Fromage Affray

Although there is no scenario in the rulebook for Shadow of the Demon Lord, the first RPG released by Schwalb Entertainment following a successful Kickstarter campaign, one of the excellent decisions upon the part of the designer has been to release support—and release it early—in the form of scenarios for the game. This way a gaming group can get playing quickly, even if they are just using the core rules presented in Victims of the Demon Lord: Starter Guide plus the adventure. In addition, the publisher has also released Tales of the Demon Lord, a complete mini-campaign that takes a party of characters from Zero Level up to Eleventh Level. In the meantime, the nineteenth adventure is The Demon’s Wet Nurse.

The Demon’s Wet Nurse is written by Stan!, best known as a co-author of titles such as Urban Arcana for d20 Modern and author of Call of Cthulhu scenarios like Midnight Harvest and Murder of Crows. It is the fourth adventure written for characters who have entered the Novice Path, of First and Second Level and then selected their first or Novice Path—Magician, Priest, Rogue, or Warrior. It comes as a nine page, 14.50 MB PDF and is designed as a standalone adventure that slots easily into a campaign as an encounter when the player characters are travelling between more important destinations. 

The setting for The Demon’s Wet Nurse is Ephraim’s Fork, a small trading town that stands at the intersection of three well travelled roads. Initially, the player characters find it to be healthy and thriving, but after interacting with both the townsfolk and fellow travellers it becomes apparent that the town is beset by a flux that causes sufferers to evacuate themselves, sometimes bloodily, at both ends. Is Ephraim’s Fork subject to an outbreak of dysentery, the bloody flux, or something worse? Well… Of course, it is something worse—this is a scenario for Shadow of the Demon Lord after all.

Essentially, The Demon’s Wet Nurse is divided into two parts. The first involves the player characters traipsing back and forth across Ephraim’s Fork, interviewing locals and visitors alike in search of clues. Once the adventurers have found enough information, then they have reason to track the origins of the disease to its source and there have a vilely lactosed encounter with the real villain of the piece. This is a horrid, fecund encounter and might just put the player characters off child care, let alone the players…

The Demon’s Wet Nurse is a longer, more detailed adventure than the others released for Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is because it more details the town of Ephraim’s Fork for future use than it does provide a convoluted plot, which is really quite straightforward. The details though should help the GM given description to some messy encounters and nicely serve to dish up another slice of body horror, all blood and bodily fluids.