As I mentioned in my previous post, I am going to adapt Night of the Walking Dead to 14th century Averoigne for both my tabletop game as well as an adventure for the Neverwinter Nights videogame. In this post I am going to analyse the module as written by Bill Slavicsek to seek a thorough understanding. My philosophy is to understand the rules as written before changing them. (I didn’t start following that philosphy until the last decade of so but it serves me well today) but that does not mean I will not make note of “suggested” changes. Well… how about I make the changes tentative as I strive to understand the module…? *Sigh* I am an ‘old dog’ who learned to DM with the D&D White Box + Greyhawk rules in 1977 and have a very difficult time to learn the “new tricks” of using the Rules As Written.
INTRODUCTION
For the DM
This module is designed for 4–6 players of levels 1–3. Since my adaptation will be for a single player with three henchmen (effectively 4 players), it would seem the party should be 3rd level. That is too high level for my taste. I like to start campaigns at 1st or 2nd level. However, I do want the characters to be truly veterans and not just fresh out of “boot camp.” If they are 1st level, I will let them have maximum hit points. Regardless of whether they are 1st or 2nd level, they can have any amount of normal, non-magical equipment appropriate to 14th century Europe. If they are 2nd level, I will allow them to have access to any technology from the Old World. The one exception being gunpowder. At this point I have no desire to allow any kind of gunpowder weapons and frankly given the primitive technology of the time, I fail to see the benefit of doing so.
This adventure takes place in the Marais d'Tarascon, on the island domain of Souragne in Ravenloft. According to Google Translate, ‘marais’ is most often translated as marsh or swamp. As I mentioned in the previous post, I am placing this adventure in the historical Camargue region of France. The Camargue is the Rhone river delta that empties into the Mediterrean sea. As a river delta, it is comprised of salt marshes and brine lagoons. So rather than introducing players to Ravenloft, I will be introducing them to Averoigne.
Even though I will be placing this adventure in Averoigne, it will help us understand the design and intent of the module if we understand what Slavicsek was working from. Prior to this module, the only mention of Souragne comes from the the Realm of Terror boxed set published in 1990 by Bruce Nesmith with Andria Hayday. Here is the relevant text:
The Lord and the Law: Anton Misroi, the zombie master, is lord of this domain.
The Land: A slice of dry land covers the eastern side of Souragne, but the western two-thirds is a dark, swampy maze of waterways winding through towering cypress draped with moss. Most of the swamp region is submerged. A few solid patches of land rise out of the water, but only a handful of men know their location.
Souragne includes a sliver of ocean on its northern side. The land gives way to a band of saltwater before it meets the Ravenloft Mists a few miles offshore. A small town, Port d’Elhour, lies on the coastline east of the swamp.
The Folk: Souragnien people are very superstitious. They believe in a variety of nature gods, including the “Lord of the Dead,” who watches over the swamp. None of the villagers ventures into the swamp willingly, but it is rumored that some outcasts live in floating houses deep within it. The shaman is not afraid to enter the swamp.Notice that Slavicsek directly lifted ‘zombie master,’ ‘floating houses,’ and ‘the shaman entering the swamp’ for this adventure.
Story Background
Tarascon: It is very interesting that Slavicsek chose Tarascon as the family name for the rulers of the small village. Tarascon is a historical city in southern France located on the east bank of the Rhone river south of Avignon and north of Arles. Since I am placing Averoigne in the Southern portion of the Rhone river valley, Tarascon automatically becomes included. How convenient! Also of note is that the Tarasque (Latin Tarasconus) gets its name from Tarascon becuase that is where St. Martha subdued the tarasque in turn allowing people to safely kill it. Perhaps Pierre Tarascon, the progenitor of this family fled Tarascon?
Plantation: There are frequent references to the Tarascon “plantation.” First off, plantation is an anchronism. In this module, it is being used as an allusion to the plantations of the American South which combined with the name ‘marais’ evokes the 18th and 19th century plantations of Louisiana. I will change it to manour or village as necessary. This farming community is “fairly prosperous” but what are its products? As it turns out, the wetlands of the Camargue are conducive to rice and a red variety of rice (riz rouge) is native. Now what if we go one step further, and call it riz sang or blood rice? There could be an entire story of how the rice from this particular manour has the colour of blood and is rich in iron!
Timeline: The module does not specifiy which season or month of the year this story takes place. For my purposes, it will take place in October of 1347 which is when the Black Death arrived in Europe. When I ran this adventure in 1994, I used it as the launching for the Zombie Apocalypse replacing the historical Bubonic Plague of the 14th century. I am a bit torn between following this adventure faithfully versus using it for the start of the Zombie Apocalypse. So this is something I need to figure out. Also, it would be pretty cool if I can also link this to Hallowe'en. At any rate, the cause of this adventure begins three weeks prior to the arrival of the PCs.
Summary: Tarascon Manour is owned by the Tarascon family consiting of twins Jean & Marcel and younger brother Luc. It appears that the brothers are all unmarried because there is no mention of any wives nor betrothed for that matter, which is quite odd since wealthy families have been arranging marriages since the dawn of time. Jean plays the role of steward to the estate and thus is the de facto lord of the manour. Marcel has no interest whatsoever in practical matters, rather his interest lie in his family’s past. Wait, what?!? He spends his time doing genealogical research? And Jean is fine with that? The idea of the idle rich is also an anachronism. Traditionally, wealthy families would get the eldest son knighted and the second son into the Church. So how did Marcel end up a layabout? My thinking is that the family sent Marcel to the University of Montpellier because that is the closest one. It is also quite possible that he discovered black magic (nigromauncie) while he was there. I thought about Eustace the Monk who learned black magic in Toledo but could not justify a middle-class family sending a son there when Montpellier is so close. The bottom line is that Marcel most likely acquired a level in wizard/mage/magic-user while there and indulged his interest in the dark arts when he returned. Why else would he be facinated by his family's past?
Shortly after returning home, Marcel discovers Pierre the founder’s journal. The journal describes the early days of the farmstead which is left to the GM to define. It also mentions the arrival of Hyskosa, a famous Vistani seer. Interestingly, Slavicsek uses the term “gypsy seers” as a synonym for the Vistani. I note this because TSR had been very careful to use gypsy imagery but to never use the word ‘gypsy.’ I guess this one slipped past Andria Hayday. To continue, the journal goes on to say that the gentleman Hyskosa told Pierre the powerful revelation of the Six Signs. Apparently Pierre sumarized the prescience but we are not told what that is. Marcel is far more interested in the notation that a scroll containing the Revelation of the Six Signs was left behind and hidded by Pierre more than two centuries ago. For some unexplained reason, Marcel came to believe that the scroll contained the secrets of power and immortality. We are told that the Demiplane of Ravenloft fueled Marcel’s obsession with finding the scroll. Of course, I am unconcerned about the rôle of Ravenloft but it is interesting to note that by this time Ravenloft has swallowed up Souragne. Neither the module nor the boxed set tells us exactly when Souragne joined Ravenloft nor why. I do not think we need any dark powers to fuel Marcel’s obsession wth the scroll given that he somehow came to believe it contains the “secrets of power & immortality.”
Meanwhile we are told that the twins have a younger brother, Luc and that their mother Claudine died giving birth. [Oddly, we don’t learn her name until we get to the discovery of the Tarascon mausoleum in the new cemetery. Another editing oversight.] Luc grew up idolizing Marcel for some reason, which suggests to me that Marcel is significantly more charismatic than his twin, Jean.
Three weeks ago Luc spies a Vistani wagon and pays a young gypsy girl named Valana to tell his fortune. [Perhaps the Vistanic are a type of Gypsy?] Luc’s fortune as it turns out, are “cryptic” directions to the “Crypt of Stars” in the old cemetery. Yeah, it really says that. (Eyeroll) Luc grabs Marcel and together the push aside the stone slab with six stars, crawl through the tunnel, push the statue out of the way, wander around the old cemetery until they spot a tomb with six stars on the door, get it? All these years of Marcel searching for a scroll of six verses but he never checked the Old Cemetery. Now the brothers break into the tomb and find the scroll. But it is Luc who reads it and not Marcel, which is bizarre given how obsessed Marcel is with reading it. During the reading, they are attacked by a “ju-ju zombie” and some other zombies. For those of you who do not recall, “juju zombies” first appeared in the AD&D Monster Manual II (1983). They are created when a magic-user drains all the life out of a victim by using the energy drain spell and can only be hit by a +1 or greater magic weapon. In the AD&D Players Handbook (1978), energy drain is the reverse of the 7th level clerical spell restoration. In Unearthed Arcana (1985), it appears as a 9th level magic-user spell and mentions the creation of juju zombies. This is important to note because this ju-ju zombie who kills Marcel was created by a mage of at least 17th level! Why was there an arch-mage in the Marais d’Tarascon? Who became the ju-ju zombie? Whoever it was became the guardian of the old cemetery in general and of the Hyskosa scroll in particular.
So what do we do with the ju-ju zombie? Given that they are created by arch-mages, there is always a story behind each one. However, I cannot help but suspect that Slavicsek choose to include a ju-ju zombie because this is supposed to be a ‘zombie’ module and did not think anything more beyond that. The reason being, is that introducing a result of a 17th level mage energy draining a person is huge! Campaign defining huge! 17th+ level are legendary archmages and everything they do impacts the world! We are talking the most powerful wizards in legend such as Merlin, Morgana le Fey, and Maugris. Did Maugris (or Merlin or Morgana) stroll into the Marais d’Tarascon and energy drain someone into a ju-ju zombie, leaving them in the Old Cemetery to guard it? I very, very seriously doubt it. So in this particular case, rather than expanding the story to fit the module, I think it is best to replace the juju zombie with an ordinary zombie (or one of my Grym zombies I'll detail later). It also takes care of the issue that 1st level characters will not have a +1 weapon between them and juju zombies require that!
Getting back to the history, Marcel is killed by the ju-ju zombie but Luc is untouched. Conviently Jean was following them from a safe distance and comes to Luc’s rescue. Jean somehow wrests Marcel’s corpse from the ju-ju zombie and leads Luc out of the Old Cemetery. Amazingly, Jean and Luc can outrun the ju-ju zombie despite being burdened with Luc’s corpse and the ju-ju zombie moving at 9." Now Luc would be unencumbered at 12" but Jean with a corpse?!? I think 6" at best! And yet somehow they escape. Does Jean have a magic weapon? Not according to the text. Also, ju-ju zombies can shoot bows as well as climb walls like a thief (92%). So why did the ju-ju not shoot Jean or follow in the tunnel? Et cetera, et cetera. But if we replace the ju-ju zombie with normal zombies, then Jean can lead them away to the far corner, double back and take Marcel’s corpse. Yeah, I think replacing the ju-ju zombie is a really good idea!
Jean takes Marcel’s corpse to Brucian, the village shaman…. Hang on a minute, shaman? Is Brucian an AD&D 2nd Edition priest [cleric] with the savage priest kit? According to the AD&D 2nd Edition PHBR3 The Complete Priest’s Handbook (1990):
“This is a shaman of a savage tribe. This character is a member of the tribe. The tribe itself is a technoligically and culturally primitive one (by the standards & in the opinions of more “civilised” cultures), but is also one which is attuned to the natural forces of the world. The Savage Priest interprets the will of his god and acts as an advisor or leader to the members of his tribe.”
This strikes me as a bit odd, so I will peel back the layers of this onion so to speak. First off, in the Realm of Terror, recall that “the shaman is not afraid to enter the swamp.”
We have every reason to believe that Brucian is in fact the very shaman who is not afraid to enter the swamp. Slavicsek made the village priest a “shaman” precisely because he was working off the summary of Souragne found in the Realm of Terror. And remember that Andria Hayday co-created the Realm of Terror and also edited the Night of the Walking Dead. So she would have been fully aware of the connection. As an astute reader, you are probably wondering if Nesmith and Hayday were thinking of the priest kit or the AD&D shaman, given that the CPH was published the same year as the Ravenloft boxed set. Well, it really does not matter. According to the AD&D DMG, shaman are just clerics with a limited spell selection and cavemen (the only humans with shaman) shaman are not limited to 7th level unlike the humanoid shaman.
But why the choice of “shaman” instead of village priest or druid, for that matter? Surely Nesmith & Hayday and later Slavicsek intended that this priest be a Ravenloft stand-in for a voodoo priest. The imagery they evoked with Sourage is a mix of antebellum Lousiana and Haiti with bayous, zombies, and French masters.
So what we have then is that Jean took Marcel’s corpse to the local voodoo priest and that priest attempted to raise Marcel from the dead but the operation failed. Raise Dead?!? That is a 5th level priest spell! Is Brucian 9th level or higher? He is after all, the shaman of Souragne…. Yet we learn later on in the module that Brucian is only 2nd level and has a scroll with two raise dead spells remaining. So the famous shaman of Souragne is only 2nd level. Okay, I can work with that. (On a separate note, if Nesmith & Hayday envisaged the shaman as an AD&D witch doctor then Brucian should also be a 1st or 2nd level mage as well.) So Jean cries out in anguish when his twin fails to revive because he somehow knows that Marcel is now the undead and not just any undead but a Zombie Lord! Meanwhile Brucian probably thinks that Marcel failed his Resurrection % check (A CON of 10 has a 25% chance of failure). Jean goes mad, thinking that he must protect Marcel from his obsession and so he snatches the Hyskosa scroll from Luc and hides it. When Jean notices that Luc mutters mixed-up sections from the scroll, he banishes Luc to the swamp. But then…
“Jean promised to locate the scroll for Marcel, swearing to search for it as long as he drew breath. Never did he reveal to Marcel that he had hidden it, nor did he reveal to anyone what his brother Marcel had become.”
Wait, what? Jean hides the Hyskosa scroll but swears to search for it?!? I suppose what Slavicsek meant to say is that Jean made a false promise to his (un)dead twin brother to search for the scroll thinking that Marcel would believe him.
“Marcel now resides in the old cemetery, intent on creating undead servants while Jean continues to search for the scroll. For three weeks Marcel has used his powers to kill villagers; when they rise, they become zombies under his control. Though Marcel does not have the scroll, he believes that an army of undead will help him taker over this island of terror. (To date, the true lord of Souragne [Anton Misroi] has not intervened.”
How can Jean continue to search for the scroll when he knows where he hid it. Why did Hayday as the editor not change this to ‘continued to promise Marcel that he was searching for it’ or somesuch? And how did Marcel end up in the Old Cemetery? Was there a funereal? There must not have been since nobody has the key to the Old Cemetery. Did Jean drag his brother’s corpse through the tunnel or wait for Marcel to rise as the Zombie Lord and stagger there himself? Why is Jean letting Marcel kill off the villagers? I get that the shock and trauma of his twin dying and rising as an undead has caused him to go mad. I could accept that Jean locks himself up in his sanctuary and does nothing while Marcel murders the village.
“The village has to content with more than just Marcel, however. Jean has become a murderer as well as a madman. He takes victims to the zombie lord as both an offering and a sign of his growing affection for the undead.”
So Jean’s coping strategy is to become ‘Jacque le Ripper’?!? And he now has a growing affection for the undead? When I ran this adventure back in 1994, my players and I found this premise ridiculous. Twenty-six years later, I still find it ridiculous. Perhaps if the writing and editing were different, I could appreciate but…. Later on we learn that Jean forces his servants to eat the flesh of some of the victims which turn them into ghouls. That is a very interesting theme but….
This is the crux of the matter — my primary criticism of this module. There are three themes that fight to be the central theme. First we have a zombie master who goes about the village at night whose breath and/or farts are so noxious that people keel over and die on the spot only to revive moments later as a zombie slave, although sometimes their rising happens much later. Second we have Jean le Ripper murdering people also night. Third, sometimes Jean gives the corpses to his brother Marcel but sometimes he feeds them to his servants, thus forcing them to become ghouls but he is too cowardly to eat the corpses himself despite his growing affection for the undead. I think this module would be a lot less confusing and hence more enjoyable if there was a single central theme instead. Zombie Lord is a great theme for an adventure. Jack the Ripper is a great story. Crazy guy feeding corpses to his servants thus creating ghouls is a great story. Why create a mash-up? Given the limited pagecount of modules, these competing central themes prevents the exploration of the supporting cast. In every Gothic story, everyone has dark secrets. In this adventure, we have… Jean? This is Ravenloft, for crying out loud! There should have been a single central theme, e.g. Marcel as a Zombie Lord with the named NPCs all having dark secrets.
So I think this is my mission here. To take a single theme (i.e. Marcel as a zombie lord) and to flesh out the NPCs to turn this into a true Gothic story. I also wish to place the adventure in Averoigne and interject some of Clark Ashton Smith’s sardonic and ironic humour into it as well.
The Hyskosa Scroll
The proverbial MacGuffin. More than two centuries ago (late 1000s to early 1100s) a Vistani (Gypsy) seer named Hyskosa had a revelation about six events that were to take place in the distant future. He wrote down this revelation in a scroll and left at least one copy in each of the Ravenloft Domains he visited (Vistani are the only ones who can freely travel between the domains). The actual scrolls are powerless nevertheless there are some like Marcel who believe that they do contain real power.
Who are the Vistani? In this module, Slavicsek uses Vistani and Gypsy interchangeably. Throughout the Ravenloft publications, the Vistani are a stylized and sterotypical depiction of late 19th century Romani (1850–1920) given their use of the vardo (wagon). This is the image we have seen in The Wolf Man and Dark Shadows, so it should not at all be surprising to find them in Ravenloft. There are no gypsies or Romani mentioned in any of Smith’s stories set in Averoigne so we have to look to the etymology of the word ‘gypsy’ and the history behind it. According to Etymology Online it first appeared in English as a noun in 1600 and an adjective in 1620 and spelled ‘gipsy’. Interestingly it also says that in Middle French they were called ‘Bohémien’ and in Italian & German ‘zingari’ (cf. Zingara in Hyboria). Apparently in the 1400s the French either thought the gypsies came from Bohemia or confused them with the Hussite refugees (c.1419–1434). The genetics show that the Romani originated in South Asia and linguistics point to Northeast India. In 1323 they were observed in Crete and in 1360 there were Romani serfs in Corfu. According to Wikipedia they reached Bohemia by the 14th century but most likely as slaves. So it is possible, if a bit of a stretch to have Vistani as gypsies.
Wikipedia further claims that ‘gypsy’ can refer to Tinkers and Travellers, in other words all sorts of itinerate folk. However the genetic, linguistic, and historical data on the English, Irish, Scottish, & Welsh travellers shows that these groups did not form until the 1500s at the earliest. So that leaves Tinkers of which the occupation dates to the late 14th c. according to Etymology Online. I find it highly suggestive that the arrival of the tinker occupation and the gypsies to be a very similar timeframe given that historically many tinkers were thought to be gypsies. At any rate, whether they are called ‘gipsies’ or ‘tinkers’ it is a bit of a stretch but not anachronistic to describe the Vistani as a sort of tinker-gypsy so long as we leave out the vardos.
What if the Vistani were fairies? Given the rôle that the Vistani play in this module (as we shall see), they act very much like fairies. The magically appear in the swamp, offer hospitality if treated respectfully, tell the party’s fortune, and then disappear at dawn. I think that your typical person in the Middle Ages would call them as fairies rather than tinkers!
Adventure Synopsis
In this section of the module, Slavicsek would summarise the most likely path the PCs will take, the most likely PC actions, and the appropriate outcome. Except that he does not quite do that. In fact, what he does is tell the story of what is supposed to happen. *Sigh* As others have pointed out, this adventure leans very heavily towards the “railroad” style of RPG design. The biggest nit I have with this “synopsis” is that it presumes that the PCs can break into Jean’s townhouse. Except that the locks “are of masterful quality (-60 open locks modifier).” A 1st level thief with an 18 DEX who put the maximum 30 points into open locks has a base success of 55% but versus these locks has a -5% chance of success — in other words impossible! The party is forced to break down the door or a window with a base 50% chance of being spotted or heard with bonuses for “caution and quite” as the DM sees fit. The constable will arrive in 1d6 rounds (1–6 minutes) to arrest the PCs. I can imagine that Slavicsek wanted to raise the tension of the situation by having the constable arrive and search for the PCs in the townhouse. But why not allow the thief to unlock the door? Why bother playing a thief if you cannot show off your buglar skills? After all, he will not get to backstab any zombies….
IN SUMMATION
To recap the adaptation so far, this adventure takes place during October of 1347 AD in the Camargue region of Averoigne rather than the domain of Souragne in Ravenloft. It will be for four PCs (player + 3 retainers) of 1st or 2nd level. The manour (not plantation) will be famed for its riz sang or ‘blood rice.’ Marcel was educated at Montpellier but did not enter the seminary and instead has taken up nigomauncie. Jean is the Sieur or Mesne Lord in that he is a gentleman who holds the land in tenantcy from a greater lord most likely the Abbey of Psalmody (Abbaye de Psalmody). The Vistani are actually fairies. The ju-ju zombie will be either a be a Rotting Dead or some type of skeleton (I will detail my Grym zombies & skeletons in a future post). Brucian will be a village priest or vicar rather than a “shaman” or a witch-doctor for that matter. For the time being, I am going to put the Jean le Ripper theme on the “back-burner” until I am convinced that it is integral to the success of the module. And finally, I resolve to make the NPCs more fitting for a Gothic novel or Averoigne story by introducing motivations, dark secrets, and conflicts with the other NPCs.
Click here for Part III.
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