The Evil That Men Do

By Hex Girl
Melusine Press
S&W
Levels 1-4

[…] Twenty years have passed and the boy Dagobert has become a man; cunning, cruel, and simmering with resentment. Gunthigis, re-married, prepares to celebrate the marriage age of his daughter. Dagobert plans to abduct his half-sister during the celebratory feast. To do this he has retained the services of Bleda, a wizard-for-hire. Unbeknownst to Dagobert, Bleda has an agenda all his own – an agenda delivered to him by the silver armband he bears and the vengeful spirit of Carvilius that pours a honeyed poison into his ear each night…

This 47 page adventure has the party assaulting a goth/brigand hill fort. It is rife with politics for the party to navigate, both in the pretext and the conclusions, with the main “adventure” being almost certainly quite the difficult slog. It is a more interesting raid than most.

Okey doke. The time is roughly 55AD in England, I think. Post-roman, Franks and some goths running around, although this could fit in to just about any D&D game. The local manor lord is looking for a husband for his eldest daughter and holds a tourney/fair that everyone is coming to, peasants, freemen, landowners, local neighbor lords and churchmen. He’s looking for someone to marry her off to and everyone is coming to show off. At he end a large man steps forth, declares he is the rightful heir to the manor lord, and a bunch of screaming goths come out of the woods and murder and kill A LOT. Meantime the brigand/heir dude kidnaps the chick and runs off to his hill fort. The party raids it.

And why do they raid it? Well, the local lord can’t appear weak. A frontal assault will weaken him and leave him open to his neighbors raiding him/taking his lands. But he has to do SOMETHING, but, also, he can’t have hired the party, that would be an affront to his honor and strength. So hush hush. Also, he does not mention his abducted daughter. “He does not mention Elke, and if asked, shrugs and states that “he has other daughters.” Ouch! That’s real politics! The neighbor, at the festival, wants the heir killed and the daughter returned to HIM. He’s playing the long game, marrying her and getting a child will give him the manor lords lands in time. Crafty SOB, eh? And the local Bishop? He wants the daughter killed and the heir returned to him. Where he will declare him to be the rightful heir and thus NOT weaken the local lands/bishops power in the area, which would otherwise fall to more decline if chaos erupts and the local manor lord, who he thinks is weak, prevails. You’ve got three separate outcomes the party can pursue. 

What I like about this, both in the setup and in the conclusions, is the appeal to a larger environment. The party is getting lands and some social status in all of these scenarios, which puts them squarely in the next part of the D&D campaign, the build a stronghold portion. VERY rarely do you see this in an adventure and yet its present both here and in the previous adventure, ifI recall correctly. And, of course, you make enemies no matter which path you choose, to varying degrees. Thus we have context in the campaign that the DM can leverage going forward. I’m not sure ANY other adventure I’ve seen has put this kind of element in to an adventure in quite a good way. You’ve got a goal to pursue in the raid, not just a vengeance/justice raid. Justice, after all, goes to those that can enforce it. 

We move now to the actual raid. The hill fort has about fourteen primary rooms with a lot of sub-rooms attached to that. So, something like “Jail cells might have six or so sub locations and so on. Under the fort is an old barrow with another thirty or so locations. The place is STUFFED. Actually, so is the raid on the fair. We’ve got forty goths and twenty wardogs and like ten level twos and a few others attacking. These are split in three groups so it’s not as bad. But in the fort you will routinely encounter lots of enemies. Five ogres. Thirteen mummies(!) And lots of men. Or, the lake with a thousand snakes in it … There is a little bit of faction play here, with the goths coming from three tribes and some varying loyalty that could be taken advantage of, though not easily and with little initiative to. Following on from the first adventure, the adventure notes levels two’s, but I suspect that, without a larger group of supporters, fours are going to have more options, just from the spells available, such as silence, to make a raid easier. In spite of this, it doesn’t come off as,  say, unfair. We’re not doing linear battles with fixed opponents and so on. Stealth and smart play win the day, although, it brings to mind the admonition in certain older adventures that an adventure would be for experience PLAYERS, not experienced characters. 

There is some good design here. “A wolf-headed altar here is dedicated to a Celtic death-god. Inside of the wolf’s mouth is the glint of silver” The ever popular (at least with me) tempt the players angle! Who wants to stick their hand in? And, in other places, a good scene or so. The heir, Dagobert is found “Dagobert lies in the light of a fading torch, face ashen. There is a dagger protruding from his chest and he clings to life tenuous” Noice! He can, if th party likes, join them for his revenge “and we’ll sort the rest out later.” And he does! I’m down!

The descriptions in the dungeons are not exactly wonderful. “Empty. Pauper’s graves line the walls, all old bones and rotting funeral-wraps.” or “An ancient gaol; rusted iron cells with wrist-thick bars. Zombified watchdogs lurk amidst the gloom and debris” I’m not exactly MAD at these, but they could use just a bit more to them. But, also, there are situations like this “Four gargoyles squat evilly and scowl at each other, an iron chest between them. Each offers the contents of the chest to anyone who will kill the other three gargoyles. It is a ruse; they will all attack if one is attacked” That just reeks of old school situations, although, again, the descriptions are lackings. Specificity, in things like 3 elf slaves, with not much else to them, could have been done better. 

The formatting of the preamble is a bit rough also. Long paragraphs that could use some more formatting to call attention to things and organize the longer text sections better. More specificity int the rumors “Stay away from the forests to the west, across the river. A witch dwells there and

she’ll suck your soul dry if she catches you” would be nice. Mag Maggy or the like. And, the events at the fair come in their own section rather than in the sections of the contests. So, a description of all the contests and then an outcomes section at the every end of them all makes page flipping a requirement. 

I have a decent number of reservations here. The raid is not bad, just not great. But the preamble and conclusions are very good, in situations if not in the formatting of them. A little more specificity, a little more … events? Situations? In the dungeon or the events would have really gone a long way here to lifting the whole thing up to the level I think it could achieve. It is absolutely worth checking out though just for how the political/larger game is handled, as inspiration for how to design and integrate your own game.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the entire thing, which is great! But you’ll need to dig deep to get the entire sense of it.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/509757/i2-the-evil-that-men-do?1892600

“Nicetius [the Bishop] reminds the player characters that Elke [the daughter] is a “loose end” that should be “tied up” to ensure a seamless succession for Dagobert.”