A HORROR CAMPAIGN
CHAPTER 3
be pleasant. Doing this runs the risk of ruining the impact of the conclusion, and you need not do so if you feel your players will enjoy a bittersweet or dark ending. If you aren’t certain, however, it’s better to hint at what might come and be sure they can handle it than risk anger and disappointment later. Such a hint might reduce the power of the first horror campaign, but you can always run a second one without advance warning once you know they’re amenable.
SAMPLE CAMPAIGN: NIGHTWATCH
Presented here is a rough outline for a horror campaign, intended to provide you with a basic skeleton on which to construct your own ideas. It incorporates several varieties of horror, as well as substantial action and political intrigue. In a city on the border of a great kingdom, the citizens are faced with a new and unrecognized threat. While they are accustomed to the occasional monster of the wilds attacking an outlying farm, they remain ignorant of the horror brewing within their midsts. The evil of an ancient shrine not far outside a major city has leeched into the environment, resulting in a wide and growing region of taint. Foul horrors are birthed in that miasma; undead and demons are drawn by its call. Crime rises in the streets of the city as the malevolence in the air inspires the citizens to dark acts of depravity. The law grows oppressive in its attempt to crack down on the crime wave. Corrupt demagogues, and perhaps even shapeshifters or possessing demons, rise to power in the government. Not everyone is unaware of the spreading taint, however. A high priest, a druid of the wilds, and several of the ruling baron’s knights recognize the growing threat. Uncertain who else to trust and unwilling to cause panic among the citizenry, they set out to stem the advancing tide of taint and quell the monsters who carry it with them. They cannot do it alone.
PART ONE: A DECAYING CITY
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The campaign begins with a game, or perhaps several, in which the PCs are unaware of the Nightwatch organization and the growing taint in the wilds. These fi rst few stories revolve around encounters with various evils—perhaps rescuing a trade caravan from humanoids in the wilderness or clearing the city sewers of unnatural vermin. Eventually, the PCs discover the truth of the situation—that a growing number of monsters and people are infested with taint. They can discover Nightwatch on their own, because they and the organization are investigating the same monster, or the knights and high priest might track them down once it becomes clear that the PCs know what is happening in the region and oppose it. In any event, several games into the campaign, the heroes are inducted into the organization. The next several games involve the PCs finding their footing within Nightwatch. The monsters are primarily urban—a vampire stalking the city’s fashionable quarter, perhaps a doppelganger taking the place of an authority figure. The heroes also make enemies within the government when their investigations reveal corruption and criminal links to some officials. Some of the games should not involve taint directly, instead pitting the heroes against untainted
monsters, local criminals, or other foes unrelated to the main plot. These account for roughly half of the stories in this portion. The PCs begin to uncover signs of a unifying force among some of these monsters, and evidence of a strange and violent religious cult they do not recognize.
PART TWO: A TWISTED WILDERNESS While dealing with increasing monstrous incursions in the city, the heroes eventually dig up information on the cult. They learn that it was devoted to an evil deity, one rarely worshiped in the modern age. (In the world of Greyhawk, Tharizdun is a viable choice. In Eberron, the Shadow fits the bill, as would a forgotten god of past empires. In the Forgotten Realms, Bhaal or Myrkul, both slain during the Time of Troubles, are appropriate.) Why it has become active again here is unclear, but the heroes eventually track one of its members, or one of the city’s monsters, to a leader of the cult. In the various games it takes to accomplish this, many other operatives of Nightwatch are slain, and the number of monsters hiding in the city seems to grow ever greater. Crime reaches record levels, and several neighborhoods in the city itself develop taint. In the cultists’ headquarters, the heroes are attacked by what seem to be disembodied tendrils of evil and rage. These are actually small taint elementals (see page 145), although they should never be identified as such. From the local cult leader, or from studying her writings, they learn that the cult intends to bring forth their god, to manifest him on the Material Plane. They also learn of a shrine hidden somewhere in the wilds. If they do not themselves think to locate this shrine and determine if it is the source of the taint, one of the Nightwatch founders suggests it. The campaign shifts to the wilderness, where the PCs must somehow locate the ancient shrine. In their explorations, they must survive regions of heavy taint and interact with small villages throughout the area—some of which have fallen to taint or tainted monsters, others of which struggle to survive. The monsters here are often larger and far less subtle than those in the city. More than once, particularly in regions of heavy taint, nature itself seems to turn against them; animals attack for no good reason; the weather turns foul and unnatural. While the majority of plotlines should be devoted to the hunt for the shrine, several should be independent, and each should have a solid starting and ending point. For instance, one story might revolve around saving a village from taint and a pack of tainted ghouls, another around a demon possessing each of the PCs in turn and attacking other travelers, and a third around simply surviving a massive storm that seems to deliberately target the heroes with rain, hail, and lightning. The region immediately surrounding the shrine is so heavily tainted that the physical world has changed. Animals and plants are twisted and alien. Tentacled horrors (perhaps larger taint elementals) reach from the shadows, rocks gibber insanely, the earth bleeds, the rivers run with pus. A dryad steps from a dying tree and consumes her own flesh in a cannibalistic effort to purge the corruption. The mighty unicorn who once guarded these woods is a vicious, predatory thing, wanting only to kill. The skies open and rain burning hail, and each hailstone is an eye belonging to some otherworldly god. The heroes might even be driven somewhat mad by the combination of taint and an inability to fully comprehend what they see.
