Other Campaign Models

The city’s nobles have learned of it, and most seem convinced that it is an insurgent organization, perhaps even responsible for the horrors that have plagued the city. The PCs must continue to thwart the activities of various monsters and criminals while withstanding the political machinations of several important people who wish to see Nightwatch and all its members destroyed. During all this, a traitor still lurks within the organization. The PCs must survive several assassination attempts, often in the midst of other diffi cult tasks. Eventually, perhaps by taking an assassin alive and questioning her, they learn who the traitor is. The precise identity is left to the DM. It should be one of the founders—the druid, the priest, or one of the knights—and it should be someone the PCs trusted. Now that they know this, they can follow or investigate the traitor and learn that he is in cahoots with several of the nobles who have been calling for the destruction of Nightwatch and the arrest of its members. One of the nobles belongs to the cult and intends to rule the city and restore worship of his forgotten master. He believes that the monsters (many of which either worked for or were unleashed by him) and taint will ultimately destroy all law and order, allowing him to rule. The traitor is aiding him in exchange for power and riches once this comes to pass. He cooperated in the formation of Nightwatch so that he might keep an eye on those who would thwart his ally’s plans, and so that all the town’s potential heroes would gather in one place as easy targets. It was he who tipped off the assassins where to fi nd and kill the members of Nightwatch who have fallen. Slaying the noble and the corrupt Nightwatch founder is not the end of the story. Doing so triggers the rite they have been building for months, summoning something into the Material World. Whether it is truly an aspect of their god or merely evil made manifest, it appears as a mighty taint elemental (perhaps the source of the various disembodied tentacles the PCs faced earlier), formed of tendrils of sheer malevolence that assault the PCs, and all others nearby, from multiple angles.

FURTHER ADVENTURES

Even once the PCs have exposed the traitor and the cultist noble, their troubles are far from over. Much of the region around the city is still tainted, and monsters haunt the wilds. Corruption infects much of the city government, and Nightwatch is in shambles, with many of its members dead and one of its founders revealed as a traitor. Whether the PCs decide to help reform the organization, attempt to protect the city on their own, or choose some other course of action could determine the starting point for a brand-new campaign.

OTHER CAMPAIGN MODELS

In addition to the Nightwatch campaign model, any of the following concepts (or several used in conjunction) can form the basis for a long-running horror campaign.

THE TOUCH OF TAINT

In this campaign, nearly all monsters—at least those of the aberration, dragon, magical beast, and monstrous humanoid types—are the result of taint. When a creature dies of taint, it might instead rise as a monster of similar physical nature. The fi rst cockatrice sprang from the remains of a tainted rooster. The gryphon might have risen from a tainted region in which a horse and an eagle both lay dying and decayed. Driders resulted from a mass of tainted spiders consuming a drow or an elf. Centaurs could come from a horse and rider growing tainted and dying together or might actually be the result of crossbreeding inspired by depravity and made possible by corruption. In a campaign of this kind, all such creatures have a taint score equal to one-half their Charisma score (minimum 1). Creatures of the evil subtype use their entire Charisma score.

THE FATHER OF MONSTERS

In many mythologies, the ancestry of a great many monsters can be traced back to a single source. In Greek myth, for instance, most of the monsters battled by various heroes—at least, those not created by the gods themselves—were the offspring of Typhon and Echidna; in Norse myth, some of the most fearsome monsters were children of Loki. A campaign built around this concept might trace all monsters to a specifi c deity, or ascribe all monsters of a particular type to the experiments of a mad archmage or a demon prince. It’s possible that slaying the progenitor would weaken the others, or at least prevent any further monsters of that sort from being born.

DEATH IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

Nonhumanoid monsters are extremely rare in this campaign, and each is likely unique. Perhaps they are the results of the gods’ anger or of curses or foul magical experimentation. Whatever the case, each one is practically impossible to kill; every monster is considered soul-locked (see page 47). Only those with the skills and fortitude to investigate each monster and determine what methods can be used to permanently eliminate it can hope to rid the region of the beasts that terrorize it.

CONJUNCTION

The campaign world has come into conjunction with some other plane. It can be a lower plane, an alien world such as the Far Realm, the world of dreams (such as Eberron’s Dal Quor), or even an alternate Material Plane wherein the creatures and laws of reality differ. Taint or other mystical forces leak into the world through the point of connection, and many alien creatures—perhaps most of the campaign’s monsters—are intruders from the other realm. The campaign might revolve around the heroes searching for a means of strengthening the barriers and ending the conjunction, or it might simply focus on their quest to adapt and survive in an ever-changing world.

THE EVIL THAT MEN DO

A campaign of this nature focuses on human/humanoid villains. Monsters either do not exist or exist only as pawns in the schemes of humanoid villains. Suitable kinds of monsters would be constructs, mindless undead, and summoned entities. This type of campaign is a drastic departure from standard D&D, but that can make it all the more horrifi c, since the villains are not easily identifi able and the occasional monster that does appear is entirely unexpected.

Illus. by W. Reynolds