MOUNTAIN TEMPLE - Twilight City

 CITY INTRODUCTION

GALEA
FUMO
BRIGHT TOWN
POMERIUM
CALDERA
CALIDUM

HISS
TENEBRIS
MOUNTAIN TEMPLE

The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum - John Martin - Source

MOUNTAIN TEMPLE

It is too hot for mortals to traverse without divine protection. The very air will eventually crisp the flesh, and eyes will sizzle and evaporate away. Pockets of killing gas, treacherous climbs, and perilous vents of scorching ire double the hazard. Nonetheless, sometimes the Mountain Temple is braved: for treasure, for truth and for mystery.

November's Doom

Deep in the earth a Titan sleeps

She stirs and November quakes.

Her dreams give rise to bends in the deeps

The mountain erupts when she wakes

Her body is the Mountain Temple. Her name is the most guarded secret in the November. If any malevolent actors found out, it could spell destruction for the city. An inappropriate invocation of her name would send pyroclastic gasps throughout Tenebris or even Hiss.

I1: The Bends

When the volcano dreams, her thoughts spill out into the stone. They run like black oozing rivers in the dark tunnels beneath the city, pooling in melted groves where they gestate into primordial chaos. The dreams produce wonders and horrors - monsters, treasures, life, and death. To feel the dream in its fullness is to experience annihilation, to become swept away in the tide of creation and destruction. Only when it has cooled and become a mere echo of itself may one approach without unmaking.

The Tree of Life 

High up in the Bends, seldom flooded by the dream. A tree of stone, like an old warty oak. Its leaves like dripping icicles of cooled lava. In its roots are born the Children of the Dream, demons of chaos, who come crawling out of the stone likes moles when they ripen. There's no telling what the irrigation of the Dream will produce when it recedes: monsters, horrors, demi-gods? Hadal creatures of fire and stone, shadow-shades that give flight before the light, champions born with the powers of chaos in their flesh. The Tree of Life hears no plea nor prayer, but it is worshipped nonetheless.

The Mountain Face

A portal of fire at the end of the Bends. To merely gaze at the entrance requires the protection of the gods, or else one burns in the fires of divine inspiration. Nobody looks upon the Face of the Mountain who does not want to see a goddess in her full glory, and perish.

During the Magmalia, sacrifice is given to the Mountain Face. Flaming hearts cut from the the blackened flesh of the greatest bulls, chosen for their plumpness and size, so that the hearts may survive raw until the moment they are cut out, are cast into the fiery pit. The priestesses plea and they bargain, to Mountain and Tiamat, that November continue in her graces.

Demon Gates

There are two kinds of demons, as there are two kinds of dreams: those who elicit the truth, and those who deceive. By passing through the Gates do each become each.

The truth-telling demons assist augurs by giving them visions of things to come. They reside in the flesh of sacred cattle: in pigeons, pigs, sheep, bulls, basilisks, or snakes. They can corrupt it, turning the viscera dark or pale or cancerous or scaly. They come as clear dreams, or transform into visions.

Deceivers create nonsensical dreams and false omens. They cannot inhabit cattle, but often possess birds or undead. They say to never trust a bird nor a zombie for this reason.

Stone Ocean

A great cavern, with cresting stones shaped like waves. Every few days they shake, and the whole of the ocean shifts with a great clacking tumult. It's said that this signals a change in the Bends.

Horrible Black Void

Endless and dark, without gravity to know down. It lies at the end of a tunnel within which grows dark translucent crystals that clog it like a fattened artery - like the body of the mountain knows that if it didn't scab over then the eternal emptiness would bleed it dry.

The Vault

Not one among the wise knows what lies behind the Black Door. Ten times man's height, carved by impossible craft, indestructible, inscrutable, the Door is adorned with exactly one hundred and forty-four locks. Twelve times twelve. Any one lock opens the door, but to where few can say. Ultimately, it is not the locks that matter, but the key which is used. For any key, there is one particular lock. For every lock there is a vault. In the secret histories of the mystery cults, there have been three instances of the door being opened, all of them in the time of myth.

The first was the queen Gliznia, who opened the Vault with a key of iron. The door led to her enemy's home while they were sleeping, and she slit all their throats one by one.

The second was a thief, who is not named. He opened the door with a key of truesilver, and none are sure where it took him.

The third was the priestess Hazraham, who entered with a key of flesh and bone. It brought her to the heavens above, where she was cast down once again to these very pits for torment.

Sea of Unborn

Beyond the dark river of the dreams of promise lies a sea of the souls of those who will be born in the city above. They flow and surge towards the estuary by the river in tidal waves, each ghostly fetal mass awaiting its turn in the womb.

Witnessed once by a priest of November, who surmised that the date of the doom of the city could be determined by measuring the fluid dynamics of the souls and estimating the volume of the sea. Ultimately he gave up, for the journey was too perilous and the sea-depth impractical to gauge.

Empty Prison

Cells of sharp dark glass, sized for things as small as men and as great as is yet unknown, all of them empty... Does the Mountain dream of empty jails, their inhabitants liberated, or does she hope that one day they will be filled?

Anger seeps through the very rock. It absorbs through the skin like invisible mercury. Those who are said to hate the gods sometimes come here in pilgrimage, and never leave. What happens to them none dare imagine.

Web of Ira

One could hardly imagine the volume implied by the great empty space within which is contained the Web of Ira. It could be its own city, suspended in the Bends, gently curving as the Bends do not: outward instead of inward. It could be the home of a million people living upon the great strands of the Mountain's mind... were it not for the monsters.

They are often crucified upon the webs, struggling and trashing against their imprisonment: beings of many heads and many hands, with scales and tentacles and horrible teeth, no two alike, no sense or symmetry to them. All of them, though, have some part of a woman. Perhaps a woman's head, or many heads. Maybe a woman's torso, or hands, or breasts, or legs, or many legs. A woman's anger, or a woman's hunger. They thrash against the webs and escape and roam, and they eat people without a thought. Their strength makes mighty warriors seem like babes.

In the Temple of Knots, they say that there is a woman who wanders the web: a normal-looking woman, perhaps a nymph or other god-child; she wanders, and is the most dangerous monster of them all. Anyone who has seen her befalls a cataclysmic death, often instantly, after gazing upon her. Word of this has only reached the city by those who did not see, but had the sight described to them by brave adventurers who perished moments later. Ira they call her, and surmise she is master of the web.

Weeping Wall

The rock weeps, and melts, and molds itself into the Weeping Wall. Fifty feet high and a mile long: difficult to climb and hazardous to touch. The tears run in slow narrow streams, pooling into molasses-like whirlpools a few feet wide that go to some deeper darker place.

Some say that you can see the doom of the city above in the Weeping Wall. Transient images of civil strife, of crowned cannibal-queens with bloodied hands on the senate steps, of screaming mobs in the streets and thieves in the temples, knives in the sacred spaces, of matrons' children slitting the throats of their siblings, armies of undead, rivers of fire, of sacrificial cattle goring their slayers, worms drowning in the sea, and of the gods above and below averting their eyes in a most profound disappointment.

River of Flame

A river of fire. Those who drink from it are healed of all disease if they can suffer the pain it causes. The greater the disease, the greater the pain. The sign of failure is to vomit the fire out once again, in excruciating agony.

Everlasting Summer - Venture Part 1

 Underneath System, Insight Resolution System, Campaign Intro, Encounters, GM Forward.

Introduction / Marquette

Venture - Part 1
Venture - Part 2
Venture Hinterlands / US-41 Highway

The Lighthouse
Ghost Ship / Missing Isle

Traffic Jam / The Line / Roadhouse

Magic Woods

DeVart

Orange Lake

End Times

These posts are contain major spoilers for Everlasting Summer. Prospective players be warned!

VENTURE

It's little more than about a hundred empty vacation homes, a handful of motels, and a beach. So remote even the brand-name chains don't set up shop here. The pothole-filled roads are empty by day, and strange things crawl out of them at night.

On the first night, the town will be speckled with electric comfort. The occasional house will be lit. You may even see a car driving around. One by one, night after night, the lights will go out, until all that remains is that of the Lighthouse in the distance, and the 8/11 convenience store.

Buildings Easy to See: Motel 7, 8/11 Convenience Store, Super Assisted Living, the Road Commission, the Lighthouse.

Motel 7

Day Shift (8am to 8pm): Brian Hefner present (until end of Day 0). Motel is unattended during the day after that.

Night Shift (8pm to 4am): Margaret O'Neil (until Day 4)

Two rows of motel rooms, like you'd see anywhere in the U.S. There's an empty swimming pool contained in a padlock-locked fence. There's a small building on the end of the row of rooms where the Front Desk is. It's always unlocked.

SAFETY: The numbered rooms of the Motel 7 are safe, inviolable by the strange forces about, provided the doors are locked and bolted. That is, until Day 9...

Rooms numbers range from 101 to 109 (nine rooms total) on the first row. 201 to 209 on the second, stacked on top of the first. Each Motel room has a programmable safe, two beds, air conditioning, electrical outlets, a television with cable, free wifi, windows facing the parking lot and 8/11 out front, and a single wooden chair. The motel rooms require a key to access, found in a drawer at the Front Desk. Each room has a lock, a bolt, and a chain bolt to lock it.

ENCOUNTERS: If the Investigators get rooms, having things check in to adjacent rooms can be fun. Alternatively, having Encounters merely lurking/stalking outside can be fun.

Front Desk: Building at the end of the motel, about 30ftx30ft big. Door is always unlocked. A security camera watches the door from the side. 

On Day 0, Brain Hefner - an overweight sweaty man with a haircut reminiscent of the Gerber baby if he was 43 - is hastily packing all of his belongings behind the counter. He is visibly nervous, sweating up a storm, and is very bad at pretending everything is normal. Late in the day he'll take all of the cash out of the cash register and skip town.

He can answer basic questions about the Rumors, or any of the town's features. He can direct investigators to a brochure holder next to the door which contains advertisements for Townend Taxidermy, Smith's Fishing Supplies, the Sharps Point Lighthouse, Superior Assisted Living and the Roadhouse. He'll mention there's a continental breakfast at 6am.

Night Shift: Margaret O'Neil mans the lobby of the motel at night. Every so often she'll try and contact the motel's owner Brian Hefner, to no avail. She'll spend most of her nights browsing her phone using the motel's wifi, bored out of her mind. On Day 4 the A'aqur Cult will come and kidnap her for sacrifice, bringing her to the Wizard's Tower.

Rumors About...

Missing Hunters: "They never came by here, but maybe they went to Townend Taxidermy?"

Perfect Pasty: "The Roadhouse is a couple of miles from the Crossroads. Just make a right at it and keep going."

Ghost Ship: "Head to the beach, make a left. It's a couple of miles that way."

Orange Lake: "Sounds impossible. Never heard of it."

Paulding Light: "A local legend. Folks over at Superior Assisted Living have spotted it a few times."

8/11 Convenience Store

Green roof brick and mortar. Big glass windows full of advertisements for cheap beer, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. It's lit up like a beacon at night, until the final days when its guardian ascends. When the automatic door opens, a haze of weed smoke will come wafting out.

It is every American convenience store you've ever seen: junk food snacks, big fridges along the walls stocked with various corn syrup soft beverages, a slurpy machine, cigarettes, lottery tickets.

Until Davey ascends on Day 8, no monsters may enter here. It is a sanctuary, consecrated in Davey's stoner serendipity. Do not tell the players this.

Davey sits behind the cash register, his feet kicked up on the counter. He is and always will be doing some kind of hard drug when the players walk in. A Shaggy lookalike, he talks in stoner sentences, gives no fucks, acts like a dilapidated saint, and is a supreme being of peace and hospitality. You could punch him in the face and he wouldn't even get mad.

On the first day, he'll still expect people to pay for things they want to buy. On following days, he'll basically tell folks to help themselves to the 8/11's bounty. Unfortunately, it's all garbage food, with a 1 in 10 chance that any given meal won't count for sustenance.

Davey is operating on a much higher level than his stoner looks and personality let on. Whatever drug cocktail he's been on for the past few months has given him visions of the future. He will punctuate his sentences with: "...what with the end of the world coming up, and all." without even really knowing what he said. Question him on the things he say, and he'll be surprised and forgetful in a very stoner way.

Things Davey May Be Doing:

1. Pouring slurpy directly into his mouth from the machine
2. Spaced out with a needle in his arm
3. Smoking a joint, pantless
4. Sleeping on a bed of Reese's Peanut Butter cups
5. Rearranging the plastic bottles in the fridges to spell out: "YOU HAVE 7 DAYS" in product labels (Only up until Day 3)
6. Smoking from his crystal skull bong
7. Scratching lottery tickets. Every one he scratches is a winner. He's amazed every time, and then tosses it away, forgetting it every time like a baby lacking object permanence.
8. Making an army of origami cranes using cash from the cash register. Somehow the arrangement will mirror any current situations going on for the party.
9. Staring at smoke like an augur of antiquity
10. Eating a sandwich. He's not sure where it came from.

If anybody asks where he gets his drugs, he'll direct them to Mike, his drug dealer, and where his house is. But only if they ask.

Day 8: Davey ascends to a higher plane, becoming smoke in his skull bong on the counter of the 8/11. If anybody smokes this stuff, they may ask the GM three questions which they must answer truthfully.

Mike's House

Mike is a veteran and a drug dealer. Two tours of Iraq, 'Semper Fi' arm tattoo, short receding black hair. His house looks empty: no lights on, windows boarded up, a "For Sale" sign out front. He's there, though. He's there and he's going insane.

Mike sells drugs. He's got all kinds: "Uppers, downers, weird stuff." He only takes cash (Resources) or potentially ammo. Pound on his door or snoop around his house long enough and he'll open a window with his AR-15 at the ready, shouting for motherfuckers to back the fuck off. Ease it over, though, and he'll sell you drugs.

Stimulants: for 2 hours, +1 bonus to physical checks and ignore fatigue penalties. When you come down deal Resolve damage.

Depressants: helps you sleep, guarantees strange dreams. Each use lowers Insight by 1.

Weird Stuff: each use increases Insight by 1 and temporarily lowers Instinct or Empathy by 1 for 6 hours.

Day 9: he simply disappears. Poof, gone. He leaves behind all the drugs you could take and more, just sitting on his kitchen counter.

Road Commission

(Insight < 10)

An empty building shaped like a cargo container. It's got a big big parking lot, where there sits an inoperative excavator and a steamroller. Neither looks like it's seen use recently. There's fresh concrete poured on the sidewalk between it and the road. No matter the day, it's always like it's been freshly poured.

Neither the steamroller nor the excavator have fuel. They'll need diesel to operate, found at the Gas Station or Marquette. The keys to the steamroller are in the building. The keys to the excavator are kept by an A'aqur Cultist in the Coal Factory. The building is locked. It's typical office building environ inside.

TRAP: Instinct check before approaching the building, to notice the freshly poured concrete. Failure means your shoes get slagged in liquid concrete. It'll harden in 8 hours, ruining your boots. Those who fail also come under the notice of The Devil, if they approach The Chinese Theater.

ENCOUNTER: Roll for a random Town Encounter if the building is infiltrated.

The Chinese Theater 
(Insight > 10)

(Open from 8pm to 1am)

Replaces the physical space of the Road Commission for anybody who has an Insight score of above 10. It will likely take several days before anyone reaches this Insight level.

A Chinese Theater, like the one in Hollywood. It lights up the night with great floodlights on red streamers outlining a pagoda of gold. It is a building of misappropriation, like it does not know or understand its own simulacrum.

It's eerily quiet. There's no-one about. Footsteps fall loud and heavy on the marble tiles. The box office is manned by a ghost, hidden behind a pane of dark glass. You can buy tickets there.

Adorning the walls of the lobby will be three movie posters in old Hollywood style. They have titles in big sloping vintage typeface. They will be random, every night.

It costs 2 Resources to buy a ticket. The box office takes cash or other physical riches. With a ticket, one person can see one movie. Seeing a movie grants knowledge of a magical Spell. From sitting down in the theater to the movie's conclusion, the watcher will have no memory of what happened on screen. The knowledge of the spell will nevertheless exist in their mind. They may use it freely.

Underneath Spells

What's Showing at the Chinese Theater Tonight (Roll 3d8, reroll repeats): 

1. The Banishment of the Northern Wind
2. Winds of A'aqur
3. Foresight
4. Imprisonment of the Unicorn
5. Poisoned Apple
6. Banishment of the Troll
7. The Body Electric
8. Reveal

TRAP: When the newly appointed warlock emerges from the Chinese Theater with their new spell, they will be confronted by The Devil at the freshly poured concrete. A tall man, suit and top hat, gold-tipped cane and golden teeth. He will ask the spell-knower to finalize their compact by signing their name in the concrete. Conjure up whatever folksy, slick, or slimy devil you'd like to portray. Have a conversation.

If They Sign, Truthfully: Whatever parts of their name they sign with, that part of their name is lost. Erase whatever parts of the name were written in the concrete from their character sheet. The Devil congratulates them on their new stardom.

They try to worm their way out of it: For every letter in their name, roll 1d10. On a '6', the investigator takes 1 Damage of their choice. The Devil tutt-tutts that they couldn't come to an arrangement.

Everlasting Summer - Introduction

Underneath System, Insight Resolution System, Campaign Intro, Encounters, GM Forward.

Introduction / Marquette

Venture - Part 1
Venture - Part 2
Venture Hinterlands / US-41 Highway

The Lighthouse
Ghost Ship / Missing Isle

Traffic Jam / The Line / Roadhouse

Magic Woods

DeVart

Orange Lake

End Times

These posts are contain major spoilers for Everlasting Summer. Prospective players be warned!

ONBOARDING

Each Investigator starts with the following:

• A Name. Write it down. It may become important later on...
• 10 Points to distribute amongst their stats: Resolve, Instinct, Body, and Empathy. (See: Underneath)
• An Occupation (e.g. Janitor, Teacher, HVAC Repair Guy, etc.) Be a normal-ass person.
• 5 Inventory Spaces
• 2 Resources, representing cash, credit, or other immediately-accessible liquidity.
• 3 Items of their choice, which would be reasonable for a person of median means in the U.S. to carry with them unassisted. AR-15s and similar firearms are perfectly valid. An FGM-148 Javelin rocket launcher is not. (In my experience, having run this campaign three times, guns rarely make the most useful items anyway.) Anything that would have a limited number of uses like guns, drugs, or battery-powered tools get 3 Uses before they run out.
• A fully charged Smart Phone (plus a charger). This does not take an inventory slot.
• Winter Clothes good for typical Michigan winters. Takes up 1 Inventory Slot

Each Group of Investigators starts with the following, shared between them:

• One normal car, tank half full of gas by the time they reach Venture. By default cars have 15 Inventory Spaces.
• One laptop computer.

Examples of some of the best Items my players decided to take:

• Good Boots
• Chemical Resistant Latex Gloves
• Handcrank Radio
• Prayer Wheel
• Bolt Cutters
• Industrial Multitool
• Dry Suit (for swimming)
• Bottle of Prescription Anti-Psychotics
• UV Flashlight
• First Aid Kit
• 5lb Whey Protein Powder Jar

SLEEP: Getting a night's sleep (8 hours min) recovers 1 Ability Damage for everyone who gets it. Doing so also reveals Insight levels. Each day in which you do not get any sleep produces 1 Resolve damage. Each overnight Sleep, also test one person for Empathy to gives dreams of the person being disappeared that night.

EATING: Every 5 waking hours or so, the PCs must eat a meal. For every 3-4 players, this should take up one use of an expendable food item or some other food source (like junk food in the 8/11)

After this, figure out how all the Investigators know each other. Did they meet in an online chat room? Were they all in the war together? Are they all part of an drug rehab group?

CAMPAIGN LOG

It may be helpful to track your campaign a sheet like this, or something similar.

It took us around 20-30 3-Hr play sessions to finish this campaign. Your experience may vary.

GM INTRODUCTION

This is a mystery campaign. The initial rumors to introduce to the players can be found at the bottom of the post here. But they aren't the ultimate mystery - that needs to be figured out along the way.

Said ultimate mystery is, of course: "Why is the weather weird in Venture?" or 

"What does Venture have to do with the waking of A'aqur?"

Which will eventually become: "How do we stop the end of the world?"

Begin the campaign on Day 0, which is January 15th 2030.

On Day 10, January 25th, if the spell "The Banishment of the Northern Wind" is not cast, the world will end and the campaign will be over. The winds of A'aqur will wash over Venture in nuclear fire, killing anything and everything.

Don't fret too much if this happens. Horror campaigns can be fun when they end in tragedy.

Also don't fret too much if things seem to be going off the rails. This is an open-ended campaign. Its ending is not decided, and you can be pleasantly surprised where things will go if you allow your players agency. In one campaign, my players decided to spend half a week in Marquette building a fortified bulldozer to assault the Coal Factory in DeVart. That was pretty cool! I think this campaign works well with a heavy dose of improvisation.

By following up on the rumors and exploring the region, the players will get suggestions and clues pointing to that greater mystery. Eventually, they will hopefully locate the Banishment of the Northern Wind spell, which will bring them into a new phase of the campaign: finding all of the ingredients of the spell to conduct the ritual.

Do not be afraid of player-character death. They are easily replaceable. You can probably make one in 5 minutes. And this is a horror campaign. After Day 9, be not afraid to cut them down like grass with difficult encounters - by then they have run out of time.

INTRO READ-ALOUD FOR PLAYERS

The date is January 15th, 2030. Climate change has destroyed the last of the endothermic prison-seals containing A'AQUR, the Wind of the North. Political dysfunction and rampant misinformation allow the problem to fester: the breakaway event is reported but dismissed as propaganda. A'AQUR's cult operates in plain sight, wreathed in manufactured indifference. Tomorrow, another scandal is on the news. The stock market is fine.

But you know something is wrong. You've seen it. A small town in the Michigan Upper Peninsula known as Venture has been experiencing temperatures upwards of 30 degrees Celsius in the heart of winter: a never-ending summer surrounded by blizzards and choking snow. It has been dismissed as a meteorological anomaly, as proof that climate change is a hoax, as merely "Michigan weather". Video footage doesn't matter. Reporting doesn't matter. The Post-Truth world doesn't care. Nobody cares. Except you.

MARQUETTE

Investigators start in Marquette, MI. Unlike the rest of the locations in this campaign, Marquette is a real place. You can look it up if you want to see what kinds of things it normally has.

...Or, if you prefer to get right to it, you can start them at the Crossroads.

Marquette, Michigan, is a relatively safe port for this campaign. It's 15 degrees Fahrenheit. There are no random encounters within Marquette. There's all the amenities a modern investigator might need: a hospital, a university, hotels, and a supermarket.

The only thing the PCs have to lose is time and money. When in doubt, activities in Marquette consume 1 Resource. A visit to the Emergency Room of the hospital? 1 Resource (with health insurance). Groceries at a supermarket? 1 Resource. Tank of gas? 1 Resource.

CONTINGENCY: If the DeVart Police have blockaded the road, then Marquette will become inaccessible by road, and moving through the woods around them safely will take 6 Hours minimum.

THE VEIL OF WINTER

Northern Michigan has long straight roads. Miles upon miles flanked with snow-dusted trees in hollowed forests. On Day 0 it's snowed 2 inches so far, and it'll snow another 2 feet before the night is done. 

Driving down Highway US-41, the snow brushes away like a curtain unfurling, like entering a building with industrial grade air conditioning. The snow gives way to clear skies. The trees bloom green like in the depths of Summer. It's 30 degrees Celsius. The car will start to warm up considerably, making those Winter Clothes uncomfortable. What is happening here is impossible. It's not just "Michigan weather".

THE CROSSROADS

An exit off US-41 takes you on a nameless dirt road for about 5 miles, where it then intersects with Independence Way. Continue following the nameless road a few miles, and there's Venture. You can see it from the Crossroads, down a slope.

Roll a Random Encounter here, using the Town encounter list. The investigators will have 0 Insight, so it'll be in its hidden form, and likely relatively undangerous.

TIMELINE OF MISSING PERSONS

Each day, someone is going to go missing. In the middle of the night they will be disappeared.

The end of the world is nigh. As the end approaches, monsters crawl out of the woodwork and the fey corners of reality to pillage the world and dance like witches under the full moon. Magic crawls back into reality and nothing is as it initially seems.

(Campaign begins on Day 0, Tuesday)

DAY	Person Disappears	Location	Where’d They Go?	Replaced With...
0 (T)	ARRIVAL IN VENTURE, MI
1 (W)	Brain Hefner	Motel 7 (Day)	Skipped Town	Nothing
2 (Th)	Eddy Wozniak	Townend Taxidermy	Became Most Dangerous Game	Loitering A’aqur Cultist in a White Truck
3 (F)	Sarah Anderson	Gas Station	Eaten By Suspicious White Van	Nothing
4 (Sa)	Margaret O’Neil	Motel 7 (Night)	Kidnapped by The A'aqur Cult, brought to Wizard Tower	Nothing
5 (Su)	Oliver “Ollie” Smith	Smith’s Fishing Supplies	Overdosed at Smith's Resting Place	Suicide Ghost
6 (M)	Katie O’Neil	Radioshack	Kidnapped by The Electric Cult	Crawling Lightning
7 (T)	Alexander Yung	St. Droggo’s Catholic Church	Drank the Orange Water	A mutated abomination that is he.
8 (W)*	David (Davey) Jones	8/11	Turned to Dust	A crystal skull bong containing his ashes / essence.
9 (Th)**	Everyone Else But The Elf	Everywhere	Away	Nothing
10 (F)	END OF THE WORLD

  * On Day 8, the Redhound Bus appears in front of the Motel 7 at 8:30am. It will leave on Day 9 at 5:30pm.

**On Day 9, all Town and Universal tables are replaced with the Wizard’s Kill Squad: 4 HD. A truck full of Cultist Hunters armed with AR-15s and a truck-mounted machine gun. EXTREMELY DEADLY.

THE PROGRESSION OF EVIL

Every 2 Days, or every time one of the five initial mysteries is solved (whichever is sooner), a new hazard will appear in Venture. Pace them out longer or shorter at your discretion. Either roll for them randomly or pick one that seems most appropriate given what the investigators have done.

1. Time Leap

Roll a d6 every Hour. On 1-2, time skips ahead an additional half-hour. That time is simply gone.

2. Something's Hunting You

Something stalks the Woods. Something horrible. A 4HD Something lurks just beyond the boundaries of roadwork and mowed grass. Appears on 11-20. This will continue to occur until the Something is dealt with.

3. Witch's Curse

All decomposable food sources in Venture and held in inventories immediately becomes infested with flies and maggots. All hunted meat and carcasses spoil within an hour.

4.Ghouls in Venture

Cannibalistic ghouls (2HD) are added to the Town Encounter List, which changes to a d20 roll. Appears on 11-20. This effect is permanent. Ghouls are hostile whether their Insight Threshold is met or not.

5. Lights in the Night Sky

Strange swirling auroras in the night sky. No matter which location you're in it's possible to have the Lighthouse Light encounter during the night (6:00pm-8:00am). 1 in 6 chance every 6 Hours. Won't affect Investigators inside who have no line of sight to the night sky.

6. Heat Wave

Swirling winds bring a terrible blistering heat. Temperatures around Venture and DeVart become 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Every six hours without air conditioning or a similar cooling mechanism prompts a Body check or lose 1 Resolve or 1 Instinct, whichever is higher.

7. Electrical Devices Possessed

All electrical devices, including phones and cars, become possessed by strange lights. 2 in 6 chance that they'll be functional. Otherwise replacements will be needed. The Electric Cult will monitor events through dysfunctional devices.

8. Holes

An inexplicable 'absence' creeps in from the margins of the scenery. All locations in which an NPC has 'disappeared' are replaced with 1 HD Holes which deal Empathy damage to those who remain by them.

9. Acid Rain

A dreary smog overtakes the peninsula. It becomes difficult to breathe, and metal exposed to the elements begins to quickly rust. -1 Body to all Investigators.

10. Water Sources Tainted

All tap and stagnant water sources become infected with the Lake's orange water. Drinking it will transform one into a mutant. You'll need to subsist off of Nestle Ice Mountain water bottles.

SPECIAL PROGRESSIONS

These effects are triggered due to special circumstances that may arise during the campaign. Each of these can only happen once.

Sheriff Patrols

Trigger: Party member gets arrested by police or brought in for questioning by a Leviathan agent.

Blockades are established on highway US-41. Travel to and from Marquette by highway is impossible. Blockade runners will be shot. Similar to the west of town. Additional blockade established on US-41 outside of DeVart. Increases travel time by 1 Hour, and must have encounter with sheriff's deputies when traveling between Venture and DeVart.

Witnessed Horror

Trigger: Witness something truly monstrous and incomprehensible, such as a particularly gruesome death, a horrid transformation, or someone in the party committing an unjust murder.

All Investigators must test Resolve or lose 1 Resolve.

The Chinese Theater

Trigger: In Venture, Insight > 10

The Chinese Theater appears in the place of the Road Commission. One may go there to trade Resources for Magic Spells.

THE NEMESIS

During the course of the campaign, you as the GM should be mindful of establishing a Nemesis for the investigators - a mysterious and deadly force which will stalk them throughout the campaign. In my experience, you can't really plan ahead of time what this will be. It needs to be discovered. 

It may be allegorical in nature, like your traditional horror monsters. Of all the foes in the campaign, the Nemesis should be the ultimate one: virtually invincible, mysterious, and distant but slowly approaching.

The Troll

Found At: The Lighthouse

A regenerating bear-like hulk that stalks the woods. Its eyes are red in the dark and its teeth gleam in the shadows. It can only be prevented from returning with its Banishment spell. She was once a person - Dana DeVart, turned abomination by her husband The Wizard long ago. The Troll is the sick love letter of a mad man to the shade of his wife. It is the avenging demon of transgression and hubris.

The Most Dangerous Game

Found At: Townend Taxidermy

Eddy Wozniak becomes the prey becomes the hunter. A horrible amalgam of deer parts and redneck hunter madness created in a mad ritual. It is the Wilds incarnate, seeking vengeance against mankind - against you. It stalks the woods, cackling like a lunatic. It also has a gun. The Most Dangerous Game is a deadly inversion, and can be used with similar themes that use it.

The Wizard

Found At: Orange Lake

Ancient capitalist Edward DeVart, with far too much money and power, who discovered spells to prolong his life and craft horrors. Willing to sacrifice anything and anyone in the pursuit of control. Before the horrible gods we made he is but an ant. You are even less than he. He represents the spiraling corruption of economics, politics, and culture.

The Unicorn

Found At: The Magic Woods

A cyclopic deer, given strange powers by its congenital affliction. It tolerates the pure and destroys the wicked. Guess which of those you are. From its horrific singular eye it conjures shadows from beyond this reality to stalk and torment the wicked. How wickedness and purity are defined will largely affect the course of this nemesis.

Leviathan

Found: Anywhere

The prenatal god of the State has a vested interest in the end of the world to come. It blindly seeks to understand itself, through bureaucracy and law, maps and registries, and by capturing the hearts and loyalties of men. The men in black are here, but will not stop what is to come. They want to control it. In the process, they will hinder the investigators at every turn, acting as a rival adventuring party of sorts, but with all the tools of the national security apparatus at their disposal.

PLAYTESTERS

I would like to thank my playtesters, who across three different campaigns powered through scheduling difficulties and insomnia to play this game.

Deux Ex Parabola, Locheil, Mihau, Abyssin, Xeno, Bamzolino, Charistoph, Kahva, Owlbearchickenhawk, Purplecthulhu, theisticgilthoniel, Semiurge, Oblidisderyptch, Shadowfelle, Deireh

Twilight City - The Allies

Conquered peoples federated by the Novans, who bested them by stealing the protection of their gods and sacking their towns. They pay no tribute, but are required to send cohorts of warriors when the Novans go to war. For this they are granted a portion of the spoils, and enjoy the sacred protection of Novan mutual defense.

Metatarses

Source

They have never used tools. Instead, they use their hands and feet, which become tougher than steel by adulthood. They mine through the rock with hands like picks, grasping and pulling away the stone with calm strength. Their warriors are fierce and feared in the melee: pulling apart shields, shearing swords in half, prying armor and flesh apart with slow strong fingers like hydraulic vices. 

They are a birdherding folks who live in the hills and coldplains of the north. They live in underground hobbit-holes which they can quickly dig at a moment's notice. They are particularly fond of worms, considering them the greatest delicacy.

They have a King elected from among a cohort of youths who pass the Test of Flame. The youths must pass into the netherlands and collect a globule of molten magma with their bare hands, delivering it to their holy place to be slagged upon its shrine. From those who are eligible, a council of elders votes upon their kingship.

Unlike many of the other Allies, they have a tradition of marriage. Men are expected to leave their families and return married, typically after several years of indentured labor to their host family, whose daughter they court. Folk tales abound about greedy or overly-protective elders who ask for further and more elaborate labors for the young men to prove their worth before giving them marriage leave, and said young men who by strength and determination meet them, like the labors of Hercules.

Mar the Worm God was their highest patron - a god of counting, many, and plenty. The Novan cleric Fingol charmed Mar with a musical performance gifted to her by consuming the Mead of Poetry, boiled from the lifeblood of bards and granting god-wooing inspiration. So moved was Mar by the fiddling song that they abandoned the Metatarses in their moment of need to dance until they tired.

Incubi

Their skin is like aged black bronze, catching rainbows in the light. Their eyes are pale pale red in the dark, like bloodshot eyes in the woods in a cartoon. They live under the mountains in great tunnels and caverns, and are immune to Curse. They can freely touch and use Cursed objects. It tingles their skin and nothing more. Some elders even suggest bathing in the warm light of cursed stone to rejuvenate themselves. They can be dangerous to stand around and even more dangerous to touch.

They are intensely superstitious, believing that every action they take is watched by a singular vengeful spirit known as Balat. Whenever anything goes wrong they curse his name and make votive offerings to him. This love/hate relationship frequently confuses outsiders.

Their warriors wear goat-horned helmets like devils and they scream shrilly in combat. Before battle, they ritually purify themselves, believing that while Curse can bring health benefits, it also brings the ire of the gods.

A great number of sorcerers are renowned amongst their people - they whose magic derives from personally-forged relationships and bargains with the gods of the wild. They travel always alone, but say they are never alone. It seems, about them, that the woods grow eyes and the stones subtly shift beneath their feet to make way for their coming.

Their god Hakaldo, god of smoke and dreams, was stolen from them by a young priestess named Quenze, daughter of the House of Victory, who in a grand heist smuggled the smoke-god from his temple in her herculean lungs. To this day it is said she exhales dreams.

Konami

Source

Small reptilefolk who lives on the beaches and small islands of the Feyfjord. They primarily eat fish and seaweed, and love sea urchin innards most of all. They are agile swimmers, and can live indefinitely on the waves if they wanted. For fear of their historical rivals the Salmonfolk, they prefer to make their fort-like homes on land.

They distill paralytic poison from the urchins. They use it in darts and harpoons to paralyze fish. And they make love potions. There's an entire economy around love potions. Konami love is a famously expensive and fickle thing, with heads of house often spending a considerable portion of their income on enchanting lovers. The Queen of the Konami supposedly has hundreds of such consorts, maintained by a wealth of love potions and careful politics.

They raise pegasi, who frequently graze upon both land and sea. The 'sea-horses' (as they're called) are excellent swimmers, but can generally only fly upon the air in short bursts. Their silver scales, when they are seasonally shed, make fine decorations, being both luminous and lightweight like silver mirrors and filigree. They are quite social and proud, regarding the Konami something like little brothers or servants.

Legend has it that Nemor, who the Novans call Nix, was the protector goddess of the Konami. She was seduced before the Battle of Three-Finger Fjord by Nemus, a young man of impossible beauty, who drew her attention away from the battle with his superlative loveliness. Whenever her attention would wander, he would offer greater and more dangerous acts of pleasure. He went so far as to give his life in the process, drawing Nix's lust unto his own devouring. To this day Nemus is regarded as a masculine ideal to the Novans.

Caudi

Migratory salmonfolk renown for their beauty, cruelty, and Stoic philosophers. Their children live in the freshwater streams of the Feyfjord, independently of the adults, who live in the Estor Ocean catching crustaceans and hunting fish. Every year or so, a great number of adults migrate back past the estuaries and mountain rivers in order to spawn in a violent cataclysmic orgy of death. During this journey, they adopt a stark sexual dimorphism, with males growing enormous chins and sword-arms, and females growing long teeth and adopting a bright red color.

Their government is something like a Logan's Run-style democracy. Any who accumulate enough age, influence, and power all the sooner hear the biological call of their doom and are called to the streams to fight and mate to the death. Power tends to be in the largest age cohorts, which can vary from year to year due to the variance of a cohort's fertility or the proclivity of war.

When they do go to war, they go as a cohort after the spawn. They drag their rotting flesh to death in battle, unafraid of throwing themselves at the enemy. A large cohort can be a terrifying thing: singing songs of yearning and death that draws their enemies to throw themselves on their tridents.

Marlink was their patron god. To the Novans he is Timir. His loyalty altered after a contest of pain between the Novan priestess Cordatha and the Caudi champion Tresshi. Each sought the cruelest torture they could inflict upon their enemies, to entertain the sadism of Marlink. Tresshi presented devouring crucifixion - in which one was slowly devoured by a million stinging corals over many weeks. Cordatha presented immortality - so that one could be tortured forever, inevitably.

Leves

A farming people from the north. They use undead for agriculture, and believe the soul and the body permanently separate after death. Their bodies belong communally to their villages, hence their use of corpses as labor. They organize themselves into tribal councils within each region, typically composed of the heads of important families and any heroes of note.

But the real power lies within their caste of necromancers, who hold the knowledge of how to communicate and negotiate with the throngs of undead which outnumber the living. They are skilled in wizarding ways, and provide credible witness and judgement of oaths. They wear great wide and tall hats, and capes of brilliant feathers. The Levi way of law is convoluted and unwritten, kept in a series of oral agreements between the living and the dead - the later of which do not speak in ways easily comprehensible.

Source

The undead have their own way of doing things, and they do not always make the living privy to their business. One wonders whether the living truly are in charge, or they merely serve the dead in ways they do not understand.

Graia, who the Novans call Grachus the Door was their god. During the siege of Levimatrothal, the priest-necromancers awoke one day to find their impenetrable gates flung wide open, the armies of November waiting calmly inside the walls for them to wake. Betrayed from within by their undead watchmen, they surrendered immediately, throwing themselves before the mercy of the Novans. Since no ram had technically touched gate or wall, the Leves were spared massacre.