Monstrous Monday Edition
It’s a quiet night in the tavern (for yesterday!)
The fire has burned low. The regulars have stumbled home. The bard’s stopped playing and is asleep in the stables. Just you, your companions, the dregs of your drinks, and a few moments of rare peace.
Then the door creaks open and a message arrives.
Not a letter. Not a scroll. Not a pigeon with a satchel.
A thing, bone-thin, cloaked in rags that hang like wet skin, with eyes like coins held too long in the mouth. It doesn’t speak. It simply places something on the table and turns to leave.
What did it leave behind?
That’s the start of the adventure I’m working on.
See, I’ve always loved the idea that not all messengers are human, or even alive. Some messages come from older places, places where ink isn’t used and paper doesn’t burn. Where secrets aren’t written so much as bound. And sometimes, the thing carrying the message doesn’t even understand it. It’s just a vessel. A warning. A test.
This whole adventure started with that moment:
A creature. A message. A choice.
What do you do when something too old to name brings you a letter with your name on it?
What if the wax seal bears a symbol you saw once in a dream you forgot?
What if the ink moves when no one’s looking?
What if you break the seal and something breaks back?
The message in this case? It’s not a quest hook. Not exactly.
It’s a summons.
Something ancient remembers you.
And it’s time to remember it back.
That’s the thread I’m pulling on right now, something I’m weaving into the adventure that begins at the most clichéd tavern I could dream up. I want the players to laugh at the trope… until it gets quiet… and the thing at the door isn’t part of the trope anymore.
It’s part of the world.
And now, so are they.
Questions
When. Grateful. Genre.
When was I grateful for a particular genre? Hmm. I think that would have to be when I approached Christopher Golden about collaborating on a Buffy adventure for Eden Studios, and he instead asked me if I knew Victorian/Gothic horror. I stepped up and said I was practically an expert! I wasn't, I was just an enthusiastic fan, but it worked and that is one of the reasons why we all have Ghosts of Albion now.
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