tried to kill Ueth, but had to retreat back into the swamp with a bunch of cultists on their heels. One of them managed to lure several cultists out of the Sepulchre while the rest charged in at dawn. They caught Ueth sleeping, restrained him, and snuck through the tomb, killing isolated cult fanatics. The Witch got in their ear, urging them to sacrifice Ueth at the altar, and they did

I've said this before, but I run prewritten scenarios like this because I don't want to do a bunch of work to figure things out. This scenario has done the work of creating the map, stocking the dungeon, detailing the NPCs (barely), and coming up with big ideas. Unfortunately, it hasn't done the work of "figuring out" those ideas, leaving the GM holding the bag. It still beats coming up with the entire scenario on my own, but I wish it was more "ready to run" as written.