CE 9: Both Foul and Deep

Mark Gedak at Purple Duck Games is experimenting with ways to bring products to you at a reasonable cost. The most recent Campaign Element, for instance, is being sourced through Go Fund Me so that it can be releases in Pay What You Want (for the pdf version, anyway). The goal is to cover art and writing costs, as well as layout and design. All the writing is done.

CE 9: Both Foul and Deep takes your PCs into the sewers beneath a major metropolis. In addition to an example of how such a location can be set up to Quest For It (a nine-location adventure using a map designed by Paratime's Tim Hartin), you gain materials to help you create your own sewer encounters.

This includes 30 monsters (not including those who are encountered in the aforementioned adventure), diseases one can contract through exploring sewers and cesspits, and a discussion of the types of humans one might encounter in the sewers and vaults beneath the city. My recent trip to Scotland, and touring the vaults below Edinburgh, was of some use here.

If you are at all interested, I would urge you to drop by the Go Fund Me page here.

What is in this Volume?

Appendix N literature is filled with cities, glorious or decaying. Beneath the streets of these urban centers lies a region dank, foul with the effluvia of countless generations, flowing through crumbling brickwork in the malodorous darkness. If your players are anything like mine, sooner or later they will wish to have their characters delve into these fetid morasses.

This product is intended to ensure that you are ready. To that end, a small area of sewers is described, with several hooks to entice PCs into investigating. Three appendixes supply added content to expand the original area or to create sewers of your own. The last appendix is an abbreviated patron write-up of Squallas, Mistress of the Night Soil Rivers, whose domain is the sewers.

You Say 30 Monsters. Can You Give Us an Example?

Stinkdew: Init always last; Atk none; AC 12; HD 2d8; MV 1’; Act none; SP glue, wrap, digestive enzymes, vulnerable to fire (x2 damage); SV Fort +5, Ref -10, Will +0; AL N.

This fungal plant is similar to a sundew, in that it gives off a scent to attract prey, which it then adheres to and closes around to digest. In this case, the fungus gives off a horrid stench like rotting meat, which gives the thing its name. The fungus otherwise appears like a leather collection of dark rags. It can detach itself from the ground and move along slowly, in the manner of a slime mold. Stinkdews are easily avoided by characters who know what they are, but are hazardous to the uninitiated or those who might encounter them while in flight from something else. For this reason, they subsist mainly on unintelligent prey.

Any creature or object that comes into contact with a stinkdew is caught fast. On the first round, it requires a DC 10 Strength check to pull free. Each round, the DC increases by +2 and the fungus wraps more and more of itself around its victim. On the third round, the stinkdew’s digestive enzymes activate, causing 1d3 damage per round. These enzymes can digest wood, bone, paper, leather, and cloth – anything organic – but leave metal items and stone undamaged.

Even after escaping, a victim discovers that the sticky glue of the stinkdew coats him, causing a -1d on the dice chain to all die rolls until 1d3 hours have passed or the goo is washed off with alcohol. Worse, the victim stinks during this time, doubling the chances of a random encounter and making it all but impossible to surprise any creature with a sense of smell.

Stinkdews are easily burned, but that can create its own hazard in the sewers (see page XX).

(This is the least dangerous of the 30 monsters. The most dangerous....well, encounters for high-level PCs are supported.)