Night of the Walking Dead in Averoigne Part 9

Continuing my adaptation of the AD&D 2nd Edition Ravenloft module RQ1 Night of the Walking Dead to Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne, Robert E. Howard’s Cormac Fitzgeoffrey stories, and mid-14th Century Petite Camargue region of France. Note that this post contains no “crunch” and thus is system and version agnostic. Part One can be found here.

Having finished my critical walkthrough of the module, I shall collect the ideas generated previously, refine them, and add some new ones. In this post I shall determine how to integrate the Mother of Toads and generate some additional sub-plots.

THE MOTHER OF TOADS

 Actually, I’m think less frog-like but fatter.

It is time to deal with the 800 lb. toad-mother in the room (to mangle mixed-metaphors). In Clark Ashton Smith’s short story Mother of Toads, the titular character is a witch or nymph who in her natural form appears as a large and very well endowed woman (with huge tracts of land) with decidedly frog-like characteristics who is lonely and/or sex-starved.

So this has inspired me to have a Heleionoma (wetland nymph) who is a manifestation of the locale’s flora & fauna. She appears as an almost inhumanly obese woman with features that are suggestive of frogs and toads, e.g. wide mouth, bulging round eyes, warts, clammy skin, et cetera. In order for Pierre the refugee of Tarascon to settle in this area, he must wed the mother of toads. All of their male offspring appear to be human (but with the “Innsmouth look”) whereas the female offspring are born as frogs. [In Northern French, the word for toad “crapaud” is masculine whereas frog “grenouille” is feminine.] The eldest son is always the heir to the land and must wed their mother. Yes, we are talking incest here.

Have you noticed that Jean, Marcel, and Luc are unmarried? Well, this is the reason why. Perhaps all heirs are forbidden from marrying anyone other than their mother, the Mother of Toads.

What is the Mother’s role in the story? First off, she is the witch that calls up a storm that wrecks the PC’s ship so that the PCs end up in her village to save her children. No doubt that she is upset and angry at their behavior but rather than giving up on them, she brought the PCs. Can she do anything else? If the PCs were to somehow find her and speak to her, could they persuade her to do anything? And if their persuasion were successful, what exactly could she do?

The land and her are interconnected, so she can animate any vegetation she chooses to. For example, if she were convinced to intervene then she could entangle the zombies when they attempt to ransack the village. As a life-giver, she could nurse the PCs back to health if they were injured. I am not sure what else she could do other than give advice perhaps. But her price is going to be sexual intercourse, being the sex-starved nymph that she is. This presents a fun rôleplaying opportunity for the GM to describe her in both alluring and repulsive terms, much like CAS did in his story.

What does Father Brucian think about her? At the very least he must acknowledge the reality of her existence. His seminary would have taught him to recognise her as a demon and so he would work very hard to free the Crapaud family from her embrace. However, he is not afraid to enter the wetlands and tend to Luc when the latter is convalescing there. Is it because he has faith that G*D protects him? Or perhaps he is one of those priests from the Early Middle Ages who reconciled with paganism rather than demonising everything that was not familiar? I have to suspect the latter rather than the former. The Mother of Toads is very real and has very real power. Smith demonstrates in The Colossus of Ylourgne that low-level monks with religious accoutrements (holy water & symbols) do not automatically turn undead, which of course D&D taught us as well. So Fr. Brucian has to take a pragmatic strategy and not directly oppose the Mother of Toads. Does he subtly oppose her or does he accept her and Christianise her? Given the Albigensian Crusade in the past century, could Fr. Brucian be a secret Cathar or a member of the Dominicans who served as inquistors? At the very least the memories of the crusade would still linger. Brucian as a Scotsman could have joined the Dominicans and eventually be assigned to Tolouse and somehow ended up here. In fact I think it is more likely for a Scotsman to have ended up here as a Dominican rather than for the Church to have transferred him here. While a form of Catharism did get a foothold in London, there is no evidence of it in Scotland. So as long as Brucian is a Scotsman, it makes the most sense that he is also a Dominican friar — but the fact that he is Neutral/Good also explains why he is only loosely attached (if at all) to the Ordo Prædicatorum.

What does the Mother of Toads think then about Fr. Brucian? She would no doubt accept him if he honoured (worshipped) her. But what if he were to attempt to proselytise her? From a Christian perspective, are nymphs in fact nephilim or angels who fell to Earth but not Hell? Do they have free will? First off, I think that the Mother of Toads as a heleionoma is probably Neutral/Neutral in alignment and intent as she is a manifestation of the land and the life upon the land. From a Greco-Roman perspective, the Mother is the daughter of Le Ròze (Fr. Le Rhône; L. Rhodanus; Gr. Rhodanós) river. Given Smith’s story as well as fairytale traditions, I think that the Mother of Toads embodies vanity, gluttony, and lust. So long as she is worshipped, flattered with praise, and gifted with food and sexual partners, she will respond in kind with her blessings. Whereas if she is denied, she will exact vengeance with a fury.

Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.

— From the play The Mourning Bride, 1697 by William Congreve.

In other words, she is good towards her worshippers and evil towards those who do not. And given that Brucian is Neutral/Good rather than Lawful/Neutral he is going to be more flexible and pragmatic in supporting and promulgating Goodness. Combined with the reality of her power over the local area, Brucian would either martyr himself by taking a hard opposition to her or flirt with heresy in order to accomodate her.

I think then this is the key: Brucian has had to compromise his religious tenets in order to accomodate the continued presence of the Mother of Toads and he feels guilty for that. He brings offerings to her and pushes Jean to satisfy her carnal desires all the while preaching Mediæval Catholic Christianity to everyone else. The heleionoma does not care one way or another what Brucian tells the parishioners, so long as she is treated as the (very minor) goddess that she is.

So what can the PCs do for her and get in return? Once they properly present themselves to her, there is the aforementioned healing & curative magicks as well as entangling the zombies (if they run to her rather than the cemetery). She could also send an army of frogs into the rice fields to fight the zombies, or at least slow them down — this seems more fitting than entangling the zombies. She could give the PCs information on the history of the manoir, the Crapaud family, and recent events. Or perhaps she could give them a potion of frog swarm summoning. Just pour the potion on the ground and a huge swarm of frogs will arrive. I rather like the idea of distracting the zombie army with an army of frogs!

IN SUMMATION

The Mother of Toads is a minor goddess who shipwrecked the PCs in order to save her village. If they approach her appropriately, she will reward them with druid spells and a potion of frog summoning.

Frère Brucian is a Dominican (Blackfriar) preacher who has compromised his faith in order to protect the village from the wrath of the Mother. He is wracked by guilt but does his best to hide it as well as hide the cult of the heleionoma from the PCs.

 Portrait of a Dominican Friar by Peter Paul Rubens

Click here for Part X wherein I perform an autopsy on Marcel, the zombie lord!