The Other OSR: HOWL

Sailing in search of work—the ruler of a distant port is said to be offering a generous reward for investigating a great dungeon under the city—the Player Characters find themselves aboard The Erebus, when it is caught in a sudden storm that brews in ferocity until it and its crew, as well as the Player Characters are dashed onto a desolate shore marked only by cliffs! When they awake, cold and sodden, half the crew are dead and half the crew are missing, drag marks in the rough sand the only indication of their fate. As the Player Characters stare up at the cliffs a pair of glowing red eyes appear over the lip and a brutally bulky creature stares down at them before letting out a thunderous howl that shakes their very souls! This is the start of HOWL: A Horror Adventure of Dark Folklore for Cairn. Published by By Odin’s Beard, best known for Runecairn Wardensaga and We Deal in Lead, it was previously available as The Howling Caverns, written for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but has now been adapted to the micro-clone, Cairn. The name of the ship, The Erebus, the high cliffs, and the howling beast all lend themselves to certain inspirations and HOWL is upfront about them. This is a scenario inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Yorkshire port of Whitby where Dracula came ashore after travelling aboard The Erebus, English folklore, and Ravenloft, the classic horror setting for Dungeons & Dragons.

HOWL: A Horror Adventure of Dark Folklore for Cairn begins with the Player Characters aboard The Erebus and have the opportunity to help the ship’s crew and so perhaps help save the ship. Of course, that does not happen, but they may be able to keep some of the crew alive who will help them later ashore. What they also discover once they wake up from the shipwreck, they find a number of skeletons that rise to attack and once defeated, they learn from a note carried by one of the skeletons that they have been cursed! A Barghest—perhaps the beast on the cliff—is abroad and is stalking them. The only solution seems to lie up the narrow cliff path and onwards to the nearby village of Krasnaloz. What is quickly apparent is that the village is run down and its inhabitants disaffected, but they are forthcoming about the Barghest and its legend. This is, that last night, after three days of violent storms, lightning struck a tree and when it fell, it opened up a cave out of which it is said that the Barghest exited and let out its first howl!

The Player Characters have the opportunity to gather more background and clues, many of them freely given by the few staff patrons of the amusingly named ‘The Slaughtered Lamb’. This includes too, the possible means of lifting the cure that they are under and even an offer of help from a bard who recently lost her partner to the Barghest. Other clues can be gathered at a ruined temple, long fallen into disuse, before the Player Characters set out to investigate the caves located in the countryside to the north of the village. Bar a possible encounter or two in the wintery surrounds, the Player Characters will quickly arrive at the cave and begin to explore its depths. The first few chambers in the network show signs of occupation, but have clearly been abandoned, whilst the later ones show signs of exploration and hide secrets. Only in the last chamber will the Barghest be found and in confronting the creature, some secrets will be revealed.

The adventure is linear, but well designed and atmospheric. In the first part, there is a definite feeling of the cold and isolation on a bleak coast, whilst the dungeon itself is a contrasting split between a lair and a magical retreat. The former having abandoned, whilst the latter is being explored, a mixture of puzzles and traps with a dose of the weirdness of the deep thrown in. Altogether, the scenario should provide three or so sessions to play through, a single taking the Player Characters from the shipwreck to the village and the second two sessions into the cave system. At the end though, HOWL may leave the players and their characters unsatisfied. There is resolution, but not one likely to leave them happy. In part, this is due to the fact that HOWL is the first part of an extended campaign, and as yet, the sequel, Colossus Wake, has not been adapted from Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. In part, because the Player Characters are going to feel manipulated by the end of the scenario and without that sequel, there is no way in which they can address the issue themselves.

Physically, HOWL is very cleanly and tidily presented. The layout is excellent and although the location descriptions for the cave do not include individual excerpts from the main dungeon map, there is a relationship diagram showing the links between one room and another. The artwork is decent and the maps are good too. The NPC and monster stats are listed at the back, so the Game Master will need to flip back and forth.

As a scenario for the Old School Renaissance, HOWL is easy to adapt to other retroclones, but as a scenario for Cairn, with a little effort, it could easily be adapted to Into the Odd and run more like a scenario for Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales. Overall, HOWL: A Horror Adventure of Dark Folklore for Cairn pleasingly combines Gothic horror with fantasy horror in a very easy-to-use format.