More Shadow of the Demon Lord to SLA Industries adventure/BPNs
As in my previous post, I make no bones about adapting the mechanics. It's on the Gamemaster to adjust the plot for the competencies of the squad.
A Year Without Rain – Small farming and crossroad town of Asylum is having a year long drought, but town well still work. People start dying, their bodies dried out. Turns out there is an old ruin under the town, access through the well. Haunted by undead and demons, a minor demon has lurked there since ancient times. Started the drought and now getting powerful by killing people.
Adaption – Blue (Orange) There’s a neighborhood in a Downtown sector, out of the ways except for the company-owned petrol station/local supermarket. All the pipes have not run for a year except a central main. As nowhere else in the sector is reporting pipe issues, players are sent to go see if blockage is caused by something living. In order to see it’s safe to send in a repair team. A minor White Earth entity, the remnant of some ancient cult from the early days, when SLA was just paving over this area to build Mort City still lurks. Finding this out should be a D-NOTICE and possibly an upgrade to a higher BPN reward.
Dark Deeds in Last Hope – Boring but pastoral village, a thief tries to rob the temple of a relic, upset with his thugs getting into a fight at the inn. He fights the priest, revealing the priest to be changeling. The changeling was the lover of the mayor’s son, a failed wizard whose been doing some grave-robbing to study necromancy. Multiple leads and thugs will jailbreak and rampage without extra precautions, formor will come out of woods as sudden twist. Personal pleads are made from different people.
Adaption – (Can call it in as a White or RED as situation develops) A boring and normal sector with a boring and normal neighbourhood. Players were based here as part of 2E’s housing shortage. Failed wizard becomes failed Karma graduate, his lover is a person who has been drinking a somewhat illegal mixture of veraphon-derived material, since veraphon were deleted out of the edition. Trying to restart life with bodies from the morgue and illegal karma stuff. Thugs remain thugs, a gang from somewhere else in the sector. Formors are carrien and the forest is the sewers.
Dead by Dawn – Players arrive an inn where old priest died, next to dark forest. Priest was going to perform blood rites at ancient tree, tree is now awake and seeking sacrifices with zombies. Party of level 0s must last until dawn, when the dead go back, and the tree falls asleep. Can perform ritual out of material in dead priest’s room. Visiting tree in day and attacking it means corrupted dryad comes out and dead reawaken.
Adaption – No BPN/rating but hush money (equal to Jade) – A momic sealed itself up in its horrible trees, out of desperation to avoid the Stormers during the ill-fated attack on Mort, 900 years ago. It failed and now remains impaled and intergrown among a small grove that winds its way through this remote part of the Downtown outskirts (not the Cannibal Sectors). Every year a feral Ebon makes an offering of blood & ebb which keep what’s left of the mind asleep. Using spare ebb hanging around like a miasma, the party can do the ritual. Zombies are corrupted rez ebb spell. Getting out of there and reporting it means SLA will eventually send strike team, possibly players again. Best used with newer characters so the players don’t just shoot and hack through everything, unless that’s what you want.
Slaver’s Lash – Escape orc slavers. Some slaves want to help escape, one is a plant. Formor attack part way through.
Adaption - Tricky since most players are suitably well armed and tough enough to make it difficult to be involved without blatant railroading, though gang or prop characters might be weak enough to start in media res. Scavs are probably the best bet, but Scavs aren’t human enough to have the same personable failings as the orcs. Carrien or cannibals would take the place of the formors. Could also cop out and take place on far distant region of Mort or other planet as an excuse to wear down the players and isolate them. Though that would get old to constantly use off-world = Starting Character Adventures.
Survival of the Fittest – Bandits attack caravan, players are only survivors by fleeing in woods with bad reputation, woods are dark and dangerous from monsters, described ones with a set location or bandits who watch the road. A friendly hermit lives in woods too.
Adaption – No BPN/rating but media rights. On a gauss train out of Mort City or through Lower Downtown, armed gang blow tracks and anyone not dead in crash is killed by them.
Or a Green, where the forest is on another planet and a smaller truck convoy is attacked. Fletcher’s Rest is either an apartment building amid the debris of half-abandoned Lower Downtown or a tiny resupply station for miners and loggers that’s part of SLA Industries resource gathering operations on the planet. Once you get to the station, the actual BPN can begin.
The Witching Wood – Small community of religious and slightly hypocritical ascetics is tormenting by a witch. No twists. The witch is a cannibal and a devotee of evil, hates them for their devotion. Kidnaps child and locals, ultimately brings forth a small army of formors to raze the village.
Adaption – White (Orange) An isolated but not yet devolved neighbourhood on the outer edge of the sector plate in barely-Upper Downtown overlooks an eastern opening in the superstructure, revealing the sun every morning. Local White Earth cultist doesn’t like the community, torments it. Players hear about missing person and go in because it’s conveniently nearby and they have nothing else to do (to keep time pressure on). Cultist later tempts a small group of carrien to attack neighbourhood. Could also do it as a Rawhead cultist and bringing some cannibals up through the sewers. Would just be a standard White then.
In Need of Killing – We return to the village of Asylum where some zombies attack the town. They are mostly people from nearby farmstead. There the players discover the farm on it’s oddly round hill has been ransacked, the inhabitants killed and cultists working down below in the ruins of an old shrine to bring about a minor evil spirit.
Adaption – Orange. Zombies are Shi’ian cult stuff, the farmstead is a small locally owned industrial plant/yard with attached house. The round hill is a chunk of supposed superstructure that bulges around the streets. What’s left of an older complex filled in with rubble. Could be run as a sequel to A Year Without Rain as some cultists hear about that incident, especially if filmed.
The God Below – A new cult in a city with many religions has occurred promising to take in bodies of the deceased and convey them to the underworld without the risk of devils leading them astray. They are being fed to a large ooze in the old bathhouse. The patron of the players is an elder in the church of the New God, who has been devoted to a demon-possessed painting for years. He wants the players to investing if the Temple of Duvia is a threat or not. He really wants them to clear house and then follows up with some masked men, the players fight whoever is victorious.
Adaption – White, the twist is garbage because there is no real reason for the twist to occur. The players must do post-adventure legwork to find out about the painting. Easier to make the patron someone who just doesn’t want to pay the characters, or better, someone who has been running the organisation and is clearing house to secure the money. What Duvia is perhaps some protoplasmic mutant thing from CS5 and the organisation is a funeral home, one that’s been undercutting the official system by funneling all bodies into one disposal site.
Fine Country Folk - Two yokels from an isolated forest valley killed a wounded cabalist. Realising his skin was tattooed with magic burning in their brains, despite their illiteracy, they skinned the body and then quarreled over the halves. One has army of deformed, incesteous children and magic, the other has been using his imbred women-folk to entice travellers to him so he can turn them into monsters. They have been doing this for 30 years, scattering the valley with magical debris.
Adaption - White (Orange), this is dead simple. A White Earth cultist went into the wrong part of Lower Downtown, where even the gangs have given up and the situation plays out as is. Players are here to find out why people have been disappearing from local bus stops and train stations that pass through here.
The Demon's Wet Nurse - A childless couple who run a successful dairy had their pleas heard by a demon, child is born to be possessed and the wet nurse/helper who works on farm has increased efforts to have demon possess child. Cultists as hired hands. The family is enthralled/scared of her. Unknown to them all, the milk has been tainted and nearby market town is experiences horrible and grotesque reactions to tainted products, been carried far and wide as well. Easiest solution after defeating cultists is to kill baby, but that manifests demon. Best solution is to remove every one of the demonic sigils, but that takes time and child will grow up forever vulnerable to demonic influence.
Adaption Blue (White) - Something other than demon. A Rawhead cult has been hidden in the area, feeding on bodies from the local sector mortuary. Rawhead supposedly allowed the couple to conceive, the spirit is a Rawhead one. the KZ juice brought by the cultists is leaking into milk/substitute at the food building. Could make it an artificial pork processing plant to keep theme for Mort. Starts elsewhere with responding to food poisoning outbreak.
Tales of the Desolation Campaign – In the big northern desert, a village near a keep experiences a magic curse/disease, roving undead. When the cure’s found, the problem becomes an awakened vampire from the tombs in the desert. 4 adventures from level 2 to level 6.
Adaption Blue/Green - Set it in the No Go Zone, leading south towards the Fission Belt (invert directions in the module). Esker is a piddly little village that exists for unclear reasons not too far (by vehicle) from the fortified gauss rail depot and even closer to the edge of habitability. Undead are various Root Dog mutations made when a survivor huddled amid the Jethians in an abandoned lab tried to infect everyone to see if they all could survive/go into life suspension/turn into bioweapons against SLA Industries. The Dry Death is its legacy, and Vampire is a well preserved Jethian ruler. Big D-NOTICE all over the final report.
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