Roll and Tale

So we make it to the end of this Mörk Borg series, though probably not the last time I play it. In the last session our players unfortunately met their end. Or so they thought, as they start this session waking up in shallow graves in the cemetery of Graven-Tosk. This session I ran the module Graves Left Wanting, which can be found on the Mörk Borg website.

Graves Left Wanting is interesting in its setup compared to the previous two modules. The last two had a clear map and general direction for how the players would progress. Graves Left Wanting has a more freeform map, while there is a general path the players can follow they can go off trail and a roll of the dice will have them show up in a new location. The final location, the Undertaker’s Hut, is only accessible after the players have visited a number of locations—unless they acquire a guide in the form of the Roach Herder (more on that later).

What the Hell Happened?

Zolton and Nagle awaken in their shallow graves, choking on the stench of decay. Slowly they climb out of their graves and find themselves in the Plague Pit of Graven-Tosk. Both remembering their decisions from some time ago that led to their deaths, but for some reason they have found themselves awakening in a grave. Taking this as a possible stroke of good luck, they decide to figure out where they are and try to get out of this place and back on their journey. Nagle immediately recognizes this is actually part of his homeland, he grew up in some of the tunnels below Graven-Tosk. The heroes collect their belongings and head into a connecting room which holds a standing sarcophagus. They use their combined strength to open the door and find a freshly preserved corpse.

Zolton decides to inspect the corpse and realizes the skin is made of a waxy material not like skin, pushing his hand deeper he finds a large ruby where the heart once was and pulls it out. Nagle takes the robe the man was wearing to actually have some nice threads for this adventure. They continue on and follow a path south out of the tomb.

The Key to the Heart

Making their way down the hallway they make it to a circular room with 3 skeletons having an argument about a key and a box. One of the skeletons has a key-shaped dagger, which they are waving about. Nagle and Zolton can’t fully make out what the skeletons are saying, but they can decipher that they are trying to open a lockbox on the table. On approach the skeletons mark Nagle and Zolton as enemies and a battle begins. Being of pretty low health, and with some good rolls from Nagle and Zolton all 3 skeletons are easily dispatched, leaving just the dagger that one of them was waving.

Above the board, it’s worth noting that the dagger the skeleton was waving is, in fact, a key. However, it has the downside that whatever it opens leads to an unknown location. Instead of breaking the box open immediately, Zolton uses the key, and to his surprise, he sees his own beating heart. The surprise is enough to slam the box shut and relock it. After realizing the lock on the box was pretty week, they just break it open instead and find a handful of silver.

Continuing on they make it to the Vomatorium, which as the same suggests is not very pleasant, it is filled with sour smell and boiling pot. The players did not want much to do with this room and exited out as fast as possible, heading out the north entrance. The North entrance led straight to the grave yard, which calls for a roll of dice to see where they end up traveling to. They ended up right back where they started at the Plague Pitt. However, this allowed them to explore the northern path, which they hadn’t yet visited.

Going North the humidity began to increase, and a smell of rot increased. They entered the room of the Roach Herder.

Roach is Life

Entering the room the Herder is sitting on a throne made of trash and greats the heroes as they walk in. Zolton and Nagle ask “hey man what’s your deal”, and they are informed he is trying to breed a roach large enough to fly him out of this place. They follow up asking if there is any other way out of this place. The Herder responds that he isn’t sure but the best bet is to possibly go the the Undertaker’s hut, the Undertaker may be able to help them out of this situation. The heroes asked what the path to get there was, to which the Herder informed them that it was through the graveyard, and he’d happily lead them if they wanted. Nagle asks if he does that will he be bringing his roaches, to which he says “yes yes I will”. Why roaches Zolton asks in response, “because Roach is life”.

The players decide to pass on this opportunity and keep exploring. The Herder bids them farewell, saying he’ll be there if they need any help! Above the board the Roach Herder if asked and allowed to tag along will lead players right to the Undertaker’s hut, if they player’s don’t take them up on the offer the path will be visible after all other locations are found.

Dancing Tree

After an uneventful encounter with the Roach Herder, our heroes continued north and discovered a fast-flowing sewer line filled with debris. A quick investigation revealed that falling in would mean certain death—the current was too strong to escape. But there is a trap door above their heads, stirring their curiosity. Using some rope and climbing on shoulders, they manage to pull themselves through the trap door, revealing a giant tree. There is a zombie hanging out that immediately targets Nagle, and while it should be a quick fight, a nat 1 on the dice causes Nagle to fumble his sword down into the speeding water below, losing his weapon. Still one zombie vs two ends with the zombie being defeated.

Upon inspecting the tree, they notice that it is full of hanged bodies and a small door leading inside. Nagle (after pulling a weapon off one of the reachable bodies) heads into the tree, where he finds a series of strings. He pulls a couple, and outside Zolton see’s the tree spring into movement like a morbid marionette, the bodies seemingly now dancing from the limbs of the tree. Despite this fun they realize they still need to find an exit from this place and this doesn’t seem it.

They reverse their steps, once again passing through the Roach Herder’s lair and quickly let him know they are still not interested. They head south down the hallway that initially led to the Herder’s room and make it to the final room they had yet to explore. It is a fountain with some paths that require dexterity checks to get through. They choose mostly not to engage fully with this, as they don’t completely trust their balance to cross the beams, so they head out fairly quickly. To their surprise now a new path has opened up visibly in the grave yard, leading to a hut.

The Undertaker’s Hut

Approaching the hut they hear some voices arguing about chores of all things, a weird since or normalcy in this place. Outside the hut they see a shallow grave with a lone, new corpse. Upon knocking on the door the conversation inside go silent and the door creaks open. Inside there are 3 people Stein, Benzen, and Agra (the module refers to them collectively as the Deadn’t). Upon seeing 2 other alive being the Deadn’t happily invite them in.

Nagle and Zolton spent some time enjoying some drink with the Deadn’t. After the long road to this inn, it was a brief moment of respite for a journey that has been anything but pleasant for our heroes. The Deadn’t explain that they were once in the same situation as Zolton and Nagle. Mentioning they had made their way here after exploring the rest of the grave yard. When they got here they met the Undertaker, who now lies in the shallow grave outside, and mention they demanded to know the way out, and unfortunately the Undertaker would not comply. Tensions flared, ending with the Undertaker dying by their hands.

During this conversation, the air in the room grew cold, and the door flew open, revealing the Undertaker’s corpse—now reanimated and seeking revenge. From this point, the module refers to him as the Ubertaker.

A Grave End

A fight quickly breaks out, with the Deadn’t on our heroes’ side, but unfortunately, they don’t seem to be of much help. Benzen, is quickly pulled to the ground by skeletal hands controlled by the Ubertaker and dies on impact. The other two with broken moral begin to flee out of the building, but before they are able to fully escape are also quickly killed by the Undertaker.

After the Deadn’t had all perished violently, only our heroes Nagle and Zolton were left. The odds were initially favoring our heroes, each landing decent hits and doing a fair amount of damage each round, but The Ubertaker had a large enough pool of HP to take these hits while also weaking Zolton and Nagle. It got to a point where Ubertaker was just one good hit away from dying, and unfortunately on the rolls right before their turn Nagle and Zolton both failed their attack rolls. Then after a 3 was rolled on the d4, Taker appeared next to Nagle and landed one final clean hit, bringing Nagle’s HP below 0, killing him. On Zolton’s next turn, he avenged his fallen friend, landing a hit and sending the Ubertaker back to the grave.

Zolton did try to see if they were able to do anything to revive Nagle, I let them do a Presence check to see if they could come up with anything. It might of been the stress of the battle but Zolton rolled low on their check and wasn’t able to come up with anything, all but sealing Nagle’s fate. However, Zolton wouldn’t let this rest just yet. He put Nagle’s body on a cart, and when he continued his journey out of the graveyard, he dragged Nagle along as well, hoping to find some way to save his friend.

Final Thoughts

This module brought our 3 part series of Mörk Borg sessions to an end, with both players feeling like this brought it to a fun conclusion. However, they did express interest in continuing on, so while Nagle’s story came to an unfortunate end here, Zolton’s is likely to continue. But given this is the world of Mörk Borg it’s more of a question of how long Zolton’s story will continue on. The module also keeps with the morbid humor that drives some of the engagement in Mörk Borg sessions.

Graves Left Wanting, as recommended, is a great place to restart a campaign if the players all died in a TPK previously, especially if the players wanted to still use their character’s a bit more. Rather than just dying they get one more chance at life, but Mörk Borg fashion is that necessarily a good thing for the characters (it’s great fun for the players though).

For our table this module was a great capstone to the adventure, it had more freeform travel compared to the prior ones, and allowed the players to interact with a lot of weird things. The big bad boss fight at the end is an appropriate level of danger allowing a decent chance for the players to win, but also at the hand of a few casualties.

Running these 3 modules was fun getting to experiment with a system I hadn’t previously used. One of the key aspects of this system that I really enjoyed was how many outcomes depended on the players’ rolls rather than the gamemaster’s. There’s an extra level of dread where you are rolling to see if the enemy is going to hit you.