Roll and Tale

After their first adventure as heroes for the Shadow King, Nagle and Zolton headed south, hoping to find a way to delay the Miseries plaguing the world. The Miseries grew more threatening: villagers coughed up blood, and the pulse of the world itself seemed to slow. They followed a rumor of a swamp said to contain an altar capable of granting wishes—but only with the correct sacrifice: an unwilling victim. Dubious morals aside, they go in search of the Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch.

This session felt smoother, with the players more confident and me more comfortable running Mörk Borg. It felt more like a traditional TTRPG session I’ve run before. For example, the players weren’t just going through solving everything with a bit of bonking, and I felt more comfortable not giving too big of hints.

Normal or Hard Mode

The module begins as the players descend into the sunken entrance of a cavern. Inside, they encounter an emerald snake with the ability to speak. Behind it stood a sealed door, seemingly without a way to open it. The snake offers that if it is allowed to bite one of them the door would open. If a player accepts the snake’s bite, the door opens, and the venom grants them the ability to see hidden paths within the cavern. Additionally, the cultists will recognize them as one of their own, allowing relatively free passage.

However, killing the snake also opens the door, but you do not see the hidden paths and the cultists in the cavern will be pretty perturbed with your presence, essentially turning all the written NPCs as enemies right away. The players at this point are not aware of this, but as the game master I am anxiously waiting to see how this session will go.

Ultimately after some discussion they agree to have Nagle bitten by the snake, the once ugly cavern is now vibrant and beautiful to him, Zolton however still sees the cavern as it really is, ugly and depressing. But the door opens and they are able to set forth.

A Gentleman’s Agreement

The players initially walk themselves into an empty dining hall, there is a fifty percent chance that some cultists will be in here eating some gator but the dice gods didn’t want that today, in this Nagle is able to see a pathway that is hidden from Zolton due to the snake’s venom. As with most adentureres the shiny hidden path is the one to walk down so they make their way there, where they meet one of the key NPCs of the dungeon. Ueth the Scale Hunter, a man described as permanently high from the snake venom and fully believes in the visions he has. Ueth, noticing that Nagle was also under the influence of the venom, warmly welcomed them into conversation. The vibes of the conversation are off putting, with the room being filthy and has dried gators hanging from the ceiling, and drawings of snakes made with “bodily fluids”. He walks them into the next room, which instead of gators has humans hanging from cells preparing to be sacrificed.

Ueth explains the sacrifices are necessary, and there is a lovely snake pit where they do the sacrifices in. While Nagle is engaging with Ueth, Zolton speaks with one of the prisoners who lets them know that if they free him, he has a valuable ring he can give which will sell for a good amount of silver. This time, instead of simply fighting their way through, Nagle and Zolton decided to strike a deal with Ueth. Ueth had mentioned that he believes the rumor of the Swamp Witch and their alter is true, but he has been too scared to allow himself or any of the other cultists through. Nagle and Zolton agree to take the risk on his behalf, if Ueth would release the prisoner who knows about the ring. The dice gods looked favorably on this and Nagle rolled high enough on Presence to convince Ueth. Ueth saw no downsides to this arrangement—worst case, the adventurers would die, nullifying the deal.

Nagle and Zolton knew they needed an unwilling sacrifice for the alter, rumor was being a hero here didn’t benefit anyone at all, so they awkwardly interview each of the prisoners and find the one with the least amount to lose, and reluctantly dragged him along. The prisoner was not too happy to be told that he was to be sacrificed, and did try to run away, but unfortunately for him Zolton noticed and got a good solid swing on his Achille’s tendon (would it be called Achille’s in a fictional world?).

What a Lovely Garden

The make their way to the next room which has Ueth’s snake pit they use for sacrifices, Zolton looks in the pit while Nagle looks around the room and finds the next passage way with his emerald venom vision. While looking in the pit another emerald snake slithers up and starts talking to Zolton asking him if we wants to be bitten now, Zolton again declines, and the snake ominiously says “if you don’t let me bite you, you’ll die in this cave”. Zolton not allowing a snake from a well to make his life choices again declines, and follows Nagle when they find the next passage way, which leads into a lovely garden.

The garden was lush and beautiful, with luminescent flowers hanging from the ceiling. Hidden among the vegetation was silver, and a path led to a fern-filled room. In the fern room a quick investigation revealed a hidden weapon of the dungeon, The Croaking Trident, which was a weapon that did magical damage in addition to physical, but the more you use it, the more you transform into a walking violent amphibian. Nagle took this weapon, not knowing about the curse held with it.

Wanting to explore further, Nagle rolled a Presence check and rolled surprisingly high. Now the module isn’t completely clear but there is a secret path from the alter room to the ferns, but at the time wasn’t sure if the path worked in reverse, but with Nagle rolling high enough allowed him to see it, and the two squeezed through and made it to the alter room.

Sacrifice

Upon exiting through the secret tunnel in the ferns, they were greeted by an alter wrapped deeply in roots. Watching them was the titular Swamp Witch, she didn’t speak a word, but spoke to the players telepathically. The Swamp Witch was unsettling: headless, with glowing gems where her eyes should be. Dressed in a green robe, her body was covered in multicolored scales. Zolton and Nagle listened as she confirmed their beliefs that an unwilling sacrifice would allow them to make a wish. Though the Swamp Witch carried an intriguing lunar sword on her back, the players chose not to engage her in combat and instead heeded her cryptic words. Thus putting the sacrificial man on the alter.

And it finally came time for the sacrifice, they dragged the unwitting sacrifice to the alter and have him placed. The players aware of the problem of the Monkey Paw take a moment to really think about the wording of the wish. They keep it simple and Nagle asks “to undo the action that set off the current series of Miseries”. As the wish was made, the man’s soul was violently ripped from his body and absorbed into the altar. After making a wish there is a table to roll that decides some of the consequences, the random event that popped up for them with quite fitting. I had to roll a dice until a Misery occurs (which is caused by rolling a nat 1 on whatever dice you choose, I was rolling with a d10). “It took around 15 rolls before a Misery was triggered, meaning 15 days had passed for the players. The new Misery I ended up rolling causes snakes to spill forth from cracks in the ground which just felt fitting for this module.

The players were a little confused by all that transpired in front of their eyes, but the Swamp Witch gleefully told them that they did stop the end of the world, unfortunately they also kicked off a new one, and they had been in this room for 15 days. In that 15 days the venom in Nagles system had worn off and he saw the cavern for how it truly was again, ugly and depressing. With this unsatisfying turn of events they headed back into the cults part of the cavern to make since they made good on their end of the bargain.

Unfortunately, for them since the venom wore off and they had been gone for 15 days, the cultists in the place didn’t quite recognize them and were now less than friendly. Nagle does take a moment to meet with the same emerald snake that had threatned Zolton, and offers to be bit again. Snake agrees, and Nagle asks if it wanted to travel with them going forward, the snake not wanting to turn down an adventure agrees. While Nagle is talking with the snake, Zolton notices something unfortunate in the pit, the remains of the prisoner who’d they originally made the deal about, it has appeared that after 15 days Ueth didn’t think they held up their end of the agreement. Angry Zolton and Nagle marched into the next room to talk with Zolton who was surrounded by 4 guards.

A Fitting End?

Zolton demanded to Ueth to know why he went back on the deal, Ueth in my opinion pretty reasonably said “it’s been 15 days I’d assumed you both died.” There was a quick discussion between Zolton and Nagle about what to do, maybe not the best to have a serious discussion with someone who is high on snake venom, but they decided if Ueth went back on the deal, they’d try to get what they wanted by force. Ueth and his guards seeing the situation whas escalated and everyone drew their weapons.

The fight began with Nagle, Zolton, Ueth, and his guards clashing. The dice gods had clearly turned against Nagle and Zolton, as they consistently rolled misses and took damage from their foes Nagle and Zolton tried to split it up that they’d each take two guards, but Nagle quickly fell to a critical hit from one of the guards, leading Zolton to be surrounded with 5 enemies wanting him dead. Zolton did his best to hold his own, and wanted to fight for a chance to maybe save Nagle.

Ultimately it was all for naught, though Zolton was able to take down one of the guards the numbers out weighed him and found himself cut down by the others. Nagle and Zolton’s last sight was Ueth and his guards standing over them as their consciousness faded. However, this wasn’t quite the end of Zolton and Nagle, much to their surprise they awoke days latter in a cemetery (unfortunately for Nagle looks like the cultists took his new trident, so no curse for them), where the next session starts off.

Final Thoughts

For being the second module I ran, with all of feeling more comfortable with this system, this was an all around great experience. We had the ability to use more mechanics, and my two players were not on full murder mode to start off. Interactions were more thoughtful with players thinking about their consequences before just bonking away through the dungeon, which led to a surprising, but still fun, session.

When running games, especially those that evolve into campaigns, I usually keep a lot of information to myself in case I want to use it later. For the most part in games the players don’t need to know all your secrets. However, since we were all still learning this system a bit, after the game did take some time to go over with the players and debrief, letting them know some of the possible outcomes and where things could have gone.This was especially helpful for Zolton’s player, who had less experience with TTRPGs compared to Nagle’s player and me. This provided an opportunity to explore ‘what could have been’ while encouraging them to consider the consequences of their actions in future sessions.

I had planned for two scenarios for this module, if the players managed to TPK I would run the Graves Left Wanting module having the players awaken in a grave, and if they had managed to survive I’d let them march down to Galgenbeck and would run Goblin Grinder next. As mentioned unfortunately both Zolton and Nagle met their untimely ends, so next up is Graves Left Wanting.