Miskatonic Monday #314: The Arkham Witch Trials of 1693

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: The Arkham Witch Trials of 1693
Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Duncan Heystek

Setting: Arkham, New England
Product: Scenario
What You Get: Twenty-one page, 1.37 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Suffer the children to come unto the hands of Keziah Mason
Plot Hook: “How do you know she is a Witch?” – Sir Bedevere, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, four NPCs, one Mythos tome, three Mythos spells, and five Mythos monsters
Production Values: Execrable

Pros
# Perfect for the Keeper who likes to modify (or rewrite) her scenarios
# Potentially interesting setting
# Wiccaphobia
# Hylophobia
# Autophobia

Cons
# Claims to have been edited
# Needs a clear explanation for the Keeper to understand
# Does involve the slave status
# Wanders into a random discussion of a 19th century detective agency
# Minimalist background

Conclusion
# Almost unreadable, let alone playable
# Difficult to tell if the witch or the Keeper is on trial
# Reviews from R’lyeh Discommends

Friday Fantasy: Colony of Death

Colony of Death – Weird Fantasy Roleplaying in 17th Century Maryland is a campaign setting set in the New World of the mid-seventeenth century. Designed for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying, but easily adapted to the retroclone of your choice, it takes the Player Characters to the Americas, but not where you would expect. In general, when a supplement is set in early colonial America, it is set in Massachusetts, or elsewhere in New England. Examples of this includes Atlas Games’ Northern Crown and StatCom Simulations Inc.’s 1983 Witch Hunt. The setting for Colony of Death though, is further south, the rough and ready Maryland Province, which in 1650, is not even twenty years old. Although the war between King and parliament back in England led to an uprising in the province, this was put down, and the governor reinstalled, as was its policy of religious tolerance between Protestants and Catholics. Also restored was its promise of fifty acres of land to farm for each new settler—and this a potential reason for the Player Characters to come to the frontier of the empire that is the young Maryland Province.

Colony of Death starts with the history of the new province, how King Charles I of England granted its charter to Lord Baltimore to the recent war with the Susquehannock natives and their allies from nearby New Sweden; the various peoples of the colony, including Catholics, Protestants, indentured servants, Virginians who want to claim the area, natives from the various tribes of the area, and more; and details of diseases rampant in the area, such as Dysentery, Hookworm Infestation, and Yellow Fever; and encounter tables for the various terrain types in and beyond the province. A lengthier section is devoted to a bestiary of the region, detailing the varied creatures and things to be found in Maryland. These include the mundane, such as the Black Bear and the Black Widow Spider, alongside a number of monsters, for example, the Goatman, said to be the devil and to haunt the forests west of the Chesapeake; the Hexenwolf, a type of lycanthrope also found in Maryland’s woods and its arch enemy, the Schneller Geist, or Snallygaster, a dragon-like best. Stats are also included for English pirates and natives, and the monsters also veer into Mythos territory with the inclusion of the Mi-Go and the Sasquatch. However, none of these count as the oddest threat in Colony of Death, and that award goes to a Squirrel Swarm. Altogether, the range of the monsters in the book covers a number of genres—more traditional combined with folklore the Hexenwolf, for example, whilst the Mi-Go are definitely Lovecraftian.

Roughly half of Colony of Death is devoted to the supplement’s four scenarios. The first of these is ‘St. Mary’s Shoemaker’ takes place in St. Mary’s City, the capital of the province. Still suffering from the aftermath of The Plundering Times—the Protestant Uprising during the time of the English Civil War, the people of the tiny city are shocked to learn that the body of a well-dressed woman has been found in a nearby river, minus her feet! This is more of a scenario set-up and the opportunity to detail St. Mary’s City than a plotted scenario and the Referee will need to develop a good reason for the Player Characters to be visiting the city, let alone investigating a podophiliac murder.

However, if the Player Characters are successful in investigating the strange death, ‘St. Mary’s Shoemaker’ does set up the second scenario. ‘Hell’s Bell’ takes them exploring or surveying up the Potomac River, perhaps visiting a parcel of land they have been given. On their way, they pass through the village of Lebenstadt, settled by Germans and notable for the large, engraved bell hung at its centre. The people of Lebenstadt are welcoming and hospitable, but hide a supernatural secret which is revealed when the settlement is attacked by another creature. Again, this is more of a set-up than an adventure with a plot and there is the possibility that even if the secret is revealed, that the Player Characters walk away from the village with nothing really happening. Another settlement, a Swedish trading post, beset by attacks by a red-haired giant, is the location for ‘The Hand and Eye of Loki’, the third scenario. If the Player Characters have reason to visit the trading post, there is more reason for them to get involved and this scenario is stronger for that and its greater use of Europeans’ historical involvement in the New World. The last scenario in Colony of Death is ‘To Burn a Witch’ and it oddly takes the Player Characters out of Maryland and across the Delaware River and to the city of Providence. There they come across the sight of the city’s Puritans burning a young girl accused of witchcraft. This is not really even a set-up , more of an encounter in which the Player Characters can choose to get involved in or not. If they refrain, nothing happens, but even if they do, ‘To Burn a Witch’ does not explore the ramifications. Ultimately, it suffers from being based around twentieth century attitudes towards what is a horrid happening rather than the attitudes of the period.

Rounding out Colony of Death is a lengthy appendix. This gives tables of names suitable for the region, including Algonquin, English, and German, an expanded map of the region, and a guide to growing tobacco in Maryland—which turns out to be really hard work! This is all useful content and the latter guide adds depth to making a life in the province.

Physically, Colony of Death is reasonably well presented. The maps are okay and if the artwork is amateurish in style, it at least works well enough for all that.

Although Colony of Death – Weird Fantasy Roleplaying in 17th Century Maryland is to be welcomed for taking Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying (and other retroclones) to the New World and a hitherto unexplored region of the New World, as a supplement it is underdeveloped. It could have done with reasons for bringing the Player Characters to the New World—and Maryland in particular, and for involving them in the scenarios. Perhaps also some rumours that the Referee could develop into scenarios and help get the Player Characters get more involved in the region would have also been useful. As would a bibliography and perhaps a look at the folklore of the region, especially for the Referee who wants to bring it further to life.

Ultimately, Colony of Death – Weird Fantasy Roleplaying in 17th Century Maryland is not a book which can be picked up and used with any ease. As the groundwork for a setting which the Referee can research and develop further herself, Colony of Death – Weird Fantasy Roleplaying in 17th Century Maryland is not an unreasonable starting point.

Friday Fantasy: Lorn Song of the Bachelor

Published by Hydra Cooperative, LLC, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is an Old School Renaissance fantasy scenario for the roleplaying game of your choice. If choosing a retroclone, it works with any that use ascending Armour Class, and in terms of setting, it would work with any which involve elements of colonialism, imperialism, and mercantile adventuring companies, such as the East India Company or the Dutch East India Company. So it would work with Arion Games’ Maelstrom as much as it would Triple Ace Games’ Leagues of Adventure: A Rip-Roaring Setting of Exploration and Derring Do in the Late Victorian Age! or the same setting as Hot Springs Island or that of Crypts of Indormancy. It would also work as far off location in Empire of the Petal Throne: The World of Tékumel. The scenario does also mention the use of firearms, but they are not integral to its play and the Game Master can easily ignore their inclusion.

Obviously, the scenario’s themes of colonialism, imperialism, and mercantile adventuring companies are contentious issues, even difficult ones for some, but the author of Lorn Song of the Bachelor makes clear that they are unavoidable given the legends and history of the region that the scenario is based upon, and that they are open for the players and their characters to explore and make choices about. To that end, no obvious incentive is provided to involve the characters in the situation detailed in Lorn Song of the Bachelor.

Although it is a sandcrawl of sorts, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is quite different to the previous sandcrawls published by Hydra Cooperative, LLC, such as Slumbering Ursine Dunes and Misty Isles of the Eld. It is as far away from the Hill Cantons as can be imagined, being a riverine and dungeon crawl inspired by a story from the island of Borneo. It shares much with the lovely fanzine, MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom—crocodilian gods, forgotten monkey-empires, dangerous waters, and exotic fantasy—and indeed, they share the same author, Zedeck Siew. And just like MR-KR-GR The Death-Rolled Kingdom, Lorn Song of the Bachelor feels humid, sweaty, and sun-drenched, strange, and exotic.

In essence, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is all set-up. At the far reaches of a river, in the lands of the tribe known as the Gleaming Fins, grow great trees from whose heartwood can be extracted a valuable incense, Dreaming Agaru, which aids divination of all sorts with flashes of true inspiration. So the Company sends trade factors and loyal mercenaries—all bad teeth and bad breath—up river to trade and harvest the heartwood of these trees. Yet that trade is threatened by the Bachelor, a giant albino crocodile, which has been the scourge of the river for centuries, having killed all of the other crocodiles. Long has it preyed upon the boats of the Gleaming Fins tribe, upending them and tipping the men into the water to be snapped up. Many times the tribe has hunted the great riverine beast, even killing it, but always it returns. Is the Bachelor a god? Is he immortal? Now it takes the Company’s boats too and so threatens its investments and revenues.

The most obvious way into this for the player characters is to be hired by the Company—akin to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—but what they will discover is faction upon faction within the lands of the Gleaming Fins. The one-armed, silver painted Vartu Si Sartu, Gleaming Fins chief wants the Company gone; the untattooed, jade finger-nailed and abacus-wielding Company merchant, Machivir Sanna Krau, wants the Bachelor dead; and the wrinkled, incense-infused, firefly surrounded witch and midwife, Sati Wu Sati, wants the curse of the Bachelor on the river lifted and the breaking up of the crocodile cult dedicated to him. These are not the only factions and not the only motivations threading their way through Lorn Song of the Bachelor. The player characters will need to weave their way through these to learn the secrets that lie at the literal heart of the Gleaming Fins territory.

Lorn Song of the Bachelor is presented in a sparse fashion. Descriptions are kept to a minimum, often supported with a table or two of further elements waiting to be found and interacted at each location. There is often a bullet-point or list-like quality to the writing, making it accessible and easy to work with. In terms of scale the adventure really only consists of eight locations, each roughly a half day apart, and a small dungeon of just seven locations, a ruin left over from the Monkey Empire. Here the descriptions are richer and weirder, perhaps even more wondrous.

Of course, the presence of the Bachelor, the albino god-crocodile, lurks throughout the scenario and will become an active threat whenever the player characters are on or by the water. Unsurprisingly, this is very likely to occur given the location of various places in Gleaming Fins territory, and ideally it should, since the Bachelor is mystically linked to parts of this land and should he be hurt, there are repercussions for these locations. This perhaps one of the two weakest parts of the scenario in that it does not seem quite strong enough in effect and will need to be carefully worked in by the Game Master. The other is that the solutions to the scenario, there being several given the number of different factions present in the region, are not clear. Now part of this is intentional, as after all, they should not be obvious, but the players will need to work as hard to get at them as the Game Master will in presenting them.

Physically, Lorn Song of the Bachelor is a lovely little book. It is well written with its peoples and personalities, its places, and its strangeness being described with a very simple economy in terms of its words. Whilst the cartography is clear and strong, the minimum of description in the writing is paired with utterly delightful artwork, light, if not ethereal, ranging from the inhabitants of the Gleaming Fins lands and the weird objects found there to the strange vistas of the Monkey Empire ruin and the bestiary found at the back of the book.

The isolated and exoticism of Lorn Song of the Bachelor does mean that it may not be easy to add to an ongoing campaign, since it may well be far away from the campaign’s main locations. However, that does not stop it from being a lovely little adventure, a mini-sandbox into which the player characters can come and explore and perhaps aid one faction or another. It is simply presented with artwork which evokes so much of the strangeness and exoticism of the Gleaming Fins lands. Although the formatting means it looks simple, there is a lot of detail and flavour to Lorn Song of the Bachelor which together evoke visions of a very different world and of a very different fantasy to which a Western audience is used.