The Final Voyage of Draengr Thar

By J.C. Conners
1Shot Adventures Blog
OSR/5e/GURPS/Cthulhu Dark Ages
Levels 3-5

[…] Drængr survived the initial attack and ordered his men to barricade the lodge. But the next night, the wights returned and Drængr was unable to fight them off. He and the surviving men were taken into the earth to face the resentful King Kolbakr, lord of the land’s wights. Meanwhile, Drængr Thar’s scouts finally reached the nearby town of Bjørgvin. Not knowing their warlord’s dark fate, they pleaded for the town to send a boat to rescue Drængr. Promised by the appeal of treasure and the favors that might be bestowed by a great war leader, a band of Viking sailed north to find the Drængr Thar’s hidden inlet.

This 25 page adventure has about eleven locations in some old barrows with wights and is themed around Vikings. It is one o the best viking adventures, one of the best wight adventures, and one of the best horror adventures that I’ve seen. It’s also a bit wordy and lacks an understanding of adventure focus, as witnessed by the page count. Je wil be de firste mann!

The backstory here, from the designers page, is that there was this supplement called Lords of Darkness that was full of adventures and each one was supposed to focus on one type of undead. Surprise surprise, T$R was pumping shit out and it sucked.  In (this) designers words “My main gripe with this old-school adventure is the lack of unsettling horror or even creepiness. Fighting wights in their barrow should be horrifying AND also give you a sense of why they’re cursed and buried there — two things this original adventure didn’t do.” Well, dude generally accomplished those goals to a large degree. 

This thing brings the dread, anticipation, creepiness and horror. It’s set up as a one-shot with a viking theme. Dragnr is a viking raider, and a damn good one. On his latest return trip from England he’s blown off course by a storm and beached a few dozen miles from port. He send two men to run down the coast to fetch help. Fuck yeah he does! We’re not a million miles gone. He’s sending for help with runners. Great! Then we get to our pregens. This thing does two things with them that is great. First, they have a starting motivation. “You have raided with Dræengr Thar twice. Each time he generously shared his pillage with you and your brothers. You grieved when he was hurt in the storm, and cried when he ordered you to run to Bjørgvin to get help. It felt like abandoning a blood relative. This is what Dræengr Thar’s life means to you. Dræengr Thar must be Rescued.” Each motivation is different but each one ends with that “This is what Draengr Thar’s life means to you. Draengr Thar must be rescued.” Great fucking tone setting for a viking adventure. (Also, I don’t really give a flying fuck if any of this viking shit is historically accurate. It FEELS like it should be and it fits in to the game AT THE TABLE, both of which need to, and do, happen here.) Then, each pregen gets a little index card called a banter card. It’s got like five or six separate lines on it. Each platers goes around the table and reads one line in turn until all of the lines are done. “The winds from those cliffs chill my bones.” and “Draengr Thar myst be rescued.” and shit like that. Again, GREAT tone setting here. There’s a handout page from a manuscript that looks like what you think a dark ages manuscript might look like. One of the better mood setting handouts I’ve seen. 

You arrive on shore. The ruined ship is there, no sign of the men, and the ship has been INTENTIONALLY ruined and torn apart. Nearby “the PCs find the corpse of a man nearby, nailed to a tree not too far from the wreckage. The man’s skin is withered and gray and he’s tattooed in old, unrecognizable sigils. His eyes have been devoured by birds. Above him in the branches, a large crow proudly rattles and clicks, something small and wet in its beak.” Fucking A man! Nailed to a tree! Withered and grey! Tattooed in sigils! And on top of that eyes devoured by birds?! Sign me right up! Welcome to the mythic underworld motherfuckers! “his chest has been pierced many times with a broadsword. many of his tattoos refer to eating at the great feasts of Valhalla.” That’s the shit right there. Pierced many times by broadswords! What the fuck is going on here? The party might ask themselves. 

Wolves howl. The runner (now a PC) says “Agnar fell behind and was taken down by the predators. “Those wolves have no fear of men nor gods.” Ok, off we go down the deer trail to find a hunting lodge. Old and abandoned. The door replaced by a board from the ship. Inside are a few things, abandoned by the shipwrecked crew, no sign of them, but “Unusually, the fireplace is piled with far too much wood inside its great hearth. The wood overflows on to the floor in a disorganized mess. Much of the wood is from the boat, and some of the wood underneath the pile seems to have been burned; the feint smell of burned oak comes from the fireplace.” Eeris. Odd. Unsettling. UNUSUAL. We’re still building that mood. Fucking with the fireplace reveals a hole in the ground underneath … at the same time a lady shows up. “She is dressed in fine but long-faded raiments. She carries an old oak spear, which she grips

tightly in her hand, and has a heavy blood-stained sack over her shoulder. Thick-bodied flies buzz around it.” Fucking a man! A crazy lady! The wife of the man who owns the lodge King Kaldor. “On some nights he even invites me, but his men do not like me anymore. They are jealous of our love” A fucking crazy lady! Unsettling shit AND a crazy lady??! Game over man! Th e dread here just keeps building and building. I got a BUNCH of other shit I’ve yoinked from this adventure to illustrate this shit, but, I’ll save space. It does a really great job if emulating vikings, doomed ladies, and horror. It is less successful in brining the wights to light, but still does a much better job in that area than most. We do get a couple of great vignettes with them and you CAN learn why they are doomed, but it just doesnt rock out like the rest of the adventure does. Above average but not the rock star of the rest.

Treasure seems light for an OSR game, as befitting the conversion to all those systems. But, also, here’s the magic sword you can  find “the sword is fused with the dead spirits of the barrow and constantly whispers to the one who wields it. This gives the wielder the sense of true north, and signals danger (sometimes… what the sword finds dangerous is not necessarily what the wielder might…).” We’ve got a reason for the sword that fits in to the adventure. It’s got context. Great item. For a +1 sword. In other places there’s a fine shield perfectly intact, except for its straps that have rotten. Yup! Thats’ what happens. Great job! These things are so immersive amd so evocative; I love them.

It’s also doing a few things I’m not so fond of. That treasure conversion issue is one of them. The l00t from the mighty summer raid of England is only 4k in gold and the barrow treasure is mostly just a couple of magic items. This isn’t the treasure table from Bree & the Barrow Downs. I think I also mentioned that the wights themselves get the short end of it. The whole Doom & Curse thing is in this, but I think it comes through the weakest, by far. And the horror of them doesn’t really come through either, when you are in their presence. Not a great physical description or manner. That’s disappointing.

There’s also the backstory. The actual backstory that starts the adventure, the background, is not too bad and not overly long, helping the DM understand what has happened. But then, also, there are little bits of explanation and WHYs in the descriptions all over the place in this. They are generally in their own paragraphs, and you could, I suppose, just highlight those and ignore them all to help with focus during running of this. That little thing with the magic sword is a fine few words. But longer explanations are generally not needed and interfere with running things. Nobody enjoys having to whip out the highlighter. 

Die rolling and skill checks are another area of note. Generally they are handled poorly in this. I think the concept of what a good skill check/stat check has been well explained in many articles by now, 2025. Putting in a skillcheck for the sake of rolling dice, for no real purpose other than that, isn’t really useful. And then there’s this example” Under the firewood is a hole in the ground. If the party moves the firewood then they find it. If they don’t then the DM is encouraged to let them make a WIS roll to detect a foul smell wafting from it … clearly with the purpose of getting the party to look in the firewood pile and discover the hole … which triggers the crazy lady event. If they fail that then the crazy lady shows up anyway. So … we’re helping the party through the adventure with the roll, or it’s pointless because the event happens anyway, with just some more difficulties for the party as they attempt to find the main, or alternate, entrances that she hints at? I could go either way. 

And the page count ins’t THAT off; we’ve got the pregens and shit back there. Let’s call it eleven pages for the main adventure. This could use a little more focus in the main text, I think, to cut and focus the DMs attention, and a little more work on the wights and their doom, their description, their vibes. But, fuck man, most adventures don’t get anywhere CLOSE to the vibes this thing brings. I’d get my fucking hilighter out and run this.

This is free at the blog: https://1shotadventures.com/the-final-voyage/

Seated around the table are four men, the last survivors of Drængr’s crew. Their hands have been nailed to the table so that they cannot move. All are bloody and barely alive. Elder wights loom over the men, holding pale hands to their skulls. The wights’ lips move, but only meaningless, wrenching sounds come out