More Portraits- Orcs!

This week's post is fanged and misunderstood. I added four portraits to the gallery. One is a pretty halfling, and the others are something new: three tough and craggy orcs.This is my favorite batch so far. The orc-y style was very simple to do, and all three are very obviously orcs.
So if you plan on playing an Orc, feel free to use these as character portraits.

Adventure Idea- the Skeletons in Benjamin Franklin’s Closet Are The Bodies In His Basement.

Recently it was brought to my attention that in 1998, 10 skeletons were found in the basement of a house in London. All of the bodies had tool markings on the bones. The skeletons dated to the mid 1700s when American statesman Benjamin Franklin rented the house. 
After wondering why I hadn’t heard of this already, my second thought was that this discovery would be great for a Victoriana scenario.

A Bit of Background

Between 1757 to 1762, and from 1764 to 1775, Franklin lived in a London home rented from a woman named Mary Stevenson.  His mission in England began with the politics of Pennsylvania and expanded, with the threat of Rebellion, into his becoming the colonies’ spokesman to the British Government. 

During his years in the Stevenson home, Franklin grew close to Mrs. Stevenson’s son-in-law, William Hewson.  The bodies found in the basement were probably the remains of dissections performed by Hewson, who was an anatomist. Hewson later died because of an infected cut suffered during a later dissection in 1774. 

Franklin’s house would have been the perfect spot for Hewson’s illegal scientific exploration. His mother-in-law owned the property, the current tenant was a friend of his known for scientific curiosity, and a gallows on one end of the street and a wharf on the other provided easy access for the deliver off specimens.

As creepy and morbid as that is, in Victoriana we can nudge that in a number of directions. Here’s an explanation for the skeletons, and an adventure

Skulls and Shovels

Benjamin Franklin, William Hewson and a team of anatomists and resurrection men (criminals who stole bodies to sell to dissectors) waged a secret war against necromancers across the graveyards of London. The bodies buried in the basement are captured zombies that were dissected in an attempt to find clues pointing to the identity of the necromancers. After bringing the chief necromancer to justice, the macabre cadre split up. 

One Hundred years later, the player characters find evidence of new zombies being made with a familiar technique. The necromancer is back with a sickly plot of revenge if he can get his hands on the remains of his old enemies, or their ancestors. 

Investigators can look into old newspaper reports with chilling similarities to the day’s headlines, find the group’s abandoned headquarters under Franklin’s house, fight body snatching minions in London’s cemeteries, and recover equipment to handle mobs of the undead.

Alternatively, the concept of a secret society of criminal medical practices hunting zombies would make for a great association. Perhaps the group did not disband and the players are the next generation of the grave digging conspiracy.  Depending on Benjamin Franklin’s race, he could be alive to recruit the investigators into the adventure or serve as the villain. An eldren Franklin is in his later years, a dwarven or gnome Franklin is very long lived.

More Portraits

This week's post is very photogenic. I've added a Portrait Gallery to the Navigation Bar. You can find all the Victoriana portraits on one page, arranged by subrace. Feel free to use them in your games as PCs or Npcs.

All of these portraits start as images from two very special Flickr pages: the British Library and the Internet Archive Book Images. I smush and scrunch the images (and add the occasional deer head or fangs) until I get the effect needed to identify the face with a Victoriana race. Enjoy!

Skullduggery in Motion- Deleted Content from Saltwater Tears

Now that all the synopses of Saltwater Tears and Istanbul Intrigue have been added, I thought it might be helpful to illustrate a flaw of my campaign preparation. I tend to overthink my campaigns and I get far too ambitious for the amount of time I have to run the game.In this case, I had to cut a number of side plots, encounters and even the main plot line.
As a warning for others (and to remind myself of this foible), here is some of the content cut from the campaign.

Deep at the bottom of the Mediterranean Zat, a powerful Efreet, lies trapped in a prison of bubbles and currents. A rogue French admiral leading a crew of pirates on a legendary ship, the  Poisson Rouge, is searching for Zat in the hope of enslaving him to power his ship.
The admiral was going to be an Eldren who served under Napoleon and refused to surrender. He terrorized English shipping in the Mediterranean with a magically enhanced ship. My intent was to have the player’s encounter a wreck caused by the  Poisson Rouge, later have to run from the Rouge, and at the climax fight ship to ship over Zat’s prison.
If the players released Zat and set him free, the efreet would grant them 3 wishes (there were 5 players). I wrote up a few rules for the wish such as cannot use the words “and” and “or”, cannot change past or future, and no wishing for more wishes.
Additionally, with a successful Lore roll I would give a little advice for dealing with djinns. The simpler the wish, the less the interested the djinn will be in corrupting the wish. Djinn love a challenge, so the more a petitioner tries to make an ironclad wish that cannot turn out wrong the harder the djinn will try to find loophole.

A ship in the convoy, the Penguin, is on a secret mission to look for Zat and has diving equipment to look for the djinn. The crew hopes to capture Zat to empower an experimental military airship.
I wanted to add some mystery to the convoy. The players would notice that the crew on the Penguin is secretive and some odd equipment would be on their deck. During the fight, the Penguin could be distracted by their mission or be able to help if the players come up with any crazy ideas using diving equipment.

The Purser has contacts in every port. He leaves every port with cargo to smuggle. Players may be able to help.
Before the cuts, there was a lot more shore leave. I wanted to give the players lots of time to explore and get into trouble. The ship was going to stop in Algeria, Malta, and Crete on the way to Istanbul. After cuts, Malta was the only stop remaining.
Many of these sub plots would have involved some time in port to find some item needed. I thought a shifty officer could open up some criminal enterprises and give the players a starting goal in every port to lead to adventure.

A midshipmen was a crewmen on a boat sunk by the  Poisson Rouge. He wants revenge and he has a plan.A little bit of this made it in at the climactic fight. I gave the plan to the captain of the Unicorn and he tasked the players to carry it out. They released the Elemental spirit powering the ship and the spirit tore the ship apart.

A sea hag appears to give the sailors fortune and make some money. Careful not to insult her.
No part of this made it in. I wanted to pull in some sailing superstitions through a small nautical curse or blessing. I’ll use it someday.

A fellow crewman has a terrible aversion to crustaceans, too bad he attracts them. Like the sea hag, none of this made it in. I was going to give this plot to an NPC the players liked and would want to help. There were a few candidates, but like the rest it had to be cut.

Looking over this list, it’s not as bad as I thought. Some these ideas are good and I will use them later. Others would have been fun, but I don’t regret their cutting. I am glad the campaign didn't end with the wishes. Who knows where the players would have ended up with that opportunity!
It is obvious I did not learn from my last overambitious campaign as I’m doing it all over again right now, but I suppose it’s better to have a stock of surplus good ideas, than a lack of them.

Skullduggery in Motion!- Istanbul Intrigue

Synopses for the adventure Istanbul Intrigue have been added to the campaigns page.

At the conclusion of last summer's naval campaign the party came ashore in Istanbul. I didn't have an adventure in mind and seeing as Istanbul was the capital of the Ottoman Empire it was a natural time for a prewritten scenario from the D&D setting: Al Qadim. Al Qadim is a great fantasy setting centered around the tropes and textures of the Arabian Nights.. The exotic flavor fits the expectations of Victorian Englishmen abroad.

I ran the adventure "Twelve Flawed Sapphires" from the book "A Dozen and One Adventures". It's short, simple, and works as a transition to the next campaign.  I had already converted the NPCs and encounters to a dice pool rule set  making conversion very simple.

It ran very well, and worked as a 2 session break between lager stories. I did not change very much, but I did add a Gen that could be indebted to the party, and I kept the entry to the adventure open so I could add it to whatever trouble the player characters looked for in port.
The experience of adapting a written adventure from D&D came in very handy in the next campaign.