The Road to Blackmoor – Steal this Adventure

This adventure is designed for Warhammer Fantasy, but (of course) could be tweaked for any fantasy game.

Plot: The PCs are hired to retrieve some scientific research from the lord’s manor in Blackmoor, though they get more than they bargained for when they find that the area surrounding Blackmoor is indeed cursed.  Ultimately, the PCs must identify and eradicate the source of the curse.

What’s really going on: Markus, a well-off scientist and inventor, moved to the small village of Blackmoor over ten years ago to work in peace.  Last year he was successful in creating an electrical generator as a potential power source.  However, in his quest to advance technology, he inadvertently disproved the existence magic as it relates to mortals.  In a world full of magic, his work and notes solidly proves that magic, as it is understood, cannot exist.  Markus finds this all interesting, but believes it is of no consequence.

The effect of the machine he created in his home, as well as the physical research and notes, has created a void around Blackmoor – an area that magic (as it is understood by mortals) no longer exists.  However, being that chaos magic cannot be understood, it remains unnaffected.  Not only that, but the area around Blackmoor has seen an influx of chaos magic.  This has caused the area around Blackmoor to undergo some strange happenings.

• Magic performed by anyone in or near Blackmoor receives a penalty of five black dice (or a -5 penalty in 4e).  Those who practice chaos magic receive a bonus of two white dice (or a +2 bonus in 4e).
• A flooding of chaos energy has forced the vegetation to grow uncontrollably.  The forest surrounding Blackmoor has overgrown into a dark canopy that little or no sunlight can penetrate.
• The overgrown forest has become home to an increasing number of beastmen (orcs or gnolls in 4e).  This makes traveling to Blackmoor, or near it, dangerous.
• Old people of the village have simply gone mad in one form or another.  The adults have turned into near-zombies, as they really have no desire to live anymore, and the children have all been possessed by minor demons.

When the strangeness started to occur, Markus was killed by a doppleganger that entered the area (he was simply drawn there).  A month after he assumed the identity of Markus, he finally figured out why he was drawn there by going through Markus’ research.

At that moment, Elsa Whickham, a devout cultist, entered the village (she too was drawn there).  Being somewhat powerful, she drove the doppleganger out and moved into the manor (it’s the biggest house in the village).  She came here to set up a temple for her chaos demon that she is now able to summon, and is using all of the mindless human drones wandering around the village.  Elsa is a very tall, gothic-looking woman, the kind that could intimidate any man.  She doesn’t care about the old people, as some of them can still tend to her needs, nor does she care about the possessed children, as they pose no real threat to her.

The Player Characters

The Doppleganger hires the PCs to go to Blackmoor to retrieve all of “his” work, before Elsa figures out what it is.  No one else wants the job, because the area has generally been deemed cursed due to the overgrown forest (and the fact that so few people return from Blackmoor).   He doesn’t think that she will prevent anyone from taking it, as long as she doesn’t know its significance.  If she won’t part with it, the PCs are to take it forcibly.

The travel time is four days (one day to the forest, three to ride through it).  On the way there, they meet up with a minor noble also traveling to Blackmoor (actually intending to travel through it).  If the PCs don’t suggest traveling together for safety, he will.  He’s traveling in a horse-drawn carriage, accompanied by a driver and bodyguard.  Play it up that he is a bit snobbish, controlling, and not afraid of anything.

Just as the group are about to enter the overgrown forest, a horse runs out of the forest without its rider.  The horse is spooked and has been splashed with blood (presumably from its rider).  The rider is nowhere to be found.  About an hour into the forest, if the PCs are very perceptive, they can see a bow on the ground, but no body.  Twelve feet up, four-inch thick branches have been broken.  A large beast has killed the rider and taken his body.  For the rest of the trip, the heroes are followed by beastmen (or gnolls)  in the woods.  At some point in the forest, the PCs will be attacked by a large pack of beastmen/gnolls.  The monsters kill the NPCs (have the noble cowering as he is ripped to shreds).

Just before they enter the village (past sunset), they are practically chased into the village by a very large number of beastment/gnolls.   Once inside the village, they find an old man (in the dark) randomly hacking away at some fences with a hatchet.  He cannot be helped or communicated with.  An old lady sweeping her porch with an imaginary broom babbles incoherently.

The village is rundown. The fields have not been worked in months, and have been overrun by trees and other vegetation.  No horses, goats, chickens, etc. can be found (they’ve all been eaten by the children).  Children can be seen about, but act very strangely (when they skip down the road, they do so in perfect unison, singing child songs in perfect harmony).  Other children drink ale from the old lady’s cottage (it’s her duty to feed them).  If asked, the children don’t know where their parents are, “probably out working the fields.   Drink some whiskey with us.” The children are not children at all, but have been possessed.  They seem to have a great interest in the PC’s horses.

Once the PCs make it to the manor, a child offers to stable their horses (again, no other horses can be seen, though their saddles are clearly visible strewn about).  If the PCs agree to this, one of their horses will turn up missing by morning.  They are greeted by a very tall woman, Elsa, who eventually offers to put up the PCs for the night.  If any of the PCs are injured, she can heal them, as she has excellent first aid skills.  Dinner consists of food the PCs are familiar with, and a meat that they are not (human flesh).  She doesn’t go into details about it.  She knows what the PCs are after, knows what the research really is and does, but passes it off as if it’s just some junk, and let’s the PCs take it.  Her real motivation is one of the PCs…

Make sure that in a creepy village such as this, Elsa still seems somewhat normal.  In any other village she would seem like a master vampire hellbent on domination fetishes and goth decor.  But here, she is almost a safe-haven.  The PCs may suspect her of something, but she offers nothing for them to hint at.

When the PCs awake in the morning, one of them has scratches and bite marks all over his torso.  He also remembers a dream he had that night involving Elsa – the most passionate night of his life.  If it weren’t for the scars and bite marks, he would have thought it just a dream.  Even if others were in the room that night, they never heard anything.  If mentioned to Elsa, she smiles coyly, and bids the PCs farewell.  All of the research and machinery that the PCs need to take must be taken in a wagon or carriage.

While leaving the village, the children all follow the PCs without saying anything.  Play it up in a very “Children of the Corn” way.  If at any time the PCs look for the adults, they don’t find them.  The old lady shouts out ramblings at the PCs as they leave, at one point saying, “The sun is North and the sky is red, that scientist died and is buried to bed.” If pressed or questioned, she can say nothing of any intelligent meaning.  In truth, she knows that the scientist was killed by a doppleganger, but is unable to formulate that into words, or point to where the scientist is buried.

The trip back home is a tense one.  For the entire four days, the group is followed and/or harassed by dangers from the forest (though there should not be any real deadly danger).  The horses are uneasy for the whole trip due to the chaotic effects of the scientific research in the wagon.  Normally, the cargo would cause the PCs to slowly lose their minds, but Elsa wants the cargo to get to a larger city, so she has blocked the effect from targeting the PCs.

When the PCs get back to town, they can drop the cargo off at the merchant’s grounds.  Neither the merchant or the doppleganger are there, though.  If the PCs won’t part with the cargo unless they get paid, someone will find the money to give them.

After leaving the merchant’s place, they happen upon a public hanging.  In watching the event, they find out that the person being executed is indeed the scientist/doppleganger (all doppleganger’s are evil assassins, right?  That’s why he’s being executed).  It is at this point that the PCs find out he is actually a doppleganger.  As he’s struggling for air, he changes shape into several different forms (presumably ones that he has assumed in the past).  With the scientist/dopplegnger dead, and the merchant out of town, the PCs either have yet to be paid, or are waiting for their next job/adventure.

Over the course of the next few days, the PC’s slowly notice subtle changes in the town.  Some trees start growing in the center of roads, beastman/gnoll attacks happen extremely close to the town, and then finally they notice some children acting very strange.  People also begin to have problems casting magic.  If the PCs don’t figure out that the cargo they brought along has something to do with it, you need to help them along.  Should they go back to investigate the cargo, they find that the workers on the merchant’s grounds are all very complacent, and do anything the players ask.

Upon investigating the cargo, they discover that the scientist had a diary.  In it, he describes his work, his findings, his theories, and notes on the strange occurrences in Blackmoor village leading up to his death.  By now you must get the PCs to understand that simply by bringing the scientific research (the research that disproves magic) to their town, they have also brought the curse.  The only real course of action at this point is to destroy all of the research, and then head back to Blackmoor to rid the village of the evil there, completely stopping the curse.

If the PCs have trouble with this, they are contacted by the Lord Marshal of the town (the captain of the town guard).  He knows that the PCs went to the “cursed” town of Blackmoor and brought back cargo (few people, if any, have come back alive from Blackmoor).  With the town starting to become cursed, he naturally suspects the PCs.

Whether the PCs can successfully defend his implications or not, he will appeal to their  “expertise” on Blackmoor, and insist that they accompany him and his troop to Blackmoor to deal with the curse once and for all.  The PCs have no choice – they must go back to Blackmoor.  However, this time the group is constantly threatened by beastmen/gnolls, though not attacking the group until the night before they reach Blackmoor.

In this big, dangerous battle, give the players control over groups of soldiers.  Each player gets bonuses for his own attacks, defense, and damage for every soldier in his group (makie it 4, 5, or 6 soldiers in each PC group).  With every hit that the PC takes, he can choose to take the damage, or take one soldier out of the fight.  Remember, while all of soldiers are in the fight, none of them get actual attack/defense rolls; they are simply augmenting the PCs rolls.

If any of the soldiers survive, they dissappear in the middle of the night (having been summoned to Blackmoor by Elsa).  When the PCs finally arrive in Blackmoor, their horses begin to bleed from the nose and mouth.  With the scientific research that disproves magic no longer in Blackmoor, magic now works here normally, but the area is still filled with chaos.  Here they are greeted by Elsa and her new son.  Elsa appears to have aged about 60 years, and is very frail.  The son appears to be about 8 years old, and is the spitting image of the PC that slept with Elsa.  When he sees the PCs, he welcomes them and says, “Hello father.” Yes, the son is actually less than two weeks old.

Elsa’s whole purpose here was to erect a temple, and then bring her god-demon to life by way of inception and birth.  She let the PCs go back to their hometown with the cargo because she felt it would bring her more human drones (and in fact it brought her soldiers who became drones).

By now the PCs should want to kill Elsa and the kid.  Let them kill her, but the child gets away.

It’s obvious to the PCs that the surviving soldiers have traveled to the other side of the village (a large group of bumbling men leave good tracks).  The PCs should be able to follow the tracks without any rolls needed.  About half a mile into the forest, they come to an area where many of the trees have been cleared away.  A shoddy temple (a large log structure) has been erected next to a pond.  In certain parts of the pond, pools of oil are lit up on fire, making several bonfires resting on the water’s surface.

As the PCs are deciding what to do next, adults (who are presumably from the village) start walking out of the pond, all zombie-style (yes, they’ve been underwater for awhile).  Some even walk out from the forest, not bothering the PCs.  If the PCs want, they can get into the temple just by walking with the village adults.

From here it’s up to you to decide how the adventure ends.  The child is indeed inside the temple, and may be spotted for a moment from the distance (so the PCs know for sure he is in there).  Do the PCs get into a big fight with a bunch of almost-undead?  Do they find a way to bring the whole temple down and burn it up?  Do they go inside to see the soldiers all fused together, acting as pillars for the temple?  Is the child-demon easy to kill, or one tough bastard?

After all is said and done, do the children need to be killed, or do they revert back to normal children?  The same question applies to any surviving zombie-adults.  Should the heroes go back to town as the only survivors of an awful curse, but having eliminated that curse?  Or do they also get the honor of saving the people of Blackmoor.  The grim nature of the final outcome depends largely on you.