Markov's legacy

[Paladyn]

As a part of our RPG tradition, I am going to run Halloween Ravenloft One-Night Special. This time I go back to Barovia again (after venturing to Richemulot and Mordent in recent years). I was going to run Fair Barovia but it is too long to finish it in one session, so I have picked one sub-plot to expand. My choice is Frantisek Markov's butcher shop and it's legacy. Now, I must admit that as much as I like Fair Barovia, the whole dusk elves and Far Realm are not my things, so I have to begin from a scratch. Which I have nothing against and I am in favour for. Please find below sketch and ideas for adventure, please feel free to comment and add yours.

Heroes are approached by an elderly couple from Krezk, the know and like. They are worried about their daughter who recently got married and moved to Vallaki. She seems to get more cold, distant and not her usual herself with each passing month. Heroes arrive to Vallaki and learn that young ones, having an thriving business, bought an old house in rundown part of the town. Many of establishments there had been closed, vacant or simply abandoned. Street urchins, beggars, thieves and criminals dwell there, whole quarter has an eerie atmosphere and reeks uneasiness. Quick investigation, aided with magic and clerical divination will point to an abandoned shop - Markov's Meats: the Butchery and Shop.

I suspect PC's will quickly learn that many years ago it's owner murdered his wife and disfigured her post mortem, then had been chased out of town and disappeared in Mists. The will also see some shady characters coming to shop in late hours, sneaking inside and doing something. PCs will also notice that they are being followed by some incredibly and inhumanly agile person.

Hopefully PCs will enter a house, where Halloween fun begins. I imagined that in each room there will be a clue to what had happened there. Either physical or ghostly apparition, all eerie and haunting.

Haunts
- at the shop - PCs will see woman (Ludmila) frantically running for her life, falling down the stairs and being beaten by huge, burly man (Frantisek);
- in the bedroom - a man (Frantisek) packs his belongings in haste and looking in fear outside the window;
- in the butchery - a terrified woman (Ludmila) arguing with a furious man (Frantisek) and then storming out;

Each successful haunt-seeing will age a character for about 1d3 years.

Physical
- a wedding daguerreotype of newly-weds. Woman looks serene and jovial, a man has a wolfish smile (I hope that Daguerreotype will show players, that butcher had been a wealthy and well-respected man);
- unsettlingly wide array of tools, not only butcher's but also chirurgeon's;
- in the secret basement there is a strange machine, a wicked looking grinder over a tube filled with stinking and rotting leftovers. What is the most unsettling, that it can be operated from outside, like a normal meat grinder, but a second set of pulleys hangs over feeder as to be operated from inside.

With this, I hope that PC will know that something terrifying had happened in butcher's shop and that it's resonance spreads influence on neighbourhood. Then, at night, group of several people will sneak into shop to do SOMETHING If PC investigate, the will learn that it is a death cult of people who fell under the still lingering resonance aura of Diosamblet. Among them is young couple and on that particular night they decided to embrace for eternity by stepping into meat grinder together and grind themselves for the cult's feast. I hope PCs will prevent that and save the young people.

As for shadowy stalker, it is my ace in a sleeve, she is one of Markov's broken ones, who sided with Akanga in effort to overthrow tyrant. She had escaped Markovia, braved sea and lands of Core to obtain something (Daguerreotype) what will cause immense pain to Markov and will grant an edge to rebels.

I'd like to hear your opinion, advice concerning an adventure. Any loopholes I have left? Would you add something?

[KingCorn]

Maybe some monster pigs? Markov was a butcher after all and his depravity could still be causing physical mutation to the livestock in the area. Maybe the cult feeds its ground members to the pigs and that mutates them?

I don't know, but some mutant pigs (more bestial and animal like than the broken ones, more mutated) would be pretty fun

[ewancummins]

Maybe some monster pigs? Markov was a butcher after all and his depravity could still be causing physical mutation to the livestock in the area. Maybe the cult feeds its ground members to the pigs and that mutates them?

I don't know, but some mutant pigs (more bestial and animal like than the broken ones, more mutated) would be pretty fun

Orcs.

Just don't call them orcs.
They can be like the swine-things of The House on the Borderlands.

[Cromstar]

Maybe some monster pigs? Markov was a butcher after all and his depravity could still be causing physical mutation to the livestock in the area. Maybe the cult feeds its ground members to the pigs and that mutates them?

I don't know, but some mutant pigs (more bestial and animal like than the broken ones, more mutated) would be pretty fun

Orcs.

Just don't call them orcs.
They can be like the swine-things of The House on the Borderlands.

Moving in the dim light you can see pigs, or at least what were once pigs. Now they're malformed, twisted into a mockery of nature, neither man nor animal anymore. Their skin is a pallid shade of pink, but large sections have begun to turn a sickly, gangrenous color, most likely a side-effect of the 'science' that created these creatures. You can make out a half-eaten body on the floor, and though you don't know who it might be, there's no doubt they've been feasting on one of the local homeless tramps. As they turn towards you, their eyes shine with a disgusting yellow light that flickers with thought...and hunger. One of them speaks. The words are slurred, produced from a throat and mouth never originally intended to speak a human tongue, but there is no doubt as to the words. "More food to eat?"

[ewancummins]

oink oink


Good stuff.

Orcs should work fine.

For an even more animal-like version, you could use boars instead of orcs and give them low INT, speech, ability to go on two or four legs, and crude 'hands.'
In 3E, I would take a boar from the SRD, add augmented template with magical beast type, as with the awaken spell. Give it dwarf-speed two-legged move and its normal(faster) move for four-legged mode. Its crude hands aren't well-suited to weapon use or picking locks but are good for opening doors, grabbing, dragging, climbing, etc.

In earlier editions, I think just reskinning the orc works well.

[DustBunny]

To add a bit of atmosphere you could lift some things from Lovecraft's Rats in the Walls

Tweak the final 'cavern' they find the remnants of Markov's forgotten experiments in his actual secret workshop before he was chased out (not the basement the cultists found) - as opposed to the original horror. And of course rats in the walls to make players paranoid whenever they hear skittering sounds…

[ewancummins]

the daemon swineherd

[The Lesser Evil]

How did the broken one figure out Markov's past and what to do to make Markov suffer?

How did the parents know if she was becoming colder/unlike her self if she moved to Vallaki? (or did she become colder before she went to Vallaki?)

[brilliantlight]

I wouldn't limit it to pigs but huge mutated chickens the size of people and beaks as sharp as knives. Taking a page from Monty Python make some killer rabbits. Use Flemish Giant Rabbits as the base but give them more and sharper teethhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish_Giant_rabbit and a murderous impulse.

[Paladyn]

First of all, I'd like to thank you for your ideas. I think I will have human cultists wearing pigs' carcasses cut out like trenchcoats and one huge hog that is slowly transforming into human like hybrid.

As for The Lesser Evil's question. I assume daughter visits her parents from time to time and it was then, when the had seen a change in her behaviour. But your questions about broken one got me thinking. Perhaps she was his maidservant and mistress? I find it... disturbing.

[ewancummins]

If the cultists have been altered by their foul rituals, they could have orc stats. Just switch subtype from orc to human in 3E.
Cultists with darkvision.

In the gloom, a man in a pig-coat will look like a bipedal beast or some horrible monster.


ORKS ORKS ORKS

[ewancummins]

Perhaps she was his maidservant and mistress? I find it... disturbing.

Suffer not the furry to live.



''The prettiest one I made. My very favorite little pet."

I think this is a good idea.

[Cromstar]

Perhaps she was his maidservant and mistress? I find it... disturbing.

Suffer not the furry to live.



''The prettiest one I made. My very favorite little pet."

I think this is a good idea.

Reminds me of that Markovia adventure, where if any of the PCs show interest in the girl in Dr. Fran's care, he takes a weird, fatherly interest in the matter. Its probably the creepiest thing in that entire adventure.