Friday Fantasy: Brought to Light

Brought to Light enables you to visit the great city of Eversink not once, but four times. The city stands at the mouth of the Serpentine River where it flows into Bay of Coins, cut through by canals crossed over by numerous bridges from one plaza to another, filled with flotillas of boats and gondolas, spoiled by outpourings of human and other waste waiting to be flushed out to sea, all to the sound of merchants, high and low, hawking their wares, and the chants of the priests. This as its cellars and basements continue to sink into the mire, despite the best efforts of the engineers of The Guild of Architects and Canal-Watchers. Eversink is a city of feuds and rivalries and secrets, some secrets hidden in the rooms of buildings swallowed by the swamp upon which the city stands and a city of laws and traditions so complex and convoluted that no city official can expect to remember them all. The only crime that agreed upon and widely known is that of Sorcery, for hand-in-hand with Sorcery comes Corruption, and if a Sorcerer chooses not to internalise it, he must instead externalise it and that spiritually scars the surrounding terrain and brings the attention of the Inquisitors for it scars the blessings of the city’s patron goddess, Denari—and that may be Eversink’s ultimate secret. This is the setting for Swords of the Serpentine, the swords and sorcery roleplaying game of daring heroism, sly politics, daring thievery, incriminating secrets, feuding houses of the nobility, rampant corruption, and bloody savagery, set in a fantasy city full of skulduggery and death, that uses the GUMSHOE System and is published by Pelgrane Press.

It is also the setting for Brought to Light, an anthology of one-shot scenarios for Swords of the Serpentine. All four were originally run as demonstration scenarios at Gen Con and all four run the gamut of the roleplaying game’s tiers of play, from Fledgling to Sovereign. Which means that they showcase a range of Player Character types, campaign set-ups, and power levels in the setting of Eversink. Each scenario is structured the same way. This includes its adventure premise, setting, tone and hints for running the game—including inspirations, plot summary with a plot map, a breakdown of both the primary adversaries and the heroes, and how to start the scenario. This is followed by map of the scenario’s various scenes and the scenes themselves, the scenes further broken down skill by skill and how they apply and what the Player Characters will learn and lastly six pre-generated Player Characters specific to the scenario. Each scenario also includes a handout.

The anthology opens with ‘Ragamuffins’. Written for the Fledgling tier, it casts the Player Characters as urchins surviving as best they can on the streets of Eversink. Opening in exciting fashion with a rooftop chase, the Urchins find their home in Sag Harbour, the worst district in the city, has been robbed! This includes a precious MacGuffin that makes them feel safe in their hovel. The culprits are their regular bullies and the Urchins have to track down both and what the pair has done with the item, which ultimately leads to a horrible conspiracy underground. ‘Ragamuffins’ mixes grime and children’s own adventure in engaging fashion.

‘Murder Most Foul!’ takes the classic country murder mystery and gives it an Eversink twist, making it a locked-room—or rather locked-mansion—mystery. Master Pietro Contrari is the most famous and most successful freelance detective in the history of Eversink, having solved over nine hundred murders in thirty-five year career! He is holding a sixtieth birthday party at his mansion and the Player Characters’ patrons want to know the secret of Contrari’s success and so have got them invitations. The Player Characters are, of course, no slouches when it comes to investigations, and of course, there will be murder. Which sounds like a fantasy version of 1976’s Murder by Death. So, there is a ball at which everyone can circulate, a murder that Master Pietro Contrari is bound to solve, and a whole mansion to explore and investigate. This is a mansion crawl in which three investigations are running in parallel—one that of Contrari into the death, the second of the Player Characters into the death, and the third of the Player Characters into Contrari himself—with the first being separate from each. The scenario even ends with a, “But tell me inspector, what I don’t understand is…” scene in which the Player Characters get to turn it back on the master detective. This is an entertaining pastiche of all the genre clichés.

‘Smuggler’s End’ is another classic murder mystery style investigation, but here the Player Characters are members of the City Watch instructed by a very rare letter from the Triskadane, the city’s highly secret, anonymous rulers, to solve the death. The body is that of nobleman with a rakish and criminally connected reputation, now dressed in rags and seemly dumped on the streets of Sag Harbour with a knife in his back. How did the victim get there and who killed him? Add into the mix a sister whose haughty manner is going to make the players hate her, let alone their characters, who wants the body back for burial and will get it back in two days, and what you have is classic police style procedural in which justice crashes into city politics.

Politics rears its ugly head again in the fourth and final scenario in the anthology. ‘Takedown’ switches the Tier up to Sovereign and has the Player Characters take command of their greater resources rather than go toe-to-toe in direct combat—whether that is physical, verbal, or sorcerous—as they are constantly harried and harassed by their enemies. Again, the Player Characters are instructed by Triskadane, the city’s highly secret, anonymous rulers, to investigate and act against Judge Lorenzo Spina, Lord High Magistrate of Eversink—one of the most power, visible figures in the city. As creepily conveyed by a child, the Triskadane has foreseen that he poses a severe threat to the city. The scenario does not have a structure so much as it considers what actions the Player Characters might take and how their various Investigative and General abilities can be applied to the investigation, what they will learn in the process, and how Spina is likely to retaliate once he becomes aware of their activities. So, bar the initial one, there are no other scenes and the investigation and play process will be much more open. Tonally, ‘Takedown’ is much darker than the other scenarios and it probably the one on its own which could be expanded from a direct four hour affair into a mini-campaign. It is effectively a freeform played at the table and so requires greater input by the Game Master.

Physically, Brought to Light is very well laid out, nicely illustrated, and the individual organisation of the scenarios eases the Game Master’s job. However, as much as their portraits impart a feel for the pre-generated Player Characters, none of them have any ready background that is accessible to the players. Each does have some background—it is given in the breakdown of the heroes at the start of each scenario. So, whilst useful for the Game Master, she has to find a way to impart that to the players of these characters. Another issue is the lack of maps. All of the scenarios are to be run theatre of the mind, but in some cases, such as the mansion in ‘Murder Most Foul!’, map could have been useful given its location-based play.

The problem with Brought to Light is that not that it is a collection of bad scenarios; quite the contrary. These are all good, entertaining scenarios. Rather that it consists of one-shots, convention scenarios, and whilst they can used as the basis or starting points for ongoing campaigns, they are not easy to add to a campaign. Which ultimately means that Brought to Light is not as flexible as a more general anthology of scenarios might be. Nevertheless, Brought to Light is a good showcase for Swords of the Serpentine, capturing not just some of its possible set-ups, but also the feel and flavour of Eversink, its grottiness and grandeur, corruption and capriciousness, power and pettiness, and more.