Beyond this portal lies the realm of Kashrin.
        Servant of the Old Gods. Guardian of the Hidden Lore.

Realizing the need to defend the large fortress, the party began to recruit and train a militia from the villagers. Four teens began training in archery under instruction from Mizfaer the Elf, while eight of the able-bodied adults began drilling under the watchful eye of former mercenary, Dollar.

Mizfaer also received a vision from the King of Elfland, calling to restore the altar formerly dedicated to the Druids of Nyrwood.

Seeking to focus their attention on pressing matters, salt-and-pepper haired Karpheelia, a wise sage and acting village-elder, approached the party with an appeal for help. She explained the dire conditions and looming threat of winter, and asked them to protect a small caravan bound for the walled town of Trinn, to trade for much needed supplies. Karpheelia also explained that the Great Wizard Raladash dwelt there, and being a friend of the Old Man might be counted on to provide assistance in some manner.

A small expedition then: two wagons and a half-dozen villagers led by Jamto the merchant. Their path: travel through the Nyrwood to the ruins of their former village, then follow the rutted track to the crossroads at Valmo, crossing the great ravine there to take the dusty road to Trinn.

Until reaching the fogged-in outskirts of Valmo, their journey had been uneventful. Instead of the expected warm welcome from neighbors, their noses were met with the stench of burning flesh, and the village lay in ruin. A great pyre consumed the undead flesh of a good number of Obiesh, the bridge guarded by a band of ruddy-skinned Hobgoblin Mercenaries and a band of enslaved villagers being forced to repair the stones of the broken bridge. Cautiously, the party sent a small delegation to parlay, while Van the Thief and Mizfaer the Elf took up hidden positions in striking distance. Gruffly, the Hobgoblin captain claimed to be the King of Valmo and demanded a toll of ten gold pieces to cross. Not wishing to be fleeced for such an exorbitant fee, the party offered to enlarge one of the helpless villagers to aid in the reconstruction work. This was a great success and openly marvelling at the tripled size of a strong-backed villager, the Hobgoblin captain reduced the toll to a single gold piece per traveler.

Disgusted by the plight of the enslaved villagers, Mizfaer loosed an arrow toward the Hobgoblins, who were taken by surprise by the act of perfidy. A vicious battle erupted, that ended with Van and Dollar badly injured, but all three Hobgoblins slain. The villagers had slipped away during the fight, their chains being broken by the freshly minted giant in their midst. Tossing the bodies onto the pyre, they continued over the makeshift repair to cross the ravine for the Trinn Road.

Trinn was bedecked and bustling in celebration of the festival of Seventhmoon. While Jamto and villagers separated to make their trades, the party sought out healing from the Sisters of Divine Mercy. En route, they were met by a strangely-captivating young-man, dressed in tattered motley who implored them to attend his entertainments of the chime of the forth-bell. While some measure of healing was bestowed by the sisters, some of the party who aligned with the Lords of Chaos were sternly commanded to leave.

At the very chime of the forth-bell, our party had wandered into a small plaza to attend to a strange show with grotesque puppets. As the previously encountered man-in-motley delivered an intriguing introduction, the PCs became disoriented as reality twisted around them. The puppets began to take on the appearance of more real and terrifying forms...

"My friends, I give you the Court of Chaos…"

Sentries tumbled into the void, as the party forced their way into the final keep and barred the heavy doors behind them. After carefully traversing the dimly-lit throne room (and receiving a fair amount of foreshadowing of being stalked by... something), they freed a captive Roc in a rare moment where the Lords of Chaos must have been distracted. Returning to the throne room, they were ambushed by a stealthy and quick-witted hag, who managed to rake her claws across the Gravedigger's face, plucking out his eyes in a vicious strike. The rest of the party dispatched her quickly and found the wherewithal to douse her in flames to prevent her regeneration.

Thus, we come into the final battle. Ascending a winding stair around the outside of a great tower, to the sounds of the howling wind and booming voices of ritual from the summit they marched. The Old Man lay upon a sacrificial altar, loomed-over by the Seventh Thrall holding a sharp blade in one hand and an ebony chalice in another. He was flanked by two mighty captains of the Obiesh. Hurling themselves forwards, our party scored an early and incredibly lucky success to lasso the cup from the hands of the undead chieftain, thereby sparing the life of the Old Man by interrupting the ritual. Bravely they did battle, dispatching first one captain then another, until they cornered the Litch. Sensing his moment of triumph evaporating, he hurled himself into the fray but was quickly overcome by the desperate rage of former villagers.

His fate was to be pushed over the edge of the tower by a polearm that sunk into his undying flesh.

They arrived as desperate, fearful villagers, and yet few – the brave, foolhardy or lucky few that survived – now stood as conquerors of Castle Nyr. Not heroes perhaps, but adventurers bold.

Upon discovering that they had returned to the castle entrance, they doubled back, ascending to the castle proper. Hearing the sounds of Obiesh tomfoolery coming from a great hall, the party used the Bone Wand found in the rubble of the Old Man's Tower to enlarge the Cobbler to triple his size! In a fearsome clash, they leapt upon the stumbling drunken Obiesh that emerged from the Great Hall, despatching them with the ruthless efficiency of hardened adventurers. Not even the Obiesh Warrior Queen and her retinue could withstand their onslaught.

Following Anja, the Old Man's familiar, they bounded up the stairs of a cyclopean tower. The Elf at the front of the party encountered a strange statue with a longsword plunged deep within, a puddle of viscous black fluid oozing from the wound. With a determined tug she withdrew the sword, and was immediately confronted by a terrifying vision of the statue in a cursed glade – its eye flicking open to reveal glowing red orbs. Terrified to her core by the sinister power of the retrieved sword and its hunger for the otherworldly soul of Sezrekan himself, she led the party to the upper floor of the Citadel and out into the howling gale of the night...

Despite swelling their ranks with rescued compatriots from the village, our band lost a halfling, a woodsman, a farmer as well as two of the rescued villagers in the battles with the Obiesh. Only time will tell if they still have sufficient strength in numbers for the final battles ahead.

The Outlaw plunged in. His search in ink-dark water at the bottom was rewarded when his fingers brushed against a strange, wavy-bladed dagger. Upon examination the pommel held an eerie red gem, inlaid with a sliver of onyx to resemble the eye of a great cat. A mere treasure, or perhaps something more?

As the halfling Yarias pleaded for his life, the fickle hand of the Three Fates intervened to help usher our Gravedigger further along his darkening path. How the Lords of Chaos must have chuckled when his shovel blow, intended to merely render their new captive unconscious, instead split his skull and ended one of the threads of this story.

Venturing deeper into the cavern, the party encountered the source of their torch being extinguished earlier. Before them lay a steaming and bubbling pool of water from which boiling geysers would burst forth, pushing out a hot mist deep in the caves. At the center of this churning cauldron, a hoard of glittering treasure heaped upon a small island – belonging to whom?

As the Outlaw and halfling excitedly began filling their pouches with treasure, the surface of the burbling pool became more and more agitated until a column of hissing water erupted between the island and the shore. With a hissing shriek the skeletal form of a dragon unfurled its bony wings and issued an enraged shriek of challenge to the would-be thieves. Perhaps not realizing that OSR stands for "Oh Shit Run!" our players decided to throw-down against the colossal revenant in a bitter battle to keep their ill-gotten gains. Focusing on the two thieves, it spat forth gouts of boiling steam, and whipped its snarling maw forth to savage its victims with ancient chipped fangs. In an unforgiving battle, both the Outlaw and the Gravedigger were slain, but through sheer weight of numbers, desperation and greed, the party finally battered the Bone Dragon into the pool to resume its eternal slumber.

Death it seems is not necessarily final for those blessed by the Druids of the Nyrwood. Both the Outlaw and Gravedigger had received the blessing of the Druid of Chaos, and both were restored barely to life as their reward. Thus, many treasures were filched. The larcenous halfling claimed the Dwarven-forged sword Rautanfir, imbued with the fighting spirit of a legendary warrior. The Gravedigger chose to place a circlet engraved with symbols of Sezrekan upon his head; an act of self-coronation or perhaps a declaration of fealty. Are the Lords of Chaos and Law already appointing their champions?

Growing in confidence, our band stormed up stone stairs, an onrushing tide of greed and rage, crashing upon the fortress's gaoler in a bloody wave. After a brief melee, they slew the brutish and corpulent half-ogre right beside his last meal, before storming toward the cell-block. Three new recruits from a nearby village swelled their ranks, while the Gravedigger parlayed with a dwarven Obiesh who pleaded for freedom in return for an unlife of service. Perhaps displeased by the fawning display of supplication, or instead wishing to further attract the gaze of the Lords of Chaos, our Gravedigger gave his answer in the form of a pitchfork to the face.

With agility and a little cunning ropework, the party slipped down into the oubliette. They traversed over to the corridor that led to a thick and banded wooden door, upon which – and with uncharacteristic politeness for this group – they knocked. "I've been waiting for you. Do come in," came the reply from a firm and almost ethereal voice. As to where this all leads, we shall discover next session.

I think the map turned out great. The road section formed dangerous firelanes for the two snipers with enough cover from woods, hills and buildings to make positioning interesting.

We both opened with rapid advances. My Marauder covering the road, while the Stalker swept over onto the left flank to try to engage Gene's Thunderbolt before his Awesome could get into position to melt us down with its three PPCs. Alas, no good plan survives contact with the enemy. My attempt at indirect fire with the Marauder acting as spotter was a dismal failure, and the Marauder was unable to make much of a dent in the Thunderbolt that we'd caught by itself. With my Marauder coming off far worse than the Thunderbolt in the ensuing exchange of fire, I decided to go all out to try to inflict maximum damage before the Awesome could link up and cause us even more problems. This proved to be a costly mistake, causing the shutdown of both of my mechs in the same turn from heat and allowing both the Thunderbolt and Awesome to close on the prone mechs and hammer them with fire as they sizzled in the steaming mud.

Gene succumbed to the same frenzy of poor heat management that cost me tempo and position as he cycled through the Thunderbolt's loadout to try to score a kill. It went down hard, injuring the pilot. My cooled mechs restarted, the Marauder standing while the pilot of the Stalker failed his PSR to come crashing down again. Sensing a kill, Gene focused his mechs on my battered Marauder until the Awesome finally put a PPC into the cockpit, killing the pilot in a mech that was otherwise pummelled but fully operational.

My Stalker was able to score a second Hip crit that began a death-spiral for the Thunderbolt as it crashed down again, its pilot taking a fourth wound and blacking-out. The Stalker was in bad shape with no center torso armor left whatsoever thanks to a few PPC hits but otherwise in fighting shape. The game degenerated into a highly-tactical battle of position between the Awesome and the Stalker, as they hunted for maximum advantage between two bands of woods. As a side-show, the Stalker was able to tear chunks off the prone Thunderbolt when the Awesome declined to present a target. Slowly that Thunderbolt succumbed: losing its right torso, then one leg after the other, until engine crits finally took it out of the fight. Gene's Awesome wasn't able to score a killing blow on my compromised Stalker, while I was able to tear into his armor in multiple locations. After five hours of intense combat and a game that could easily go either way, we decided to call for a draw and grab some dinner.

All-in-all a fun game. We made some rules mistakes around LOS and cover but nothing too serious. We both felt like our heat management was pretty abysmal and cost us dearly in critical parts of the game. I think I made a major mistake in bringing the Marauder in too close to the Thunderbolt. I should have let it close on me while the Stalker caught up. That would have dragged the direct line the Awesome needed to slog across the battlefield to reach us. Lessons learned for sure.

Looking forward to playing again, probably with a lighter force and more mechs.

While seeking shelter on a sacred hill, we gained our first real taste of the touch of the Chaos Lords upon the group, as the Gravedigger decided to act upon the Alchemist's innocent observation that a sacrifice may be required at the altar of the ancient Druids. An unwitting Mendicant had already volunteered as sacrifice by climbing onto the altar to take a well-deserved nap – a sleep they would never awaken from – as the Gravedigger murdered him there before his kith. One cannot easily say whether the bolt of lightning that struck the altar from the heavens was truly a curse upon the perpetrator, or perhaps a salute to this newly corrupted soul.

A further day of slogging through muddy tracks brought our band to the gates of the ancient and semi-ruined Castle Nyr. Confounded by roaming undead sentries and winged beasts soaring over their heads, they sought a narrow cliffside path around the side of the great rock upon which the Citadel stood. With guile, they set upon languorous Obiesh shirking their duty to enjoy an evening meal of roasted halflings. The artifice of hiding two of the party's own halflings in sacks on the trail, while causing a commotion such that the alarmed undead would hurry past in pursuit, permitted a cunning ambush ending with a swift hurling of the Obiesh into the yawning void below!

At first the three rescued halflings were elated to join the party... that is until the Chaos-tinged Gravedigger started tormenting them like a cat toys with a mouse. Seeing how they had merely escaped from the roasting-pole to the fire, two of the rescued halflings seized their last opportunity to flee, while their lone comrade stayed behind as a captive distraction. I imagine, we shall learn more of his fate, later.

As to our band, we leave them deep in a dank cavern beneath the Citadel for now, amongst faerie-touched springs and strange pools, while the rocks shudder and steam hisses from the darkness. More confident in their growing abilities, yet with the cracks of division spreading between their ranks, for they have all chosen a most perilous path. For some, perhaps, a path far more perilous than others.

The battered survivors have vowed to rescue The Old Man...somehow. For justice! For revenge! For glory! For spells!

We have room for a couple of other players. This is an excellent time to drop-in and try something new.

Nostalgia was strong when playing Space Hulk, still one of my favorite games in a narrow category. I managed to make one extremely poor move in the second game we played, which totally collapsed my position within two turns. This game is brutally unforgiving of mistakes, especially those made by the Space Marine player. An absolute classic that I hope to see back in print someday.

On a total impulse I ran a 4-hour popup game of Mothership's The Haunting of Ypsilon 14, and I have to say I'm sold on its tri-fold format. Just enough information to allow me to run the game almost totally cold, without being too cluttered to scan in the moment. I could easily run this as an eight hour session with more (OK, any) forethought and prep. The first piece of advice I have for anyone running this for the first time is to make a plan for where all the workers are when the PCs arrive. Think in shifts. The Team Leader Sonya doesn't have a written pitch for the PCs, and I think she makes for a weak patron anyway. Much better to have an NPC disappear while the PCs are unloading their delivery and getting sign-offs.

My third run of Within the Charnel of Dreams was a solid success, at least by my estimation. Running Ypsilon 14 the night before left me confidently fluent in the rules, and previous tweaks had streamlined the game substantially. Without spoilers, all three groups I've run this for have executed mostly similar plans to survive the worsening situation in the prison complex. Unlike in prior runs, this group really didn't rage against the dying of the light, instead roleplaying their descent into self-serving compliance with storytelling finesse. The grotesque additions I made to the madhouse that is the berthed freighter really delivered, as this group avoided many other parts of the complex where other groups had discovered meaningful information. The group was gracious enough to give me some useful suggestions for further tuning. I'm not sure I'll run it again at a con next year, but I will aim to publish the scenario... maybe in that neat tri-fold format if I can make it work.

As a total palette cleanser from the gnawing death-spiral horror of my game, I dove headlong into a DCC After Dark session – Blood for the Serpent King to be exact. The whole group knew exactly why they were there, and our Judge delivered all the gonzo, pulpy old-school goodness we could want: from Ziggurats, belligerent Serpent-Men and larceny-gone-wrong related consequences. I am seriously contemplating running Crypt of the Devil Lich with Jon Wilson's crew next year.

Over the last few years, my goal at tabletop cons has been to try at least one new thing each time. I mostly failed this year, but last year that one new thing was the scavenge and skirmish miniatures game Zona Alfa. I met Tim dePertuis last year, who introduced me to not only the game but the inspirational source material: the novel Roadside Picnic and Andrei Tarkovsky's mesmerizing adaptation – Stalker (which is now one of my absolute favorite movies of all time). This year I had the privilege to play again at Tim's stunning Zona Alfa table, complete with buildings glowing from the inside with insidious witches brew, and the forgotten corpses of unlucky flatniks. My three-man crew managed to mostly avoid the lure of vodka caches and racked up a respectable score in loot from anomalies and other mission objectives. My fellow players were new to the game, and I think we all shared in the enjoyment of gamers discovering something new and awesome together.

My good friend Matt Steele was running multiple seminars over the weekend on how to GM. I stopped by his round-table discussion on DM 101. We discussed problems ranging from dealing with the needs of younger players around emotionally sensitive subjects like character death, setting up your first group, and how to move beyond rote mechanical cycles of listening at doors, checking for traps, etc., to breathe atmosphere and energy in basic dungeoneering games. I'm somewhat inspired to run a seminar on how to describe action in RPGs to build drama and player-engagement, while relaying the most important information at the right time.

All-in-all it was a good con for me. I was able to connect with friends and reconnect with most of my pre-pandemic DCC group from Fremont Game Kastle for some much needed reunion time. The absence in our party is a void that can never be filled.

This coming weekend, I'm excited to be running Mythic Bastionland for a recorded playtest project I'm tackling with good friends, the brainchild of the aforementioned Matt Steele. More on that once we start to release our videos.

As an extra bonus to close out the weekend, I was able to watch the newly released trailer for the next Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries DLC – Chaos Reign. PGI really pulled off a coup here. I'll have a lot more to say about this in a future post. Information is ammunition.

I debuted this game to friends at the Dead of Winter Horror Invitational last December, and also ran it at Dundracon earlier this year for a great group that really leaned into the genre. I intend to publish this scenario (and several other convention one-shots I've run over the years) under a Creative Commons license on this site in the future.

Stop by and say hello if you're at Kubla.

• Absolutely classic modules with some narrative glue to tie them together
• Purple Planet (pulpy swords and planets setting)
• Lankhmar (gritty, urban fantasy without Clerics)
• Chained Coffin (Appalachian-inspired fantasy)
• Dying Earth (Jack Vance's sci-fantasy setting)

Come meet for Session Zero. We'll see if we vibe and can figure out our flavor of DCC insanity together. My preference is for some classic modules or go wild with Purple Planet, as there's a vast array of material to play through. I probably can be bribed.

We already have 3 interested players!