Forest of Fear

From Leicester and Newark in the north, to Oxford and St. Albans in the south, from Banbury and in Kineton in the west to Beford and Peterborough in the east, the forests have become one and as one, they are beginning to spread beyond their former boundaries. As the Forest Sauvage grows wild and unchecked, strangling paths and ripping up fields and starving villages, returning the heart of Logres into a wild forest of years past. When travellers wander too close to its eaves, they wonder where they are and in whose lands they journey, whilst the lords upon whose lands the forest borders worry at the encroaching undergrowth and canopy, fearful that what they hold by right will be lost and turned into an impassably dense morass of trees. Yet this is not a natural phenomenon. The kingdom of Logres has been weakened for decades now, ever since the death of King Uther Pendragon. Not just in terms of power and control, but also spiritually. It is this weakness that Madog de Sauvage, a lord of the fae, has taken advantage of to extend his kingdom into the mortal realms. As the newly crowned king, Arthur seeks to unite and restore his father’s kingdom, but this new realm, this Forest Sauvage, threatens his kingdom from within.

This is the set-up for Pendragon: The Sauvage King, a sandbox campaign framework that expands the world of King Arthur Pendragon and Pendragon, Sixth Edition thematically and chronologically. It can be run using the Pendragon Starter Set or the core rulebooks. As a supplement, Pendragon: The Sauvage King takes content from the start of the highly regarded Great Pendragon Campaign, which explores the spread and threat of the Forest Sauvage and updates it to Pendragon, Sixth Edition. In the previous Pendragon: The Grey Knight, the Player-Knights did enter the realm of the Fairy, but only in a small way, here they confront its power, its majesty, and its unreality in full force. They will discover its growing influence at the edge of the Forest Sauvage as they probe its fringes, hopefully in the process finding a way past the fringes and ever deeper under its canopy, in the process discovering what has happened to the former counties of Lambor, Tribruit, and Wuerensis, as well as their lords, and ultimately forge a path to the court of King Madog de Sauvage.

‘The Forest Sauvage’ is not the only content in Pendragon: The Sauvage King, but it is its feature content. Narratively, its starting point is the spread of the Forest Sauvage, but for the Game Master and her Player-knights, there are multiple starting points and ways into the Forest Sauvage. Four introductory adventures are divided between motivations and plot hooks that are personal or directed. The personal might be that the King Sauvage has kidnapped a Player-Knight’s child and replaced them with a Changeling, compelling the Player-Knight and his companions to go in search of them, whilst the directed include Saint Dubricus and Merlin the Magician becoming worried about the spread of the Forest Sauvage or King Arthur becoming concerned when an ally asks for help or contact is threatened with an important county, and so the Player-Knights are asked to investigate. The plot hook with the replacing of a Player-Knight’s child with a Changeling is likely the one with most interesting and radical of outcomes since it can lead to the creation of an interesting heir. The other adventures in ‘The Forest Sauvage’ take place inside the Forest Sauvage, typically in the towns and villages which have become trapped within the forest realm. Moving through the forest is challenging because like other fairy realms, it is very easy to lose track of time, and unlike the typical adventure for Pendragon, supplies matter. This is also a campaign where the Hunting skill is very important and the Folklore skill a close second. The Player-Knights will need to proceed with civility and their honour and their reputation will be tested throughout.

With multiple entry points, ‘The Forest Sauvage’ can be run by the Game Master more than once, each time with a different starting point. There is the possibility that a group of Player-Knights might try more than one starting point if they fail to make progress with another. The majority of the adventures are short and can be run in a single session, sometimes less than a single session. This does leave some room for the Game Master to insert content of her own, which can be the other two adventures in the book, generated from the tables at the back of the book, or selected from The Companions of Arthur community content. The capacity for this drops the deeper the Player-Knights travel into the Forest Sauvage. Multiple entry points and plot threads means that many of the almost thirty adventures in ‘The Forest Sauvage’ will not be run. That said, the Game Master can take some of adventures she has not run and adapt them to be run later in her campaign. The Game Master will also need to work harder with ‘The Forest Sauvage’ to set it up for her players and their knights than with other content for Pendragon as it is not linear. Fortunately, ‘The Forest Sauvage’ does guide the Game Master through the set-up process and along the possible plot threads. All of the mini-adventures are neatly organized into sections that in turn cover their Setting, Characters, Secrets, Problems, Solutions, and Glory rewards. Often the section of Solutions suggests multiple ways in which issues outlined in the preceding Problems section can be resolved. Many of the mini-adventures are short enough to run from the page.

Another issue in running ‘The Forest Sauvage’ is chronological. Since its events are triggered by the death of King Uther Pendragon in 495 C.E., it can be run from any time then onwards, particularly from 508 C.E. This gives it some flexibility, though if ‘The Sword Campaign’ of the Pendragon Starter Set and Pendragon: The Grey Knight, is being run, the likelihood is that the Player-Knights are going to be occupied! Later in the timeline, after the events of Pendragon: The Grey Knight, as Pendragon: The Sauvage King acknowledges, Merlin is not present in 517 or 518 C.E., so that limits the plot hook involving Merlin for the campaign.

As a campaign, ‘The Forest Sauvage’ present the Player-Knights with a ride range of challenges, whether that is gambling over games of knucklebones in ‘A Game of Chance’ or playing a game of skill to win knowledge in ‘A Scholarly Opinion’, searching for lost dogs in ‘The Baron’s Hounds’, literally overcoming indolence in ‘The Castle of Ease’, racing horses in ‘The Castle of the Race’, evacuating a village about to overtaken by the forest in ‘Cutting Through’, defeating a magical boar in ‘Horror at Alcester’, and more. They will find that many of the lords whose lands lie on the edge of the forest have reacted in many different ways and so have to be entreated in different ways too. This is a mystic maze of often soporific befuddlement, but in turn ‘The Forest Sauvage’ will also horrify and bewitch its Player-Knights.

In addition to ‘The Forest Sauvage’, Pendragon: The Sauvage King also contains two other adventures. Both could be used as introductory adventures, added to an existing campaign, or used in conjunction with ‘The Forest Sauvage’. The latter is quite easy because both adventures take place close to the borders of the Forest Sauvage. Both can also be played through in a single session. In ‘The Adventure of Black Annis’, the townsfolk of Leicester implore the Player-Knights to come to their aid in dealing with a horrifying hag who has been preying on lone travellers and children. Any encounter with her is likely to devolve into a nasty fight and she may even turn the tables and hunt the Player-Knights. She can be defeated though, but dealing with her permanently is an undertaking in itself. The Player-Knights have an opportunity to participate in a moon-lit horse race across the countryside from the Great White Horse of Uffington. This will test much more than the Player-Knights’ Horsemanship skill—though both it and their horses are greatly tested—but this is a thrilling flit across the landscape. Lastly, ‘Other Scenarios’ presents a handful of adventures, some of which could be run more than once as they include tables for generating their precise details.

Physically, Pendragon: The Forest Sauvage is well very presented. The artwork is excellent and the illuminations entertaining. The maps are decent and add much to the manuscript-like feel of the book.

After the rush of the Pendragon Starter Set and the Pendragon: The Grey Knight, which together laid the foundations of what is to come with the Great Pendragon Campaign, what Pendragon: The Sauvage King feels like is the difficult second album. It is both more challenging to use and more challenging to fit into a campaign, primarily because of the open framework of ‘The Forest Sauvage’, but also because rather a single beginning and middle, it has multiple beginnings and middles. Picking and choosing between these require set-up and development effort upon the part of the Game Master, but the rewards are ultimately worth it, because with more choice, comes the scope to tailor the campaign framework of ‘The Forest Sauvage’ to the players and their knights. Supported by other content, in particular, two good adventures, Pendragon: The Sauvage King is a campaign in which the Player-Knights can confront a threat to the realm like no other in a framework that lets them make its story their own.