Shadow of the Demon Lord Adventures to SLA Industries Part 5

 Last 11 of the normal short adventures. I was originally inspired by the succientness of the adventures but I've increasingly come to see how they rely on the titular demon lord of the majority. Which is perfectly fine for a "The Truth"/White Earth-focused camapign. But makes it somewhat lacking elsewhere. Especially now I have access to Threat Analysis 2: Cults. Makes all my converted-as Orange BPNs a little less intense than what the book implies.

Saving Face

Demon Lord’s corruption has produced a plume of mutating glop that made clam parasites eat people’s faces. A local Flesh Taker steals people’s faces/skin. Figure out what’s wrong and treat it before the big clam festival.

Blue/Silver BPN

Out where Frother territory meets the sea, a prominent local clam festival is held. This is a minor tourist attraction that needs some pep, courtesy of the local council. The blue option is that the local council is worried about rumors. Either way you will talk to Eiðella Haraldsdöttir.

The Face-Taker is a local killer, a MESHA graduate or a shatter-addict to dial it down. But the core issue of no one wanting to shut the clam beds during the festival remains. The ultimate cause is a spill off the coast. This can be something as simple as a lost chemical container or a Grosh pod that missed its target and slammed into the seafloor like a meteor.

The Measure of a Man

Men’s Rights cult takes over doomsday vault that’s supposed to house artifacts to survive the Demon Lord until the world is saved. Leader found real demonic artefacts and a stupid magical item, turned vault into ransacked den. Supposed to be a little silly at first.

Cyan/Orange (only found to be partway through) BPN

This is very playable. The Vault of Hope becomes a Naga 7 storage site. The “Swarm Cultists” (courtesy of Threat Analysis: Cult) are just latching onto the leader with his massive manly gun. The automatons are not Manchines but are pretty much the same stat-wise and of the same era. The portal is one to White Earth and so the demons are various ethereals and other such nasties. The piece of cloth can be White Earth or an out of Territory object.

A Measure of Faith

Local fears shape belief into a sickness at a crusader castle, Inquisition begins torturing crusaders for info, which only makes the fear/belief stronger. Players can be on any side (including village suffering belief-borne disease that makes them cannibals).

Deep below is an abyss where the belief has manifested into a monster-beastman who is converting other people into beastmen. Either suppress the truth or expose it.

Grey/Orange (Actually Cyan) BPN

White (what’s with the disease

A major Downtown Shiver station is suspected of belonging to some kind of cult. Shián, Rawhead or something. Only there are cannibals and carrien running loose at night. Shiver/Cloak Division violence is getting bad.

Actually, a Dream Entity, some kind of warped Dream Master, who is halfway between a carrien and CS cannibal. Maybe a Derro King for stats. Killing people and using that to imprint new Dream Entities. The Grey and delusions of cannibalism (even if the subject doesn't do anything) spreading. This is going to end with someone important, angry at the players. But doing their job is all they can do.

White Out

Players are stranded in a blizzard with a group of people, all who have something wrong with them. A Demon in a jewel is causing the storm, and one character has it. Monsters and survival tasks occur until the jewel is destroyed.

Blue (Why are train switches not working)/White (Find out why people keep disappearing from a SLA-operated station).

This could be as simple as it sounds, on a Green BPN the players are stuck somewhere. But maybe a shop or bar at a nearly abandoned gauss train station might be good.

But supernatural events can become passe. Let’s make it drugs, a giant high-quality cocktail of combat drugs, shatter, whatever else. A Wraithern gang (The Ice Demons) want it back. The old man is still a cannibal but the zombies are drug addicts, forced as a human wave. They somehow smash up the ground or a broken wall when the bodies of the victims lie. The final demon is when Qui ingests the whole set of drugs or the gang leader shoot up the rest of the gang’s supply.

The Little Horror House on the Prairie

Demon torments a cultist who tried to escape the cult long ago. The lonely house contains the apparitions and bodies of his family and the demonic manifestations. Wants travelers to snoop around and die, demon wants to possess newer body. Demon would suggest Shi’an and Ethereals, but they don’t seem to go for slow possession.

Part of Green BPN where it’s the closest listed location to the stranded players or a cheap Green BPN to go see if it’s still active. Can be argued as a Cyan or Orange depending on the debriefing.

Beyond the Cannibal Sectors is a near abandoned Gauss Train depot. Technically it’s listed as infrastructure, but no one has been recorded as clocking in for years and no train has needed to resupply there because it was presumed abandoned. The manager was a member of the first Shi’an cult but quit early on when the Ethereal really showed off what they could do. A minor Ethereal tracked him down and did his family in via possessing him. But both are trapped there, the nightmares of the man creating Dream Entities in the isolation.

Kind of a stretch.

Blood Will Run

Elf has fallen under sway of devilish patron. He makes cursed blades from human bones and gives them to people he thinks will cause havoc when they break down from them. Two kids, brothers have gone missing. Bonesmith (Elf) accuses them of stealing blades though father denies this.

Ruf, the first boy got haunted by the ghost of the old lord whose bones were dug up to make blades. He did steal them and tried to take them back to the ghost to avoid his wrath. Fomor band caught him and robbed him. Fomors kidnapped daughter of innkeeper and threating her to make the innkeeper keep their presence quiet. So, the innkeeper has Ruf locked up in cellar where he will die from the formor beating soon. Other missing boy Tuf was killed by Bonesmith in a two-sentence description to appease his patron. Right at the end and perfunctory. Not even a description of what happens if the party finds out.

White BPN

Local feral Ebonite who moved into area is a drug maker and cooker. BPN is to see if he is a soft-company or not. Not technically, but the drugs are an SLA knock-off and something that might be worth following up with the head of the syndicate. “Bonersmith” is using material stolen from local factory. When Ruf was sneaking around as Downtown kids do, foreman threatened him because he believed kid was in gang stealing chemical shipments.

Local gang/cognate operating out of nearby disused factory (not same district) waylaid and stole from Ruf. Who stole the drugs from Bonersmith. They have been holding Jex, local restaurant owner’s daughter hostage, so Jex will use her restaurant as a front for drugs/warn of the Shivers. Ruf is in disused freezer.

Tuf is being held drugged, by Bonersmith in revenge. Who is draining his blood day by day to see if he can give drugs that kick.

Forbidden Fruits

Outpost in forest is a guard against beastmen. Local commune in old tower support it with food. Tower is filled with demonic taint and twisted the community into strange worship. Or evil vine from the forest got into them. They found a crippled minotaur and brought it back to have babies with it. Juvenile beastmen are everywhere now.

The nasty vines seem to be unrelated to what caused the commune to go insane. Just what killed them. The commune also wants to spread them to the outpost but the post-adventure mention is the plants spreading into the farmland. Unless the garrison spreads them from the outpost.

White/Green BPN, maybe this could be labeled a Orange but more likely to be argued down as hazard of the region.

In Cannibal Sector 1, there is a bridgehead which guards some of the new towns. One little village/district/block has gotten all messed up from growing a kind of toxic weed. Either a local poison or something alien that shouldn’t be there. They supply the bridgehead with the non-essential extras that SLA Industries doesn’t care about and some stuff on the side. Bridgehead put out the BPN. The community got it in their head to turn into a Rawhead cult and have a crippled Butcher and some runts in their settlement. And demonic incursions from the random roll table are local hazard Dream Entities.

 

Flute of Farewell

A group of fey-related beings have a cult about someday returning to fairyland rather than be condemned to one life in the world without an afterlife. A treasure dealer sells them a flute designed to open a portal. But really, it’s made by the fairies of hell to lure people. Which are separate from demons from outside the world. The cultists sold everything from the temple land, the decorations and most of their savings. The player characters are hired to make the transaction. Some cultists try to steal back their money after the transaction.

The dealer has been killed by the devil bound to it. Something that seems to come out of the blue. The players have to save who remains at the temple as that’s the next destination. The head priest doesn’t want to give up the flute because his goal seems so close.

Yellow BPN

This is simple but the reasoning is complicated. Operatives don’t normally do delivery jobs, but maybe a senior corporate member of a company could put out a BPN.

There is a small group of researchers who think it’s possible for humans to gain Ebb powers and want a relic that supposedly gives access to the White. It does but that’s very lethal for non-Ebonites and Momics. The entire subsidiary has maxed out on loans and pilfered staff accounts to transfer bonds to a dealer in ancient artefacts. The devil is either a minor Necrothrope clearing out meddlers or some sort of echo of a Momic. Maybe a Momic without the bells and whistles. Needless to say the whole thing will be swept under the rug and any rewards coupled with threats/NDAs.

Apple of Her Eye

Prosperous apple farming village of Avelton keeps its generational pact with a dryad, Nymian. By leaving out a child once every 7 years for ‘Tithing Night’. Characters encounter said child tied up in orchard. They are threatened by 5 changelings who look like kids but fall apart when killed. Taking pel back to the village for he is scared that people will take him back to the orchard reveals worried and suspicious villagers. The dryad sends recaps and then herself with changelings to bring back her own soul tithe.

Blue/White BPN, go stop local drug gang selling combat drugs alongside recreational stuff. Or why are all the trainees/Operatives from this sector killing themselves?

This should be straightforward investigation. But there aren’t very many human threats in MC that can deliver consistent prosperity and only abduct 1 child every 7 years, for 140 years. The frequency could be boosted for one of those threats, hence a white BPN. Or the Dryad is turned into something that is harder for the players to deal with, a kind of MC charming ability.

Nymian is an SLA Industries recruiter, a Eban/Brain Waster with a lot of subsidiary cash. She runs a company that finds Operative from among the juvenile justice system and theoretically checks them for suitability. In practice, she uses the kids as drug mules, pushers and enforcer. Getting kickbacks from her Ops for combat drugs too. Any kid who survives violent gang life for a few years and not spiral into self-destruction will be fed into Meny as an emotionally unstable recruit. Who in turn will likely perish in Operative training or on the streets. Nymian can offer cash (in Unis), manufactured BPN situations (Be ready at the terminal), off-the books favors (she doesn’t intend to keep) and black-market material (Ops will see her gang pillaging their street fights).

Or Nymian is part of DRYAD, a Darknight recruiting scheme that picks up kids from a network of sectors, no more than one every seven years from each but enough that they conscript a kid every month. Those sectors that agree to it get protection from terrorist attacks and Darknight drug-dealing.

The BPN becomes a Blue, checking why a cadre of DK agents killed in CS1 all come from the same adjoining sectors. Nymian screwed up seven years ago by assigning the sequential kids to the same indoctrination squad. The latest young squad provide her with backup.

Feast of the Father

Characters visit village of Argron’s Dock at the time of a local festival. A fisherman threw back a tainted fish but missed a few of the black worms. Which in turn forced him to evacuate his bowls into a psychic worm that controlled him. He is now the new priest. Worms spread throughout town and when the priest tried to rally against it, the infected killed the uninfected. Now the town willingly live in the worms’ live cycle. Worms live with “Father” the first worm.

Silver/Yellow BPN

Operatives are tasked with providing either celebrity coverage of a hot new weight-lose clinic that has swept Mort or acquire the samples for Karma, who are annoyed a small subsidiary/sign-on has achieved some effect they can’t figure out. Interviews and stakeouts show the offices and homes of the members are slovenly and ill. Festival is the big closed-door party for the grand opening.

Records show an apparent car crash/accident/gas leak/maniac attack killed one of the business founders and several of the original investors during a meeting in their old office. Finding and slaying the mind worm gets mixed results. If the footage before and after can be used, the Silver is technically paid out. Karma wants the body of the main worm or equivalent mass of lesser worms.

The Man Who Fell to Urth

An incarnate genie failed to stop the Demon Lord from destroying the universe he swore to protect. After drifting in the void for 1000 years, he realized the small chucks on land he was orbiting were going to hit Urth and plugged the crack with his body. The chunks will breach through and hit Urth within a few days. The genie’s appearance is frightening the townsfolk, especially as salamanders have come to guard and have killed to protect him. A member of an apocalyptic sect of the New God is whipping the townsfolk into a frenzy to attack. No mention if the genie survives but his death causes the crack to open, and demons appear. Inside the Void are the chunks, but they have members of a lost civilization on them. They pose an issue to rescue or defeat, to destroy the chunks.

Red/Platinum BPN

One of the mysterious members of the Kilneck, hit a downtown sector last night as if falling from a great height. Party is told to deal with the issue before cleanup teams arrive. Only problem is a Moral Right squad got there first. Most players, even long-term players won't have the SCL to countermand a MR squad on the spot. Everyone knows about Shi’an and this is clearly supernatural. Made worse by a gaggle of off-world Neophron who are standing off with MR.

Regardless of what happens the Kilneck either tells or has on the body Ebb formulae for a fold ship teleport. That means a foldship might be bearing down at these coordinates, through the plates. The Kilneck is partially intersecting with the Ethereal/White Earth realm as well, whatever works better.

Once the monsters are dealt with, Operatives heading through the portal meet with a disintegrating foldship, containing treasure, a weird alien species that are all that’s left after something White Earth/Conflict Races and a faulty ion support craft.

Save some, none or all. But this ship will teleport and crash through the whole level and into the one below. MR keeps pulling rank because they think seizing the ship will give them a one-up in the company. And the level isn’t worth saving. But really the whip is just going around the bend with stress and power.