{"id":10697,"date":"2026-11-04T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10697"},"modified":"2026-10-13T13:00:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T17:00:05","slug":"treachery-in-the-duchy-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10697","title":{"rendered":"Treachery in the Duchy of Death"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By John Keefe and Laurel Nicholson
Self Published
OSR
Levels 7-9<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The Isle of Argilla has been beset by plague and quarantined, stranding fortune hunters for so long that there are no longer opportunities for profitable exploration.  Adventurers spend their days in taverns rehashing and embellishing stories of past glories hoping for a whispered tip about an unexplored dungeon but, until now, upon the arrival of an elderly gnome, nothing has even been rumored.  The gnome is the envoy of unknown entrepreneurs hoping to lure anyone courageous enough to teleport to the Duchy of Death.  The mission\u2026to kill a sanguinivorous dragon. Will you accept the gnome’s proposal and go to the Duchy to negotiate with the vampire Dragan Amsilowicz?  Will your party defy Dragan and defect to Orcus?  Or, being heroic adventurers, will you turn to treachery and set out on your own flouting certain death and pursue untold riches in The Duchy of Death!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 313 page adventure is Bat. Shit. Crazy. Formatting is a mess. Layout is a mess. Read-aloud is a mess. Following the adventure is a mess. A glorious glorious mess. What\u2019s the fantasy version of gonzo? This is that. Not a hint of the standard setting nonsense or Tolkien in it at all. I\u2019m in LUV. Just once in your life you need to take a month to digest this and run it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a mess. The read-alouds are long, multi-paragraph. The players attention turn away from the game. There is extensive color coding that demands your attention and distracts you, a not uncommon attempt to make things more runnable that instead works against that. The thing is full of long sections governed by if\/then statements. If Bob is with the party then x, y, z and if he\u2019s not then this and this and this. There is no summary, so you\u2019re going in to each section blind. There\u2019s no way you can figure out what is happening, or supposed to happen, in order to run the game without taking copious notes on multiple read-throughs. Information is introduced, off hand, that you have no idea how it plays out in the adventure. \u201cThe Wobbling men will follow you in.\u201d Who the fuck are they? One of the men has the golden doorknob. What the fuck is that? Things are out of order. I can see no efforts made to help the DM understand what is going on. At All. Who\u2019s alive, when, what’s the importance of an object, who is trying to accomplish what. It\u2019s almost stream of consciousness writing. Yo\u2019re going to have to study this. Multiple times. Taking notes. Referring back to them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it may be worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever seen an adventure like this. The setting. It\u2019s insane. Like a fourteen year old raised on 70\u2019s trash fantasy made an adventure. It\u2019s fucking awesome. This is not something for your campaign. This is a let\u2019s use premades and run the things for a few months, in isolation adventure. It\u2019s an experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not going to be able to convey to you what it is like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A gnome takes you from the staid town to the Duchy of Death, just across the sea. Every guard in town, all of the bar bouncers, are level seven or eight fighters. The people in the inn, three pages of them, have subplots going on. One of the innkeepers wears a lot of pearls. If you steal one she turns into a raincloud that rains over the thief’s head until you give it back. The gnome takes you to the duchy on a carousel. A carousel. It teleports you. You meet with vampires. Vampires. They want you to kill a dragon vampire. This makes sense because they all live in Vampire City. That\u2019s the name. \u201cMost of the vampires in the city are proud of their undead state and will not hide the fact that they are vampires. Dressing in stereotypical clothing and intentionally showing their fangs.\u201d A whole city of Bela Lugosi\u2019s!! How about this as a room title? \u201cOpera House Star\u2019s Dressing Rooms,\u201d What?!?!?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBecause of the mysterious disappearance of one of the co-Grog Emperors along with Goatalicious, an artifact that held the fragile alliances of the Empire together, the current Emperor is unable to confront Gag-lak. His hope is that, between the pixies and the inhabitants of Vampire City on the western edge of the Duchy, Gag-lak can be held at bay until the fractured Empire can be once again unified and a mighty army can be assembled to reclaim the territory.\u201d That\u2019s a bat shit crazy summary, from the adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, did I not mention orcus? \u201cSURPRISE ARRIVAL OF ORCUS. Happens Once the Treasure Chest is Opened\u201d<\/strong> Yes, Orcus shows up. He\u2019s working against the vampires and would like you to do, essentially, the opposite of what they want. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the first encounters in the Duchy is with Primal Zombies. A whole page for a stat block. Turn as spectres. ONLY APPEAR AS PRIME NUMBERS. If there are thirteen and you kill one then a number of them fall down until the next lowest prime number is reached. Eleven. And so on. Who the fuck thinks of things like that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You want rumors? How about : \u201cThumper Hopsquench is not trustworthy. Just look at him and you can tell he’s up to something. Be very careful at the Tell Me Why You Did It.\u201d That\u2019s the name of a bar. Tell me Why You Did It. They only serve beer. They have a stage. If you get up on stage and explain a crime you did and the bartender likes it then you drink for free all night. Also the city guard hang out there to arrest people who confess to local crimes. They don\u2019t give a shit if it\u2019s not local. That fuckingplace rivals the orc bar in those City books supplements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s all like this. Every subplot. Every person. It just REEKS of awesome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019ve gonna start off in town, have a running battle in the teleports carousel tower, hit a hex crawl with 24 locations, vampire city, pixie island, dragons lair. Weird magic abounds. Railroad scenes abound. Orcus screams in delight as he smashes potion bottles against his horns. Vampire lords are staked. Level nine my ass. Come loaded for bear cause there ain\u2019t NOTHING in this that is gonna do anything but sneeze at your level sevens.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is 34 pages and more than adequate to understand what you are getting in to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/568704\/treachery-in-the-duchy-of-death?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By John Keefe and Laurel NicholsonSelf PublishedOSRLevels 7-9 The Isle of Argilla has been beset by plague and quarantined, stranding fortune hunters for so long that there are no longer opportunities for profitable exploration.  Adventurers spend their days in taverns … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30,14,31,15,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-god-effort","category-level-8","category-millions-and-millions-of-its-babies","category-no-regerts","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/568704.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10697"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10732,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10697\/revisions\/10732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}