100 Days of Halloween: Sepulcher of the Sorceress-Queen

Robert E. Howard casts a long shadow over Fantasy Role Playing in general and D&D in particular.  This is best seen in two different near clones, Adventurer Conqueror King and Hyperborea. So when ACKS did an adventure that was an homage to Taramis, well I had to check it out.

Sepulcher of the Sorceress-Queen

Print and PDF. 56 pages. Color cover and interior layout art with black & white art.

For Character levels 7th to 9th.

Ok. So another tomb with a sleeping undead witch. It is a powerful trope. This one features the Sorceress-Queen Semiramis of Zahar who has been dead, but sleeping, for 1000 years. She had been betrayed by a former lover (and having killed her first 100 lovers she should have seen this one coming) and is now waiting for her chance to rise and rule again.

The adventure is part of a loosely connected series but it is mentioned that it can be used as a stand-alone adventure and placed anywhere. 

The adventure involves going into her tomb, stopping her from rising, and maybe make off with some treasure. The tomb is full of undead horrors and other dangers. To make things more interesting there is a group of lizardmen in the tomb trying to do the same thing as the characters. 

It then becomes a race against time, times 2. Get to the queen before she gains her full power and get to the treasures before the lizard men do. 

The adventure gives us a bunch on new magic items, a new spell, and five new (ish) monsters. The adventure itself is cut from familiar cloth but the map is quite good and great for groups that like to explore old tombs.

Use with my War of the Witch Queens

For this campaign, this adventure covers more than just familiar territory. This will be the third or fourth "tomb of a long dead witch coming back to life" they have seen if I stay on current plans. So...what am I to do?

Well. I do love the map here and the tomb itself is an interesting place. Maybe...I can merge this with my other Howard/Hyperborea-influenced adventure The Lost Caverns of Acheron.  I mentioned all the pluses that using this adventure gives me when I reviewed the V series from BRW Games. There is one thing I failed to mention though. I have already taken my players through module S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Once they get to that spherical room they will remember they have been here already.

I could use this as a base and bring notes from The Lost Caverns of Acheron. I certainly do not need to run both adventures no matter how fun they are. But I also really love the idea of using Xaltana.

Do I go with Xaltana or Semiramis? 

I thought maybe the unnamed Witch-Queen of Yithorium from Hyperborea might be a good substitute. Both come from the same sources. Semiramis has a name, the Witch-Queen does not (even though I named her Miriam). Semiramis is a Zaharian Sorcerer which reads a lot like a warlock or a witch and has a strong Howard/CAS vibe. Same with our Witch-Queen of Yithorium. 

Yithorium is surrounded by the Zakath desert. Zahar is now described as a desolate wasteland like a desert. Ok, that's a stretch but you see where I am going here. 

Why mix or merge them at all? Simple I want to get as much of all the great material out there I can for this adventure campaign and knowing full well I can never run everything. Also by picking and choosing different OSR systems, publishers, and products, I am naturally going to get similar results; we all draw from the same wells. 

So in my campaign, the Sorceress-Queen Semiramis of Zahar and the Witch-Queen of Yithorium become the same person. 

Maybe I'll keep Miriam around as the descendant of Semiramis. She is every bit as evil as her forebearer. Maybe Miriam leads them to the tomb in order to gain her ancestor's power but ends up getting possessed in the process.  I do like this idea.

Use with my Second Campaign

My original idea for this was to run it mostly as is for my Second Campaign. I'll have to see how that one develops when the characters get to the right levels.

October Horror Movie Challenge: Daughters of The Craft

Over the years I have noticed a trend in movies to try to recreate the..hu...magic that was in the movie The Craft. AKA the move that made a thousand teen witches in the 90s. I have taken to call these movies Daughters of the Craft since that is what they obviously desire to be. 

Here are a few I watched starting on Friday till tonight.

The Coven (2015)

Take the Craft (sorta) and put them in an English boarding school. No not Hogwarts, but they do name-drop Margaret Murray, Robert Cochrane, and Gerald Gardner (though they call him Joe) so that is something. 

There is a new teacher, Mrs. Belial, who takes over the class and teaches them about Uri Clef (an anagram for Lucifer). We see her eating raw meat later on. 

The girls head out to Queens Woods where Robert Cochrane used to meet with his Wiccan group. They are joined by two boys, Eddie and Louie, the five girls and two boys realize their first names all spell out Lucifer. Now strange things start to happen. They are joined by the at first uninvited Eve (who has been at home researching all of this) and soon they are being chased through the woods by the guy on the motorcycle...who might be Eddie? All the names appear including Eve's but not Eddie's and they all get sucked into a burning tree.

Yeah. Ok, that one was rather bad, to be honest. I had such hopes for it in the beginning.

Ouija Craft (2020)

This one is "What if the girls from the Craft were in college with an Ouija board.

And man is this one starting out bad. There are two characters who look like they are some time in the past, running through the woods. The woman uses magic to try to heal the man but it doesn't work. What else that doesn't work is their acting. Cause they are both terrible. Not a great start here. Anyway, there is a demon girl of some sort and an Ouija board.

Fast forward to the present day. Abby, Rory, and Jess are in a barn somewhere practicing magic. Jess is trying to get a spell to work with only a little success, Abby and Rory, along with Abby's boyfriend Sam, are making potions. Abby and Rory are obviously better at magic. Rory drinks a potion and is able to levitate for a bit. Abby decides she wants to mix a temporary immortality potion with a healing potion to live forever. The potion seems to work at first, but soon she is convulsing. I guess she never saw the Potion Miscibility table in the 1st Ed DMG because she rolls a 01% and her whole chest blows up. 

At the wake, Rory and Jess are each dealing with grief in different ways. Jess keeps thinking she hears Abby. Finally, she does and she wants her and Rory to take the Ouija board to the graveyard where she is buried and try to contact her. This is of course breaking the rules of Ouija. Anyway, Abby comes back but needs a real life so she has to kill someone who saw her die, Rory or Jess.  There are some magic battles between the three and in the process, Sam is killed and Abby brings him back. 

They learn from the ghosts from the opener they have to burn the Ouija board. Oh and that Jess is not a witch but a psychic. Jess gets stabbed by Sam, but Rory gives up her life force so she can live. Since Jess didn't see Sam die he falls to dust. Now Jess and Abby fight it out and Jess is able to TK the board into a fire burning it and Abby, but not before Abby stabs Jess. JEss drinks the temporary immortality potion and passes out waiting for the paramedics. 

Months later Jess is still recovering and she sees Abby's ghost who apologizes for everything. She tells Jess that she could become a very powerful psychic, but Jess takes all her books and potions and witchy stuff outside and burns them all.

Ok. Not great and some really terrible acting. I felt though the two leads Jess and Rory, Ivy Rhodes and Lacy Hartselle respectively were actually fairly good and made the movie watchable. 

Coven (2020) 

Also known as Akelarre and Coven of Sisters it is not to be confused with the 2019 movie Coven.

This one just sneaks in with the theme. Maybe Great-Great Grandmothers of the Craft is a better descriptor for this one.

This one is horror, but not for the reasons the first two are.

In 1609 in the Basque Country of Spain five girls are all arrested and charged with witchcraft.  One of their friends tries to rescue them and she is captured too. At first, the girls are afraid but then they begin to joke about it, not believing that this is happening to them.  Then the torture begins.   

It's all rather horrible to be honest.  Worse, because you knew this sort of thing happened all the time. 

Amaia Aberasturi stars as Ana and she is the real stand-out here. She keeps stringing along her accusers to drag out the proceedings to help save the other girls. Ana easily strings along the horny men till the full moon.

The girls decide that in order to delay their execution longer they tell the judge they will re-enact the Black Mass, or the Sabbath, for his records. They do so and get him all involved as Lucifer.  Once they had frightened the men, or turned them on, enough they run into the woods. They are chased by the men and soldiers till they get to the edge of a cliff over the ocean.  The other women, the ones not accused of witchcraft, sing a song about the full moon and the high tide.  Ana, realizing the message, tells the other girls they can jump.

They jump over the side, not knowing if they lived or died. 

I thought this movie was great honestly. Not the typical sort of horror, but also not exactly what I thought it was going to be either. 

Really good to have this one the last of the night to wash the taste out of my mouth from the first one.

Of course, I have heard this word, Akelarre, before and named a witch-focused demon after it.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2022
Viewed: 22
First Time Views: 17

100 Days of Halloween: The Baleful Coven (5E)

Let's do a 5e adventure tonight. Unlike the others I have reviewed so far I do not have a spot for this one figured out. So maybe something will come to me while I type.

The Baleful Coven (5E)

Print and PDF. 24 pages. Color cover and interior art.

For five to seven characters of 6th to 7th level. 

It is described as bringing standard fantasy characters into contact with threats of the "Far East." Which is cool, to be honest. Not sure if it will fit into my game just yet, but I like the promise of it so far. It does have one of my favorite archetypes, the white-haired witch, and there is a coven made up of a hag and two warlocks. 

I am going to pause here to note that this was originally a Pathfinder adventure. I bought the PDF of it a while back but I now notice it is gone from both DriveThru's and Paizo's websites. I mention this because I feel some of the fingerprints of Pathfinder, and in particular how they handled witches and hags, can be seen in the 5e version here. For example, while a warlock here, Masami Onishi is very much a "White Haired Witch" from Pathfinder. This is not a complaint mind you. Save in only I wish the Pathfinder version was still available. Granted it was released 10 years ago.

The bulk of the adventure takes place on the demi-plane of The Dream of Vengeful Reckoning. Ok, I do rather like that too.  The adventure then becomes a search for how to leave this demi-plane. Naturally defeating this coven of "witches" is one of the ways to do it. 

The adventure is actually rather well put together and I can see it being run over a long afternoon-evening or a could of smaller sessions. This is exactly what it was designed for. There are memorable NPCs which is the real hook for me. 

So yeah a fun adventure with some great ideas. 

Use with my War of the Witch Queens

There is a solid idea here, but not the one I think Legendary Games wants me to hook into. I mentioned the NPCs were memorable, and they are interesting, but you know what would be better? If I took three witches from three different adventures the characters had "defeated" and used them. I have seen enough movies this month where witches come back to some form of life to get vengeance on those who killed them.  Set them up into a demi-plane, or for my purposes, a Liminal Plane, where the dead witches can get their vengeance on the still-living PCs.

This is for 6th to 7th level so it would need to be part of an earlier adventure. My top choices right now are Trilena (Rahasia), Llorona (The Witch of the Tarriswoods), Kyleth (Saga of the Witch Queen), and Morfa (The Witch Queen of Cair Urnahc). I just need to pick three. Though Morfa and Trilena have both come back from the dead once already. I do admit that Kyleth on the top of the list to replace Masami Onishi.  While I know a couple are supposed to be hags I feel that is a hold-over from the Pathfinder adventure where only witches with hags can make covens. Also no need for me to add more winter witches, my cup is over flowing with them!

But what good is killing a villain if you can't bring them back from the dead to terrorize your players? I mean characters. Yeah. Characters.

100 Days of Halloween: Adventure Module V3 - Toil and Trouble (and the V Series)

One of the things I wanted most for my War of the Witch Queens campaign was to involve as many editions of D&D and Clones as I could. I wanted it to be a nice sampling of the entire OSR movement.  The second thing I wanted was to have the characters visit all sorts of different worlds.  So tonight we are headed back to Oerth/Greyhawk or some facsimile of it for the next round of adventures.

Tonight I am going to cover the "V Series" of modules by Joseph Bloch and BRW Games. While I will review all three it is likely that only the last one, Adventure Module V3 - Toil and Trouble, will be used in my campaign.  The reasons will be rather obvious.

This is, essentially from my point of view, an alternate reality Oerth. This is good since the game they are designed for is Adventures Dark and Deep RPG which is an alternate reality AD&D 2nd Edition. Though can easily be used with AD&D 1, 2, Basic D&D, or any clone.

They are low-level enough that they can be easily used with just about any form of D&D including 5e.

Each module is done in what I would call the middle phase of modules or ones from the early 80s. Not quite the rough around the edges of the earliest ones from the 1970s nor the more polished Dragonlance/Ravenlofts of the near mid 80s. No, these are solid 1982-1983 in feel and form.

Adventure Module V1 - The Hamlet of Volage

PDF. 13 pages (+ covers). Color cover, black & white interior art.
Designed for 4 to 6 characters of 1st to 3rd level.

This is where we get our "V" in the V series; the Hamlet of Volage (not to be confused with the Village of Hommlet a few miles over). This adventure introduces the players (and characters) to Volage which in the middle of a battleground between two warring covens of witches. The Cloven Hoof Coven (Diabolic) and the Dark Star Coven (Demonic).  

Though the adventure does not start that big. It begins rather with a rivalry between local families and accusations of witchcraft. 

Much like the adventures this is an homage too, we get a nice selection of memorable NPCs. Tables of rumors (some true, some false) and a village.

In this first adventure, you have to deal with the witches (here a subclass of Cleric) of the Cloven Hoof coven. Their patron is Dispater. Nice, great choice. Though there is a note that if you have BRW Games product Darker Paths 2 - The Witch you can use that for these NPCs. 

There are some new spells and two new magic items.

It feels like it can be played in an afternoon or longer setting, maybe 6 hours. Faster if the PCs figure out what is going on. 

Adventure Module V2 - Red in Tooth and Claw

PDF. 12 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art.
Designed for 4 to 6 characters of 2nd to 3rd level.

This one takes place six months after the first adventure in the series. Following the pattern laid down at the time of the earliest adventures this one now includes some hex-crawling with some random encounters. These are encountered before the party returns to Volage. Indeed this module is very explicitly a hex crawl to investigate the area around the Hamlet of Volage.  So there is no true purpose or "victory condition" nor should there be. The purpose is the exploration of the surrounding area. Though there is the threat of the Dark Star Coven. Details have to be uncovered before the next adventure can take place.  There is a nice little teaser about the "Queen of Witches."

I will admit I not 100% sure why it has to be 6 months later except to allow a season to pass. 

The most fun here are the werewolves in the woods. 

Adventure Module V3 - Toil and Trouble

PDF and softcover book. 20 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art.
Designed for 4 to 6 characters of 3rd to 5th level.

For this one I have both the PDF and softcover versions. Also, we are given our first real and proper introduction to the "Witch Queen" none other than Natasha.  It has everything a good adventure should have. Plots and intrigue, a ruined tower, cultists, caves, giant bugs, new monsters and new spells.

In this one, you have to stop the Dark Star coven dedicated to Natasha. 

Again the witches of Natasha are presented as clerics or you can use the BRW Witch class.

I also admit I find the modules colored in Red, Blue, and Green to be very esthetically pleasing. 

Use with my War of the Witch Queens

Given the events here I think I would combine this all into one "Super-module." They can be easily combined and it would work well.  For me I would need to decide if I needed another Iggwilv stand-in or not. I love that the first adventure uses Dispater. In my own games there is something of an open war between Dispater and Orcus. I could convert these Natashian witches into Mara or Demonic witches following Orcus. I would need to up the undead, but that is never a bad idea. Of course, I bought these BECAUSE they featured Natasha/Iggwilv. I could insert a Witch Queen as a proxy for Orcus, much like Natasha is an intermediary for the demons worshiped by the Dark Star Coven.

Ok...so this adventure is located in the Vesve Forest, sorry the Sesve Forest. That is near the Yatil MountainsYahdel Mountains where part of the third adventure takes place.  Hmm.

Ok here is what I am doing. Everything is largely the same, but I am swapping out Natasha for Xaltana, the Vampire Witch Queen. She combines elements of Iggwilv and Drelzna. Though I currently have her as a Hyperborean Witch Queen. Well, that is not a problem since I still have The Witch-Queen of Yithorium and Methyn Sarr and they are too busy fighting each other to worry about others.

Xaltana is a dead/undead Witch Queen. When the High Witch Queen is murdered she stirs enough to be able to gather followers again. She is this Oerth's Natasha (see note about an alternate reality) instead of Graz'zt/Grash’t as her paramour it will be Orcus.

This all gives me:

• A chance to use Xaltana and a reworked Lost Caverns of Acheron later on.
• A chance to play out my rivalry between Dispater and Orcus, something I will detail later.
• Frees up Iggwilv/Natasha to do other things. 
• Helps differentiate Xaltana from Darlessa another Vampire Witch Queen. 
• Gives me an excuse to add more demonic powers to Xaltana.

Given this is going to be an "Alternate Universe" I might even make Adventures Dark and Deep characters for my group that are the alternates of their OSE characters. Not too difficult really. The purpose would be to make the players also feel a bit out of sorts. The rules are close enough to use for this and yet different enough. 

October Horror Movie Challenge: Mausoleum (1983)

I have not seen this one in years. While demon possession is on brand for me this year, this was not on my preliminary list, it came up as recommended so I thought I would check it out, see how my memory of it was.

Mausoleum (1983)

We start with the funereal of Susan Walker's (played quite memorably to my 14-year-old mind by Julie Christy Murray) mother.  She can't take and runs off to a...you guessed it, a mausoleum. Here she hears the voice of a demon and she uses her powers to kill a homeless guy.

Fast forward 20 years Susan Walker Farrell (now played by Bobbie Bresee) is now married and seeing a psychiatrist.  The 20th anniversary of her mother's death is coming and her friends are worried. She goes out with her husband, but while alone she is accosted by a drunk. He leaves, but she causes him to burst into flames in his car.  And the killings start in earnest. She seduces the gardener and then kills him. They get a new gardener and she kills him too.

She starts to levitate, get all weird looking, and her eyes glow green. A lot. 

Turns out Susan and members of her matrilineal line are all possessed by this demon. They learn how to expel the demon from her Grandmother's journal but not before she kills her husband Oliver and remembers she killed her own aunt.

So this one was much better in my memory than it was in my rewatch. I always liked the idea of a family demon, one attached to a particular family of witches. We saw this in the Anne Rice Witching Hour books and again in my post-Buffy campaign "Season of the Witch."

I remembered Julie Christy Murray well. She would have been about the same age I was at the time and I am certain that she was one of the influences of my earliest witches. By this time I had already created Marissia and more blonde witches would follow.

I had good memories of this movie, but it didn't quite live up to them.  That's too bad, but not a big surprise. Still. It was a fun trip down memory lane.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2022
Viewed: 17
First Time Views: 13

100 Days of Halloween: Dungeon Crawl Classics Witch Queen Adventures

Up first is an update and an important one at that. It was while I was reviewing this adventure in 2015 that I thought that the War of the Witch Queens came to me. I figure I should revisit it now.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Witch Queen

PDF from DriveThruRPG. 84 pages. Monochrome cover and black & white interior art.

This is a meaty module.  84 pages, covers, maps, and OGL still leave a lot of pages for content.

First off, if you are not familiar with Dungeon Crawl Classics modules they are meant to emulate a certain feel of early 80s play.  They went on to create the game Dungeon Crawl Classics, but the adventures are still largely OSR compatible. Actually, I didn't see a single thing in this adventure that screamed ts should be used for one system or the other, though on the cover they claim "1e." That is good enough.

This adventure is actually 3 adventures in one.  Legacy of the Savage Kings, The Lost Passage of the Drow, and War of the Witch Queen (which I will discuss later).  Each one is a different part of the Witch Queen's plan.

Reading through this adventure is one part excitement for the new and one part excitement for the nostalgia.  For the new, I wanted to learn more about Kyleth (the eponymous Witch Queen and not to be confused with Keyleth) and the tome Ars Maleficus.  The nostalgia comes from many little easter eggs throughout the pages that call back to adventures of the TSR days.  I am convinced the Mad Hermit here is the same as the one in the Keep on the Borderland for example.  There are also hints of influences from Vault of the Drow, Ravenloft, and even the rest of the GDQ series.  In fact, the second adventure, "The Lost Passage of the Drow" could be slotted into the D series and no one would be the wiser.   Replace Baba Yazoth with the proper Baba Yaga and have one of the many adventures she features in as a side trek.

There are a number of named characters that would work well as witches, Maeve, Baba Yazoth, and of course Kyleth herself.   While using the title of "Witch Queen" Kyleth is only an 8th-level Magic-user.  Make her a 9th or 10th-level witch and then you have something really scary.

Does it work with The Witch? Yes, absolutely.  There is a number of great items and story points in this adventure for any witch character.  In fact, I would say that any good witch would want to see Kyleth taken out on general principle.  Plus there are a number of encounters and NPCs that would benefit from the rules in the Witch.  Night Hags get more spell-casting powers for example and the medusa can also have some levels of the witch class.

Of course, there is the issue of Kyleth being one of The Thirteen. The Thirteen most evil wizards, witches, and necromancers in the world.  She was the newest member, who are the other 12, and what are their plans?  Is anyone up for an adventure against the Legion of Doom?  I might have to come back to this idea. I can see witches, vivamancers, blood mages, evil wizards, and necromancers as part of this evil cabal. Each provides something different.

About the physical book. The book is 80 pages and printed on very heavy paper.  It is softcover, but the binding looks good. With the heavy paper and glossy cover, I expect this to hold up to wear and tear.  The cover is bound on, so no taking it off to use as a GM screen with maps.  I am glad I have this as a PDF too to print out the maps and the handouts.  I am really, really happy with this module.

UPDATE: Of course, I took this idea and ran with it making Kyleth one of the many Witch Queens that is gathering at the Tredecim. Kyleth was my first choice as the murderess of the Witch Queen, but I quickly dropped that idea. If Kyleth had kill the High Queen then her ambitions would be greater. No Kyleth is an opportunist. She sees the tide turning and decides now is her time to strike. 

Dungeon Crawl Classics #17.5: War of the Witch Queen

PDF. 28 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art. 

This is the precursor to the larger Saga of the Witch Queen. I grabbed it to have a complete collection and to see if there were any differences between this and the newer version. I would still love to get my hands on a printed copy.

This adventure is designed for D&D 3.5/d20 OGC.  This means converting it to Pathfinder is really a non-issue. More to the point we can convert Kyleth from an 8th-level Sorcer to an 8th-level witch.

The main differences here between this adventure and the counterpart Saga adventure, War of the Witch Queen is that this is for D&D 3.5e and Saga is for AD&D 1e. They are the same adventures with very minor tweaks.  

Both send the PCs on a quest to stop and kill Kyleth the self-styled Witch Queen. It is a straightforward dungeon crawl. This is not a weakness, but rather its strength. 

The obvious question is do you need this one if you have Saga of the Witch Queen? I say yes since the systems are different (but can be converted). 

Use in War of the Witch Queens

Well...yeah. In fact, many of the reasons I wanted to do a War of the Witch Queens can be found here. The other obviously was my love for all these witches.

Kyleth is fun because she can be so unapologetically evil. Even if I was not doing this campaign she would be a great reoccurring antagonist.

October Horror Movie Challenge: Witchcraft (1964)

Not expecting much from this one, but it was such a late turn for Lon Chaney Jr. I just had to. Glad I did, I was treated to some nice British Folk Horror. 

The movie deals with the centuries-old rivalry between two British families, the Laniers and the Whitlocks.  The Laniers wanted the Whitlock's land so in the 17th century they accused Vanessa Whitlock (Yvette Rees) of witchcraft.

Fast forward to the 1960s Amy Whitlock (Diane Clare) and Todd Lanier (David Weston) fall in love. Much to the chagrin of Amy's stern (and oddly American) uncle Morgan Whitlock (Lon Chaney Jr.).

The Lanier's are developing parts of their land (modernizing) and accidentally stray onto what is left of the Whitlock's land. In the process uncovering the grave of Vanessa Whitlock.  Later that night Vanessa rises from the grave to exact her revenge! She really was a witch!

It drags a little but turns out the Whitlocks have been pagans since, well, forever and they and some of the locals participate in their rituals to seek revenge against the Laniers.

This all ends in a ritual to bring Vanessa back to true life, but instead the all get trapped in the mausoleum as it, the Whitlock estate, and all the Whitlocks (yes including poor Amy) die in the fire. 

Honestly, it was a great movie and had to be pretty scary for 1964. The practical special effects were quite good. Sure they can't compare to the one we have now 60 years later, but they were still great for the time. The actors all were great in their roles and everything had a great Folk Horror feel about it. The tale itself could be adapted to today without missing a beat really.

If there was any piece of this I felt it was off it was Lon Chaney Jr., he seemed so oddly mis-cast for this. He is just so...American...it is hard to believe his character would have ever not fought the Laniers more. I can't say it was because of lack of work before or after (aka a pity casting that happens to so many older horror icons) because Chaney worked solidly with a movie coming out every year from 1931 to 1971. Sure a year might be skipped, but for many years he had multiple movies in a single year. Plus he was, by all accounts, a great guy and easy to work with.

Regardless, this was a fun little movie and a treat.

Use for NIGHT SHIFT

I have spent a lot of time this month (and the summer) talking about witches and how they will all fit into my War of the Witch Queens.  In doing all of this I have also been thinking of an adventure that I am currently calling "Coda𝄌." The idea here is that one of the Witch Queens (or just witches) defeated by the PCs will come back to challenge the PCs of the modern era using NIGHT SHIFT.  This works best if the Players are all the same.

The premise is simple. One of the witches from back then is back and wants to claim her vengeance.  My witch would come back as something akin to a Zugarramurdi Bruja, and be the dark reflection of my Dark Druid adventure.  Who the witch will be is unknown right now. I want to choose the one the players have the most interaction. If she can be a witch from our world, all the better.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2022
Viewed: 16
First Time Views: 13

Cauldron: Bubble and Boil - Deluxe Edition (2017)

Ah, now this one has a special place in my heart. I backed this on Kickstarter years ago and went in for the deluxe edition. This allowed me to add a character design to one of the cards.

I'll get to that in a bit.

Cauldron: Bubble and Boil - Deluxe Edition (2017)

Cauldron is part of the "new wave" (or at least to me) of board games that have a lot of resource management and various goals.

In this game you take the role of witches and warlocks in a potion-brewing contest. Play involves planting gardens, harvesting ingredients, and hexing your opponents.  There are points you collect and the goal is to win the potion-brewing contest and win the coveted Witches Eye.

There are game pieces that represent ingredients and all players get a little cauldron to put all their materials in. There are four Cauldrons and four player mats, so the max is four players. 

Players start the game with five resource cards. These cards tell you what you can do each turn. They all have a hex, ingredient and recipe. Each player on their turn can choose what to do with the card. They can hex an opponent which could take their ingredients or steal their victory points. They can add an ingredient to their cauldron or get a recipe. They discard and draw another. Then we move to the next player.

The strategy comes from knowing when to complete your own potions or stop another player from theirs.  Hexing another player costs victory points

Once your ingredient is in your cauldron you need to keep track of them.  You are never allowed to look into your cauldron or into other players!  There are also black "Corruption" tokens that can ruin your potions by destroying an ingredient. The player with the most corruption earns 5 points. The player with the least earns 10 points.

Once you have the ingredients in your cauldron (colored cubes) then you can make the potion listed on your card.  BUT be careful! if your ingredients are wrong your potion fails. The goal is to get the most of seven potions.

There are expansions to this as well. Like the Moon Deck which will add or subtract effects from other cards. Like removing corruption or adding extra ingredient colors.  There are other expansions like the Cove pack (which I am a fan of).

It took a bit to get into it but once we did it moved pretty quickly. Our first game took a little bit longer than an hour, and the next one was fast at just under an hour.

The biggest issue were people (who will be nameless) remembering what was in their cauldron.  This was a combination of one not paying attention and another not actually caring what they had in their cauldrons. 

The art for this game is amazing. I really love it.  The characters are interesting as well. 

For Use in War of the Witch Queens

Feeding deep into my Traveller envy today. My idea was that this Potion Making contest is something they have at the Tredecim. Which has grown from just a meeting of high-level witches to something akin to a carnival of seven days where the high witches hold their conferences and meetings, but all witches gather to discuss plans, trade secrets, and generally enjoy themselves. 

I still might do this, but in this round I do not have enough magic using characters to make it work.  Ah well.

100 Days of Halloween: The Witch Queen of Cair Urnahc

Another witch Queen tonight and this time she comes in Pathfinder 1e and D&D 5e versions.  So let's jump right in.

The Witch Queen of Cair Urnahc

For Pathfinder 1st Edition and D&D 5th Edition.

This adventure series was Kickstarted back in 2020.  I am grabbing the versions found on DriveThruRPG. It looks like the PDFs were sent out as soon as the Kickstarter finished from what I can tell.

I will be reviewing both versions and pointing out where the differences lie.

PDF. 84 pages. Color covers and interior art. Levels 3 to 6.

Before I get into the adventure itself I do want to say something about Page 3 which covers the basics of how "Zan's Adventures" work and the layout.  I know there is no reason at all that people need to conform to a "book" layout, especially since many people will read this on some sort of device. The adventures do not follow a book layout per se, but they do add a few things. For starters, color is used more to denote different sorts of outcomes or text. This is great, unless you have some sort of Red-Green color blindness. Rare yes, but these are the things I look for.

But there are some very strong benefits here as well. For example, the NPCs, including the Witch Queen herself, are well-defined in easy-to-read blocks to aid the DM/GM while running the adventure.  Same with the locations. 

The areas are defined as our three main antagonists. It is possible that one or more are freed from their tombs to enact their evil plans. Well we have character sheets in the back for those. Also, there are other NPCs and a ton of monsters to interact with.  Now given that one of the encounters is not 1 but 2 Death Knights, I think this one should be scaled up a bit. When I run it I might use just one Death Knight with skeletal minions.

There is a whole section of possible outcomes and endings. The adventure is not quite a free-form sandbox, your locations are limited, but how the players investigate them are up to them.

The biggest differences in these two come from the NPC and Monster statblocks and how the various skill checks work. All in line with the rules of Pathfinder and D&D.

The end has maps you can print out. There is also an additional product, Map Pack for the Witch Queen of Cair Urnahc for VTTs and Roll20 in particular.  I also find these are good to print. For an extra $2.00 it is worth it to me.

There is an OGL at the end, but the author might want to swap out "DM" in their text for "GM" for OGL compliance.

All in all not a bad adventure. Pretty straight forward to be honest. There are some new monsters so that is fun. I would have liked to see some unique treasure if nothing else the Spellbook of Witch Queen Morfa.

Use in War of the Witch Queens

Evil witch queen coming back from the dead? I wonder how that could happen in my world?  Hmm...

Yes, this is a good candidate for a War of the Witch Queen adventure.It practically is begging me to use it. Since there is no POD version (yet) I can print this out and then do the 5e material on one side and the Pathfinder on the other. But that is also moot since I am going to convert the whole thing over to Old School Essentials anyway.

A note about that.  Whether by design or by happenstance (I am going with design) the game-specific material is usually confined to a single page. So doing a conversion is largely a matter of writing up (or copying) a stat block or converting a DC for a skill check into an ability check. THIS also makes the layout and design more useful to me. 

So yeah, I am rather pleased with this.

100 Days of Halloween: Curse of the Web Witch & Return of the Warlock

Two adventures tonight for me to consider for my War of the Witch Queens and both are from Creation's Edge Games.

Return of the Warlock

PDF. 10 (14 with maps) pages. Color cover. Black & White interior art.
For 4-6 adventurers of levels 2nd to 4th.

A skull taken as a trophy has the trapped spirit of our warlock here, one Kalis Magefire. He has escaped and has taken hostages demanding to fight the heroes that killed him. Too bad those heroes have been dead for years.

The adventure sounds simple enough. The warlock's spirit has taken control over the hall built dedicated to the heroes that defeated him. He know wants to fight those heroes. Failing that you all will do.

Sneak in, defeat the warlock, save the hostages. 

The strength in this adventure will be how easy it can be adapted to nearly any setting or set-up. 

I would recommend that the "heroes" used here be from your own campaign. If you (like most of my fellow graybeards) are now playing with a different group the name drops might not have the same resonance, but it will still be fun.

Curse of the Web Witch

PDF. 10 (14 with maps) pages. Color cover. Black & White interior art.
For 4-6 adventurers of levels 2nd to 4th.

Another mini-adventure that could be run in the afternoon. A cursed artifact from a forgotten god has transformed a priestess into a horrible monster, a web witch!

The PCs have to track her down (not too hard) and destroy the artifact.

This one has a few new monsters including the Web Witch.  All in all quite a fun little romp.

The web witch here is fun and I like the stats, but I think I would rather use the web witches I made a few years before this one.

Again, like the Return of the Warlock this one can be easily adapted to any world. In fact, it is recommended you do so. 

About Dungeons of Dazegoneby

Both of these adventures are part of their "Dungeons of Dazegoneby" line of adventures. Here is what the author Matt Kline has to say about that:

I can remember a time in my distant past when I could head to the local mall walk into one of the two bookstores they had at the time, plunk down around five dollars, and walk out with a brand new Dungeons & Dragons module. Our Dungeons of Dazegoneby line is a tribute to old-school gaming, paying homage to a time filled with graph paper maps, wandering monster tables, hand-drawn character sheets, and lazy afternoons filled with adventure and wonder. We hope you enjoy playing these products as much as we enjoyed making them.

Damn. I could have written that myself! So yeah I get what they are doing here and I am happy they are doing it.  The maps from Dyson Logos really help.

Use in my War of the Witch Queens

Return of the Warlock is an easy one to fit in. The Witch Queen dies and the Warlock breaks free.  The Curse of the Web Witch will need a bit more work, but just a little. With the obvious spider theme here it might a fun one to do with a bunch of new characters, but the same players, after they do the GDQ series. Have this as an artifact of Lolth.

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Witchmaker (1969)

Also known as "The Legend of Witch Hollow" this one is surprisingly risque for 1969. 

Someone is killing young women, draining all their blood, and leaving a "hex mark" on their bodies.  Into this "swampy nowhere" we get Alvy Moore (Mr. Kimball from Green Acres) as Dr. Ralph Hayes a psychic investigator along with him is a  crew of experts including "sensitive" Anastasia aka Tasha (played by German/Norwegian/American/Canadian bombshell Thordis Brandt) and reporter Victor Gordon (Anthony Eisley).  Here they are investigating the story that these murders may have something to do with a witch.

Our killer from the first scene, Luther the Berserk (John Lodge), cast some sort of "Spell of the Stones" on Tasha, but it only makes her scream. He is apparently a "Sabbat Master" so he summons Old Jessie (wow, that sounds SO familiar) played by Helene Winston to help he convert Tasha to their coven, which they pronounce like "k-OH-ven."  They make a deal together. Luther gets Tasha and Jessie gets to be young again (she is 200 now).

Back at the swamp cabin, they try to get a fix on the location of the psychic emanations. Tasha reaches out and Jessie takes control of the vision and makes Tasha scream.     

Later Jessie makes Tasha lure poor student Sharon (Robyn Millan) out to the swamp where Luther kills her.  Her virgin blood now drained Jessie begins the spell to transform her back to youth (becoming Warrene Ott in the process). 

We get a lot of semi-academic exposition from Dr. Hayes that is not too bad really...if this was a documentary and not a horror movie. The acting here is not great though so it all comes off as a bad lecture. 

Luther and Jessie get Tasha to lure out Owen where they kill him and Tasha gets initiated as a witch. When later confronted about Owen's death she spontaneously casts a spell. Something that is ignored almost as fast.

The summoning of the witches and warlocks is really fun. The Luther stuff feels like a different movie to be honest. The cabin folk are so dull and all the witches are wonderfully animated and evil.  

The plan is subistiute wild pig blood for Maggie's blood so when the witches go to drink it, it is poison to them.  This way they take out all the witches except Luther. They manage to get him out into the swamp where the quicksand gets him.  

In the end Tasha turns the tables and kills Victor. She is a full witch now!

--

I am going to forego the usual game application notes here because...I think I already have. I think I have seen this movie. It had to be a long time ago but there is too much here that I vaguely recall.  For example, I always have used ogres and trolls as lackeys for Makava hags like Luther and Jessie. Speaking of Jessie, I used the same name with a slightly different spelling as the witch that introduces Larina to witchcraft in one of my earliest books. She also can change to a younger version of herself, much like the Jessie in this movie. 

Luther the Beserk would be called a Beserker in most D&D games. His good-alinged cousin appears as a Warden or even a Witch Knight in my books. 

There is also the "Tasha" connection, but that is pretty flimsy to be honest.

The posters for this are just too familiar to me.  I am sure I have seen it, but I am going to count it as a First Time View.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2022
Viewed: 14
First Time Views: 11