Manor of Montecruz - Session 2

Four adventurers stood in the Manor's hidden basement. There was no doubt that this place had become a den for smugglers. There was treasure to be had in retaking it.

Before they could push onwards, a nearby crate flew open and a filthy man tumbled out. Once bound with coarse ropes, he'd been freed by the gnawing of a trio of rats. Seeing the adventurers, the man introduced himself as "Vermin-Tongue", but hastily amended his title to "Vee" upon seeing their scornful reactions.

"The Lonely Rat Boy", from Dishonored

Ghost Town Gunfight

Fallout: New Vegas

Four federal agents stood on the eastern side of Rogers Dry Lake, shivering in the freezing cold of the Mojave night. Agent Smith doled out freshly milled bullets of nickel and iron, a crude imitation of the “sky metal” their quarry was weak to. Allegedly. 

Agent Deacon memorised the antiquated Japanese needed to summon the entity to their location, from wherever it was currently hunting hapless Californians. Meanwhile, Agent Thorn busied herself with a hastily assembled binding ritual, greedily hoping to establish control over whatever her coworker manifested from beyond the veil.

Finally, Agent Leon dug an entrenched position for the conspirators’ insurance policy - an M2 Browning he’d liberated from the base armory with bogus paperwork. As far as Edwards AFB knew, this was all just a live-fire exercise on the lakebed that they weren’t cleared for.

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 ran the "Baughman Locker Jam" on the N@TO Discord to create items connected to published scenarios. I'm very pleased with how this Jam turned out; many thanks for those who contributed the 13 submissions! I'll be displaying them here for posterity, and putting your preferred online handles next to your respective entries.

I wouldn't recommend putting all entries 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 from prospective Handlers is how to run Delta Green's quick-start scenario, Last Things Last ("LTL"). LTL is fine as-written, but 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".