Malice & Miasma

The people and land of Painyme roil in fear and resentment as the Last Day draws near. Already, the first and youngest of the lascivious and unruly Lamentides, Pestilence, has escaped his imprisonment at the hands of his parents Life and Death’ leaving many of his siblings to only reach out to the real world when he can instead touch it and breath pox and disease upon the land and the living. Already Death has closed the First Gate to Heall and turned the dead away, leaving the unquiet dead to wander forcing the Gravediggers’ Guild to not just inter the dead in the ground, but also to prevent them from rising again. As the peasantry wail and a crusade has been declared by the Templars upon the Traitor Gods, those that killed Immortal, their father and grandfather and revelled in his death, and their worshippers, the Gravediggers’ Guild has turned to those heretics who have abjured their dissenting faith and are willing to serve instead of being thrown on the pyre. Already, the Templars’ crusade has killed its first god, but not Pestilence. Pestilence still stalks the land and worse, may be responsible for one of the greatest losses that the Ecclesiarch, His Excellency Boniface Pontfex IV, has faced to date. The border kingdom, Lethe, vanished fifty years ago in yet to be explained circumstances, consumed by the Weald surrounding the Petty Baronies before the great city of Assartum. Yet whilst Lethe is thought long lost, there is a chance that it can be saved and restored to the mortal world in a great defeat to Pestilence. Can the Heretics seeking absolution in the Gravediggers’ Guild find its first Guildhouse and from there search Lethe far and wide and below for the clues as to what caused its disappearance and it to be bound to Pestilence, and also find the means to undo his unholy work?

Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is an opportunity to see what a campaign for Doomsong looks like. Doomsong is the eschatological, pre-apocalyptic roleplaying game of heretical temptation and divine punishment and survival horror published by Cæsar Ink. which is described as a ‘Roleplay Macabre’. It is presented as a sandbox—or is that plague box?—called a ‘Plaguescape’ that can be played in one of two ways. The first option is as chronicle, a more traditional style of play in which case the Gravediggers, that is, the Player Characters, are pulled into the Plaguescape via the campaign’s starting location of the Crossroads, whilst the guild marches allows for more players and begins at the Guildhall for the Gravediggers’ Guild. Each subsequent session will start and end there too. The Guildhall for the Gravediggers’ Guild forms the base for the Player Characters in either style of play and as well as serving as sanctuary also offers a means for the Gravediggers to improve themselves. This is by taking up the various offices at the Guildhall, such as Cellarer, Chaplin, Florist, Steward, and so on. A Player Character can only hold one office and must meet its qualification and fulfil its duties. Some also require projects to be created at the Guildhall before they become available, but once they are, grant Guild abilities that a Player Character can learn. For example, once the Herb Garden has been built, any Player Character with the ‘Plantwise’ trait can become the Florist. He then receives the ‘Herbalist’s Pouch’ ability and in play can ‘Dignify a Funeral’ to gain the ‘Funeral Director’ ability, ‘Maintain a Grave, Statue, or Memorial’ for an Experience Point bonus, ‘Study a Plant’ to learn its properties and add to his ‘Herbalist’s Pouch’ ability, and ‘Befriend a Herbalist’ to gain a benefit from of the NPC herbalists in the campaign. The Guild roles provide lives and responsibilities for the Player Characters in the Guildhall as well as a home and a sense of community that they can foster over time, but benefits too that come from exploring the walls outside of the Guildhall.

The heart of Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is the Plaguescape, an area eight squares by six squares, with each square roughly a day’s travel across. It is divided into six regions and both the regions and the individual locations are given two-page spreads each. Each of these has a map and an overview on the left-hand page and more details and a random encounter table on the right-hand page. There are some sixty or so locations detailed in the campaign, most of which adhere to this format. Of those that do not, most are four rather than two pages long, whilst three are much longer. Two of these are locations. One of these is the Gravediggers’ Guildhall that is the base of operations for the Player Characters, whilst the other is Castle Lethe, the last known location of Lethe’s royal family. The castle has a weird feel that combines pestilence with paralysation as it is frozen in time. It is the largest and most detailed location in the campaign. The third is the Leech market, a group of traders that circulates the Plaguescape on a regular schedule. Its members are a group of NPCs that the Player Characters can encounter again and again as the campaign progresses and trade with for goods as well as details about the places along their regular route.

The primary antagonists of the campaign—the Lamentides, Pestilence, who stalks Lethe as Father Plague and his servant, the Wycce of Pestilence called The Lice Mother, who was the one who summoned him originally—are powerful as you would expect and are detailed on two pullout spreads. Below this is a gallery of grotesques, including a miller and murderer who transforms his victims into undead he controls and grinds dried leeches into a black flower that spreads disease; a ranting lord imprisoned on Pillory Cliffs and fed hispid nectar to keep him ebullient and amnesiac; feral orphans that run rampant in the Sunken Orphanage and are beholden to Granny Redwork, who eats them when they reach the age of thirteen; and creatures such as the spider-like Laceworkers whose webs and venom are capable of heretical feats and the hare-like Lagomorphs, each born with disease that rots their eyes and a single desire—to eat and eat and eat and eat.

Although the campaign proper can begin at The Crossroads after the Player Characters have accidentally wandered into the Plaguescape and found themselves trapped, it really begins at the Guildhall for the Gravediggers’ Guild. Here, Allardyce the Guildmaster insists the newly arrived Gravediggers re-swear their oath to the Guild (reinforcing for the players who their characters are and what they do) and explains where they are and what the situation is. This includes the presence of Father Plague and Allardyce’s desire to destroy him and hopefully restore the Kingdom of Lethe to its rightful place as part of the mortal world of Painyme. Guildmaster Allardyce has plenty of tasks that she can assign the Player Characters, but the primary one will be to investigate several disturbing shrines that have appeared since Lethe was disconnected from the world. These she will mark on a map that she will also give the Player Characters. This will give the location of some of the shrines, but not all, and the Player Characters can learn the location of the others from other maps and NPCs. Guildmaster Allardyce will always replace the Player Characters’ map if they lose it.

Each shrine is different, but possess a token, such as The Last Meal, The Severed Left Hand, and The Hand-Stitched Doll. These can be destroyed to weaken Father Plague and ultimately the Plaguescape. Each also is accompanied with a cryptic clue that hints at what the Player Characters need to do with it to destroy it as it is not simply a matter of battering it into bits or burning it into ash. For example, the Shrine of The Last Meal is close to the Gravediggers’ Guildhall and its token is a sewn up stomach containing a fresh meal. Accompanying it is the cryptic message, “He stole my last meal, meagre morsel to share with truest love.” The message suggests that the food inside the stomach needs to be fed to someone, but who that someone is and where they are requires further investigation. In other words, finding these clues is not the challenge, deducing what they mean and how to resolve them is. Player Characters who simply destroy the tokens will be hampering their progress and likely result in their failing to save Lethe. Lastly, each token represents a danger in itself because all of them are connected to Father Plague and come with vile gifts that he gives.

Although it is the primary one, the search for the shrines and ultimately finding a way to kill Father Plague is not the only questline in Lord Have Mercy Upon Us. The others include aiding the settlements scattered across Lethe and killing the Misenmeists, originally the knights of Lethe who served the royal family, transformed by Father Plague into his most trusted generals. Killing the Misenmeists requires finding items other than the tokens and using them against them, but killing them helps transform the Plaguescape. The travelling Leech Market will often be a source of quests passed on from the settlements it has visited recently on its journey around Lethe.

Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is a challenging and dangerous campaign. More so given the fragility of the Player Characters—think ‘Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, First Edition in gritty mode without its traditional Player Character progression’. Player Characters will die and there really is a chance of failure in the campaign which will mean that Pestilence will have won. However, a Total Party Kill will not necessarily end the campaign. The Gravediggers’ Guild has many members and more are wandering into the Plaguescape of Lethe everyday, so that there is a ready supply of replacement Player Characters! Plus, it helps that character creation in Doomsong is quick and easy.

Physically, Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is notably very well organised. There is good advice for Game Master at the start as part of the set-up and then every location is presented in an accessible fashion, as are the entries for the campaign’s important characters, denizens, creatures, diseases that the Player Characters can suffer, profane relics, and so on. The questlines are also clearly marked and explained and everything is expertly linked through page references, and everything is easy to find with a very good index. The artwork is also excellent, the writing easy to read, and the cartography good.

The consequence of this expert organisation is that Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is actually easier to use and is more accessible than the Doomsong rulebook. Where the latter is dense and hard to navigate, Lord Have Mercy Upon Us has room for the foul setting of Lethe to breathe its pestilence and for the Game Master to use it easily at the table.

Lord Have Mercy Upon Us is grim and gritty, let alone grimy, but it still promises hope. Yet to fulfil that hope, the players and their Gravedigger characters need steely resolve and patience, as simply running at everything and attempting to put it to the sword will ensure their failure. Lord Have Mercy Upon Us brings to life the pre-apocalyptic world of Painyme and the vision of Doomsong in a fantastically foul and punishingly pestilent campaign.