An old man waits for the party at the ruins of the old mill. His name is Erstvahn, he was once a scout in the king's army, but after serving with decoration he retired to his home village where he spent the next three decades acting as its protector.
There is something evil lurking in the forest nearby, he thought he and his apprentice Zaire could handle it... now Zaire is gone, his body is ill healed from his encounter with that evil, and the village elders have hired a squad of outcasts and travellers to assist him in what might be his last hunt.
Enter the party, stage left.
Challenges & Complications:
Though this adventure could be slotted into any ongoing campaign, I've found it particularly useful as a framework for new players going on their first quest in that it has an inbuilt NPC guide/babysitter to help them stay focused on the mission. Giving your party the shame backstory of being from the same village gives them a springboard for character creation, as they can probably imagine a few interesting locals who'd want to help their neighbour Erstvahn with his difficult task. Alternatively, if they have a strong idea what they want to play, they can be sellswords responding to the village's promise of reward/plea to local authorities.
Erstvahn's has doubts about the party's capabilities, as they'll need wits and awareness in addition to strength of arms if they want to succeed on their hunt. To that end, he's stashed a lockbox and a key inside the old mill, and will agree to take them into the woods if they can bring him what's inside the box. This is your excuse to introduce your party to the exploration pillar of gameplay, pitching their search around the the ruins as an escape room. When they eventually open the hidden box, they'll find it empty, aside from a diagram on the inside indicating what they're looking for is hidden in the water wheel, but only accessible if they get the old mechanism working again. As they fuss around, Estvahn will let it slip that Zaire managed to pass this exact same test without any hints or complaining... then he'll get quiet.
Once the party has proven their worth, we can get out into the woods, and the usual gauntlet of challenges one might expect tracking through the woods at night (evading prowling wolves, fording a crumbling old bridge etc), peppered with the old ranger's reluctant guidance. As they explore, they'll notice plants starting to blacken and wither, animals acting oddly aggressive. Erstvahn will explain that this has been happening ever since their quarry appeared in the region.
Speaking of their quarry, Erstvahn will be hesitant to talk about what exactly it is, along what happened to him and Zaire when they first encountered it asides from a deadly ambush. Getting him to open up will be a challenge in and of itself, but attentive heroes may notice they seem to be on the trail of a great stag, oddly lined up with the path of corruption and malevolent shadows they keep encountering.
Background:
What actually happened is this: Erstvahn was taking Zaire out for a bit of night-time wilderness training when the two of them encountered a woman bathing in a stream, eerie beautiful but with skin like grey marble. The old man knew better than to let his eyes wander but the youth was enraptured by the moonlit sight of her. She caught him looking, smiled a cruel smile, and said:
" I was always fond of young bucks, would you like to be mine, sweet thing?"
A single nod from Zaire and a single drop of water flicked from the terrifying woman's finger was all it took to transform the ranger's apprentice into a black stag under her control. Her first command was to kill the one he loved most so that she might be first in his heart, which left Erstvahn gored, torn, and left for dead on the forest floor. His last memory before losing consciousness was watching the woman kiss his blood off the stag's snout before riding her new pet off into the forest at a trot.
Now Erstvahn has sworn to kill his former apprentice to spare him the fate of being the strange woman's plaything. One of the reasons he retired from the army was that he fell prey to a mage's compulsion and was forced to skill several of his squadmates before he broke free. Erstvahn is convinced there is no worse fate, and is willing to die to see it through.
All of us practicing magic publicly should probably be doing more evil-eye removal, uncrossing, and cursebreaking than we do. Protective wards and servitors are great, but even if we never leave our enchanted sanctuaries, some things will still get through. To that end, evolving variations of this spell have become a regular part of my magical protection and spiritual hygiene regimen.
I shared a…
Fun fact! White wolves fed on a strict diet of heartsblood and ramen turn into students when the moon is new.
Turn back into students - white wolves certainly aren’t native to the area. Although recently discovered, this will be covered in Advanced Cursebreaking, moving forward.
There’s always been a tight bond between adventurers and alchemists: with the former needing a steady supply of potions to keep them alive in the wilderness and the latter requiring rare and exotic components from the depths of the wilds to fuel the pursuit of their science. It’s a symbiosis as beautiful as it is disaster prone
Hooks:
It’s said that deep in the forest, there’s an old fieldstone cottage that you can only find by accident or invitation, inhabited by a wise witch who has been sought out by generations of townsfolk to aid with their ills. When the party goes looking for the witch, whether to lift a curse, provide the cure to some ailment, or just to top off their supply of bottled healing, they find the cottage inhabited instead by a young elven girl with sad eyes and a chilly disposition. Introducing herself as Narrus of the Nettles, she informs the party that her mother is out at the moment but she is more than capable of solving their problem, provided they’re willing to fetch her a few ingredients to trade for her services.
One visit to Narrus is likely to turn into many, as despite her chilly demeanour the apprentice alchemist seems quite pleased to have their company, going so far as to pack pastries and tea-blends in with the potions she manufactures. Missions for her can include popping over to the feywild to gather some fantastical herbs, climbing up the mountains to acquire a dragonfired cauldron, or retrieving some texts from an archive a town over.
With much hesitance once the party has earned her trust, Narrus will admit to them that she hasn’t seen her mother in nearly twenty years, a tragedy only slightly lessened by the scale of an elven lifespan. On their last day together, Narrus botched the lesson her mother was attempting to teach her and lost her temper, frustrated as any child might be when held to such exacting standards. The next morning her mother was gone without a word, having taken her most precious texts and tools but leaving her daughter with the run of the house. Beleiving that her mother left because she saw the end of her potential, Narrus quietly hopes to become a renowned alchemist and prove that she is worthy of her mother’s attention once again. A scared child’s explanation of an inexplicable disappearance, one that the party could be able to investigate should they cast their net wide enough.
Evening, Dapper. I'm a big fan of your work; I'm actually using a few of your NPCs in a campaign I'm running! As you've made a few 're-imagined' entries for demon lords already- how would you play Zuggtmoy in a way that's not just 'evil, but also brain-destroying and fungal'? What would she need to be like to motivate people to actually sign a pact with or worship her?
Monsters Reimagined: Zuggtmoy, Demon Queen of Rot and Regret
D&D has a problem with one note villains, blank slates that dungeonmaters are SUPPOSED to fill with their own ideas but end up coming off as pathetically shallow after their Captain Planet level concepts become increasingly rigid over successive generations. Occasionaly a great writer comes along and fills these concepts with interesting context, but they're few in far between.
Zuggtmoy is a great example of this, existing as what I like to call a "Fill in the blank baddie", as they adhere to a very simple formula that looks a little like this: X is an evil ____ who cares about ____, they want the whole world to be nothing but ____, they use ____ as minions and have a personality and ethos that one could describe as ____ like. For Zuggtmoy you could fill that blank in with "fungus" and you'd get her ENTIRE concept, indistinguishable from Jubilex the slime demon, Nerull the death god, and just about 90% of a high level party's rogue's gallery.
Below the cut I'm going to go into a complete lore revision for the dame of decay along with a bunch of adventure hooks, but for the TLDR: Default Zuggtmoy is weird because d&d assumes that fungus and decay are evil because they are gross, an odd stance to take because not only is rot a vitally necessary part of life, but fungus has brought us wonderful things like penicillin and mushroom risotto. My version of the demon queen is one that revolves around the idea of things “spoiling” when held on past their time, be they feelings, memories, relationships, or empires. Zuggtmoy herself is the mouldered and hollowed out remnants of a once queenly dryad, who’s influence appears in others unable to let go as a creeping blight that spreads through their mind, bodies, and surroundings.
When it comes to concepts Zuggtmoy is as about as “fill in the blank” as it gets, with her single notable character design concept and personality both being “She’s a lady made out of fungus”. This would be fine I suppose but she’s also specifically a demon lord, and that doesn’t tack at all for a whole bunch of reasons:
Do mushrooms have souls? Can they commit sin? Most of the creatures Zuggtmoy is described as being worshipped by don’t have traditional consciousness, if they have an intelligence score at all. Yeah, it sucks to be covered in slime and/or rotted from the inside out but those creatures aren't EVIL, so why is she a demon other than the fact that gross/ugly = evil in d&d world? She’d be perfectly fine if she was just the goddess of fungus, but she needs a reason to be considered one of the Pit’s big bads.
One could theoretically talk about how the grossness of Zuggtmoy is meant as a torment to those people who fear filth/corruption who might be damned to her realm, but d&d cosmology increasingly does not work like that. If Zuggtmoy is queen of a layer of hell, there needs to be a specificly demonic reason that her domain is one of rot and fungus.
Why is Zuggtmoy a lady? A giant mushroom or that happened to use feminine pronouns would have served but she is very specifically described as a humanoid made out of fungus, frequently depicted with signifies of being an attractive and elegant. The answer is obviousuly that sex sells, even when you’re trying to sell a list of demon gods, so while the male coded demons get to be grotesque blobs of muscle and bestial features the female ones need to be coded as traditionally attractive even if they have a few monsterbits stapled on. When redesigning her I could have gone with a purely fungal angle, but I wanted to play with the “lady made out of fungus” iconography
Taking all this into account, here’s my pitch for Zuggtomy: There was once an archfey, a queen among dryads who found herself undone by heartbreak. None can say what tragedy or manipulation of the great courts laid her low, only that she knew a sorrow so profound that she simply could not be anymore, leaving her body as nothing more than a grief-hollowed statue of wood. Left exposed to the elements, the echo of that grief took root, and eventually bloomed into a being that knew only regret, only loss, only Zuggtmoy.
If sorrow is left to fester it can sour any happy memory, and thus is the case for the Dame of Decay, unable and unwilling to let go of the things that gave her joy and now cause her pain, even if her continued grief eats away at them until there is nothing left. So little is known about the story of the original dryad queen because Zuggtmoy’s influence ate away at anyone and anything involved in the events, leaving behind nothing but a spore choked barrens and hollowed out husks who mine out the events again and again without detail or reason.
When rot and regret had exhausted the dryad’s story it began to spread out across the multiverse looking for new places to take root, more tales of woe, more souls stagnant in their nostalga or sorrow where the queen’s essence might bloom anew.
Within a grand estate the revels of an indolent count are said to never end, as psychedelic indulgence rages every day and night while the lands around them decay. Folk say that the count had tried for years to drown the sorrows of his long dead brother, but he now appears to have succeeded with wild abandon. Rumors spread of the count’s riders gallivanting about the countryside decked in worn parade motley, snatching up performers and carrying them back to the estate. The party comes face to face with one of these agents looking to pressgang their local minstrel into service, only to lay the rider out flat in a brawl and have his body burst open with fungal rot for all to see.
The kingdom’s wilds contain the remnants of an ancient realm, once goverend by a queen who suffered a rotting sickness that the peasants still tell folk tales of to this day. Many of the fey of these reaches are sick, and seem intent on inflicting stories of this queen on any who pass by. Only after multiple ruins with these bestricken faeries do the party realize the truth: the story is the sickness and the sickness is the queen and all three are a curse that now spreads through the land with them as a vector.
After an encounter with a particularly fungal villain does the party realize that they’ve only defeated one bud of a deeply rooted threat, with multiple copies of their foe having sprouted off from some deeply rooted evil. More than simply bashing in mushroom caps, the party must exorcise the essence of Zuggtmoy’s influence, an act that will require them to call up the spirit infected by the demon queen and work through its particular issues to resolve its grief and deny the dame of decay her seedbed.
“ Come in, and don’t mind my friends, they’re just helping an old woman move house. Good help is so hard to find these days, and i seem to need more and more of it as the years go on. Be a darling and carry in some firewood won’t you? See, you’re learning to be helpful already. ”
Setup: Every witch knows there is power in the land, but those who practice unscrupulous magic also know the danger in putting down roots, the risk of staying in one place too long and having the consequences of your dirty dealings come back to bite you in the form of a peasant mob or party of bumbling dogooders.
Such is the case for Mrs. Gunny, a spiteful adept of the mystical arts who has remained near constantly on the move since folk learned of her bad habit in turning folks she disliked into livestock and selling them at market. Assisted by a team of faceless creatures composed of mud and matted fur, she moves her dwelling from village to village, looking to do a bit of transactional magic and bilk the locals into trading away trinkets, good fortunes, and a few stray years.
Adventure Hooks:
The party may encounter Mrs. Gunny purely on accident while trekking through the muddy backroads of the kingdom, or may hear rumors in the village tavern about a house that has suddenly appeared on the edge of the woods. Alternatively they may seek the practitioner out on purpose, in need of curses lived or omens read. Mrs. Gunny has no qualms about the services she may be asked to provide, and will gladly brew up potions or poisons provided the party is willing to pay. When the party invariably end up regretting their bargain ( they always will), they’ll find Mrs. Gunny having long moved on, her cottage warded against any kind of divination magic to force them to track her by hearsay.
A noble courier stumbles into town babbling about being taken captive by a witch, her livery torn, her mind muddled and confused. On further interrogation the party realize this messenger is several decades late to deliver her message, and has spent the intervening decades as one of Mrs. Gunny’s “helpers” in repayment for one night of hospitality. Something managed to break her out of the curse, which means there’s a chance to rescue all of the towering brutes Gunny has transmogrified out of those who struck bad deals with her.
One Day several of those towering brutes make their way into town, escorting a wretched redcap carrying a demand from the transient witch: Mrs. Gunny has lost her cat: Fleabite, and demands the townsfolk help search for it or the witch will have her near invunrable muscle rip their homes down board by board to look for it. As it turns out, Fleabite is infact a kindhearted youth prophesized to be Mrs. Gunny’s doom, and polymoprhed into the form of an adorable, if neglected ginger tom so the old woman can keep an eye on him.
Beyond packing her house with magical trinkets and extending her life a few years at a time, what Mrs. Gunny desires above all else is means to ascend beyond her mortal infirmity. All her stolen decades have been spent working on a spell that will transform her into a mighty Night Hag, but in order to complete it, she’ll need the aid of a skillful band of individuals either forced into her service or so morally bankrup so as to be willing to aid in the creation of a monster. Hovering around the edges of the early campaign, Mrs. Gunny will seek to put the party in her debt, then aim them at a series of deadly challenges to gather the ingredients necessary to fuel her ritual.
I recently found inspiration in the MTG card “Korvold, the fae cursed king”. He seemed like a great idea for a semi-sympathetic villain. The shell of the idea is: fae curse turns king into a dragon, then he eats his wedding.
Im curious how you would expand on this! Also, how would you get the players involved, beyond the usual “The dragon’s a greedy tyrant! Save the kingdom!”?
Villain: Korvold, the Fae Cursed King
He'll have his kingdom, and eat it too
Setup: Back when he was but a mortal man Korvold was famed for his luxurious taste, even among other monarchs, as a sign that his enlightened despotism had pulled his realm out of a prolonged dark-age into an era of prosperity. The king would have only the finest of everything, from carriages to castles to companions, a trend which redoubled on itself when it came time for him to marry the daughter of a powerful neighboring monarch, cementing an alliance that would make his kingdom one of the great powers of the continent.
As the festivities drew to a head on the night of the wedding feast, a trio of strange guests presented themselves, fey emissaries of the land Korvold had so cruelty treated in his desperate desire to modernize. Each emissary offered him a choice of gifts, each one a hidden judgement on the king’s character.
the river dammed for a mill offered a cake, or a handfull of wet soil
the grove torn down to expand the cash crops offered a chest of gold, or the song of a bird
the ancient stones uprooted and flattened down into roads offered a caravan of treasures from foreign lands, or an old story told by peasants.
In each case Korvold chose the richer gift, and in so doing sealed his fate: a king after all is a steward of the land he rules, and should value the health, beauty, and history of his kingdom above his own luxury. Convinced of his inaptness, the emissaries handed down their judgement: Korvold was not a king, but a beast in a crown, one who could never be satisfied. With that they left the king to his feasting... a feast that continued long past the next dawn and into the years thereafter, Korvold having transformed into a rapacious dragon compelled to gorge himself upon all he surveyed.
Adventure Hooks:
Nearly two decades after his transformation, Korvold has fallen into a terrible, maddened equilibrium, ruling from the ruins of his capital while every moment struggling against the desire to devour anything that moves. Some days he musters the strength to govern, while others must be spent diverted in hours of feasting, consuming a weeks’ worth of food in a single day and maybe a few slow courtiers as a snack. Most of those remain do so out of fear, but a few schemers still tarry close enough to whisper in the king’s ear, directing his gluttonous rampages and impulsive commands to their own benefit.
Korvold is convinced that if ever he COULD be satisfied by a meal, that the curse would break, leading the party on a series of iron-chef style adventures, chasing across the land for whatever rare ingredient that dragonish imagination can imagine before cooking it up and serving it to their sovereign. Korvold is known to take hostages from among the families of promising cooks, threatening to devour them if the meal falls flat. the Fae-cursed king is also known to do this to those he suspects of disloyalty, forcing nobles and their hired adventures desperately out of their comfort zone.
With the king cursed his court has fractured, nobles fleeing the capital to their country estates and hoping that steady shipments of tribute will be enough to divert their sovereign's attention. Plenty take this time of madness to rule their domains as petty tyrants, or to wage outright war against their neighbors in the hopes of accruing more territory before order is reasserted in the realm. When the party’s homeland is threatened to be annexed by a cruel neighboring duke, their only hope may be traveling to the capital and supplicating themselves before the all-devouring Korvold, hoping to win his favor and avert a disastrous war.
The actual key to undoing the curse lays in the rejected gifts, starting with the peasant story which all but forgotten the well-learned minstrels of the court and must be discovered by the party while out exploring the hinterlands. More on that long lost tale and the steps to breaking the curse under the cut:
Further Adventures
The story tells of a young woman of noble birth who was burdened by her noble station, trapped by her innumerable obligations and forced to entertain suitors who wanted her title, not her heart. One day while sitting in the garden, the young woman’s sighs attracted the attention of a bird who happened to roost there, and took interest in the girl’s troubles. This bird happened to be one of the robins of spring, and new the secret song that renewed all things like the land coming alive again after winter. The bird told the woman to go to a river where white marigolds grew and wash herself in the dark, fertile mud while it sung, scraping away her old life and becoming something new in the process. After escaping from her family’s palace and a duel with a particularly covetous suitor, the girl managed to find the river and under the robin’s guidance, became a different person entirely. Thereafter she lived a happy and simple life, finding love in her own time and growing a garden where she could admire the songs of birds for the rest of her days.
Nothing is ever easy when undoing a fairy curse, as in order to free Korvold of his scaly curse the party must a) get the king to bathe in the mud of a river where white marigolds grow b) find a robin of spring to sing its transformational song c) get the prideful tyrant to abdicate his throne and title, the sole thing that’s let him cling to his humanity these past twenty years.
White Merrigolds grow only one place in the kingdom, a stream that has all but dried up after it was dammed to make a profitable mill. The party will have visited this town at some point in their journey, and will have to puzzle out both the logistics and morality of breaking the dam if it means breaking the curse.
Robins of Spring are hard to come by, especially since the pagan grove they were purported to nest in was ripped up to expand some profitable fields. The last few might be in possession of some greedy lord, hateful giant, or wicked witch, possibly even require the party to delve into the depths of the feywild to find one.
Once they begin seeking a way to end the curse, the party will be visited by the fey emissaries in various disguises, looking to confront, confound, or aid the party depending on the stage of the journey. River is all for moving forward and guiding the party towards their goal while Stone is stubborn, thinking that Korvold should remain cursed. Grove takes a wait and see approach, far more interested in the party’s fate than that of the king.
