Manor of Montecruz - Session 1.5

Trudging through snow, four adventurers approached a decrepit mansion.

• Cornyx, a Level 1 Warrior-Priest. 

• Dr. Holmen, Level 1 Chirurgeon.

• Malakai, Level 1 Templar. 

• Yvonne, Level 1 Illusionist.

Yvonne was here to reclaim an ancestral birthright. The others were just hoping the tavern hearsay about a stash of alchemical gold was true (and that the rumour of ghostly hauntings wasn't). 

Water-clogged stormclouds blotted out the dying sun and a thick sea-mist had rolled in from the jagged coastline of the Empty Sea, so Cornyx lit his torch and Yvonne cast Light. They began a thorough perimeter sweep of the house, prying open boarded-up windows and searching for tracks. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, they carefully breached the main doors.

Art from TSR's "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh"

Manor of Montecruz - Session 1

The world grows cold. 

A decade ago a new Ice Age began, dubbed the “Eternal Winter” by those who survived the subsequent famine, social upheaval and mass violence. Madmen whisper that the Sun is dying, its energy devoured by a nameless entity from beyond the stars.

Most of mankind fled to the “Central Territories” - hot, equatorial land with rich soil that can still support crops. But the Territories are densely overpopulated, riddled with starvation and disease, and ruled by a sorcerous madman. So many instead seek out a life in the “Frontier”, the icy extent of the known world. 

Frostpunk Concept Art

Some Changes For Last Things Last - Part 2

In my last post I gave some examples of additions to make to Baughman's apartment in Last Things Last. In this post, I'll be expanding on an oft-given piece of advice for LTL - to use the contents of the locker in Baughman's Cabin as an opportunity to seed future scenarios.

To this end, I stared the "Baughman Locker Jam" on the N@TO Discord to create items connecting in some way to a published scenario/faction. Whilst we didn't get a wholistic list, I'm still very pleased with how this Jam turned out. Many thanks for those who contributed the 11 submissions! I'll be displaying all of them here for posterity, and putting all of your preferred online handles next to your entries.

I wouldn't recommend dumping all of these in Baughman's locker - just those linking to scenarios you want to run in the future. For those you don't use, they can always pad out a Green Box the Agents stumble across in the future.

The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who

By Fee Fi Fo Fin

Introduction

“Yara red, Yara pink, Yara knowing what you think.
Waiting quiet in a tree, watching you and watching me.
Yara small, and not much bright. But Yara has an appetite.
Wandering kids, walk with care. Or into Yara’s mouth you’ll stare.”

- Blanca Martinez de Rituerto, 'Yara-Ma-Yha-Who'

The Yara-Ma-Yha-Who, or at least the version reported in publicly available records, is a niche but relatively popular Australian cryptid. This creature was first recorded by Aboriginal-Australian preacher David Unaipon in “Legendary Tales Of The Australian Aborigines”, a compendium of various myths published in 1930 (albeit this text would be credited to its white editor W. Ramsay Smith, and Unaipon would not receive recognition for its creation until 2001). 

Herein, it was described as a hunched, red-skinned humanoid bearing a loose resemblance to a frog, with sucker-tipped fingers, a toothless mouth and an oversized head. It would ambush lone travellers, especially children, exsanguinating their blood through its suckers to weaken them, before devouring its victim whole with its prodigious maw. 

Supplementary ESPER Pregens

 

Introduction

Mellonbread's ESPER is a fan-organisation for Delta Green - a private Australian corporation that secretly recruits psychic wizards, 'Talents', to fight the Mythos in the Land Down Under. As an Australian myself, I'm quite fond of ESPER and I'd like to run more scenarios using them.

Mellonbread already has a few pregenerated characters spread throughout the faction write-up and his scenarios, which are all very good. However, there was still four unused psychic powers in the faction write-up. So myself and two members of the N@TO Discord, Tophat and Grandini, created a pair of Talents that use those powers, which I've compiled them into this blogpost.

Enjoy! 

A Collection Of New Rituals

While I'm working on my follow-up post to "Some Changes For Last Things Last", I thought I'd tide things over with a few rituals I've recently put together. These are recycled from a N@TO contest scenario I never got quite round to finishing, unfortunately.

Despite that, I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. I might put them in a standalone scenario sometime in the future. In the interim, here's the three rituals in question:

Some Changes For Last Things Last: Part 1

A common question I see from prospective Handlers is how to run Delta Green's quick-start scenario, Last Things Last ("LTL"). And whilst LTL is mostly fine as-written, I do think there's some changes that could be made to enhance the scenario - especially in its role as an introduction to the world of Delta Green for new players.

So without further ado, here's some of the changes I've used:

Out In The Cold: Pregenerated Characters

An edited map of the IRL "Warren Island"

I've wanted to run "Black Cod Island" from Delta Green's "Targets of Opportunity" for a while now, but wasn't sure how to make the write-up playable. However, I recently came up with the idea to steal the concept of Seth Skorkowsky's Call of Cthulhu scenario "A Mother's Love".

Fear and Hunger: Pr_y For God - Part Three

The Officer, Theologian and Yellow Mage stood at the entrance to the Bunker Network, hestiating. They had a solid plan for escaping this Alll-Mer forsaken island but it involved getting past that flame-thrower wielding Sylvian Marriage below them. After no small amount of cajoling from his fellow Survivors, the Officer was eventually convinced to try and pull rank on the pyromaniacal monstrosity. The cowardly Bremen swigged the last of his beer and strode down the concrete steps towards the overpowering stench of burning gasoline and blood.

With the papist and oriental witch following nervously behind, the Officer blew upon his bugle and raised his voice at the masked war-machine. "At attention! Soldier, identify yourself immediately."

A pause.

The Officer's blood ran cold as ice as those emotionless windows of soot-covered glass stared him down. For a moment he was sure that flamethrower would be turned on him, burning his flesh to the bone. But then the Dragon Coin he kept in his pocket grew warm. He had looted the artefact months prior from a Xuanyuanese priestess who claimed it brought good fortune to those who carried it. It hadn't stopped his men from bayonetting the screaming woman to death. 

But now there was a change in the air. An invisible thumb pressing down on the scales of fate.

"Military designation 1-1-5-7. Standing orders - sanitisation of abominable organisms."

The three Survivors released an audible sigh of relief. Straightening his back, the Officer informed the Sylvian Marriage that there was an "abominable organism" in the Courtyard of the Bremen Fort that needed to be "sanitised". The towering soldier released a gravelly affirmation and strode up the stairs towards the unknown entity the Survivors had heard earlier. Soon came the sounds of a violent battle erupting above them: the deafening report of automatic gunfire, the roar of a flamethrower and ground-shaking explosions.

The Survivors didn't stick around to see who won.

Fear and Hunger: Pr_y For God - Part Two

Clutching his flint spear tightly, the Captain exited the Catacombs into the Church itself. He discovered that it had been retrofitted by the Bremen Army into a makeshift FOB, albeit one that was filled with corpses. Inspecting the dead, the Captain found both Bremen soldiers and more mask-wearing cultists from the Botanical Gardens. Whilst all the ammo was gone and the weapons were too damaged to be useful, he did find some healing items.

Fear and Hunger: Pr_y For God - Part One

The year is 1933. In the Far East, the Empire of Xuanyuan has been kept under the boot of the Europan colonial powers for the past three decades. Their labour pool has been exploited, their populace forcibly addicted to imported narcotics and their sacred sites plundered by the armies of the Bremen Empire's Kaiser and the Vatican's Dark Priesthood.

But this Age of Humiliation is coming to a bloody conclusion. The Burning Tide, a united front of agrarian-communists and Xuanyuanese nationalists, has swept aside the armies of the collaborationist Shi Dynasty and encircled their capital city of Yanjing - along with the Lantern Island Special Region, an international settlement ceded to the Bremen Empire.

You are the Survivors, a group of influential foreigners and military officials accompanying the Europan expeditionary force sent to crush this uprising and break the months-long Siege of Yanjing.Things have not gone to plan. The Europans barely retook Yanjing, whilst the besiegers merely withdrew into the surrounding countryside, where they have regrouped and mounted a fierce counterattack. The Europan line is failing, and you all have boarded a barge to flee to the Special Region - a fortified river island. However, you do not know the state of the settlement, it's been encircled for months with no communication forth-coming. 

But with a horde of rebels at your back baying for the blood of foreigners and collaborators, what choice do you have?