Ideas for my new Gothic Horror Fantasy setting

[Rel]

Hey folks. I'll be starting a new game with the new year and I'm always open to hearing more ideas I can use. We had a conversation a few weeks ago about what to play next and we decided that it would be fantasy, it would be Savage Worlds and I'd be the one running it. After a bit of mulling things over and a dash of inspiration from my friend, Kiznit, I decided to do a Gothic Horror theme. Here's the elevator pitch:

So a long time ago the legends say that the land was covered by Darkness. A group of guys who came to be called The Prophets came together and assembled this tome called The White Book and with it (plus an army they gradually gathered) they pushed back the Darkness to the far southeast to a place called the Greypeak Mountains. There it seemed that the Darkness was defeated but also the Prophets and the White Book disappeared in the process.

There followed a long period of growth and prosperity as the Velaedin Empire assimilated this vast new territory liberated from the Darkness. The Elves and Dwarves, never very numerous, were pushed almost entirely to the west over the Mondarvi Mountains, beyond which lies a vast and endless ocean. The Church of Light, the organization that had risen up around the Prophets during the Darkwar, ruled over all of this. The Emperor is chosen from among the ranks of the Archbishops and each Emperor serves so long as the Church approves of his decrees.

Over time however the Church has become divided over doctrine. When the White Book and Prophets were lost, those still alive who had been closest to them each tried to recreate from memory exactly what was written in the book. But this resulted in some different versions of the book and there have additionally been varying interpretations of identical passages from time to time. In order to maintain power and hold the Empire together, the Church has maintained solidarity even despite sometimes heated disagreements over these doctrinal differences. But recently something has happened to change that.

First of course there were reports that the Darkness had returned, deep within the Greypeak Mountains. This was naturally a concern to everybody but to call the Greypeaks a backwater is an insult to most backwaters and it was largely considered to be an exaggeration of a problem that was taking place far, far away and nothing that the average citizen need be terribly concerned about. Attitudes began to change somewhat when it was rumored that an entire mountain had been ripped out of the ground and had begun to float above the area. But still it was far away and might simply go away on its own.

Meanwhile another event happened in a remote village. For a period of one year, every child born in that village was an Albino (no Albinos had ever been seen prior to this). The local Church of that Province declared this a miracle, sent by the Light and proclaimed that these babies were the Prophets Reborn to combat the Darkness again. However the Emperor, backed by several of the other Archbishops, said that these children were not in fact the "Prophets Reborn" but instead Abominations that needed to be destroyed. After all, they could not even stand the light of day and must therefore be affiliated with the Darkness.

Years went by as a rhetorical battle raged in the Church over what exactly these children meant. Three years ago however, they hit puberty and every single one of them began to manifest "powers" (keep in mind that nobody in the Church has ever manifested any such powers (unless derived externally from the animistic spirits)). To the local Archbishop this solidified in his mind the claim that the children were the Prophets Reborn. To the head Church this was decreed to be indisputable evidence of their link to the Darkness. At that point the Province in question formally seceded from the Empire and civil war broke out.

It is a time of political turmoil within the Empire as Provinces pick sides, Generals decide where their allegiances lay, the Spirits and their worshipers move more freely than ever with the eyes of the Church focused more inwardly and all the while the Darkness in the south creeps ever closer to the center of the Empire.


I should probably revisit and clarify a couple things.

The clergy of the Church of Light exhibit no "magical powers". They derive no abilities from their worship. They maintain power due to faith, tradition and vigilance, plus the fact that they essentially run the Empire. They also have technology on their side including the engineering marvels that are their massive cathedrals as well as the science of Alchemy, exemplified by gunpowder weapons.

The animistic spirits that inhabit the fringes of civilization are regarded with at least suspicion if not outright hostility (and many of them are malicious spirits worthy of such hostility). But those spirits do have mystical powers and pacts with such spirits can grant similar powers to mortals.

As for that floating mountain fortress, it is inhabited by The Vampire, who is sort of the Avatar of Darkness. The PC's probably won't know anything much about him at first but I suspect that a showdown with him in some form is inevitable late in the campaign.



Anyway, right now I'm sort of waiting for our next game night for the group to collectively make characters. I feel like I'll know more about what kinds of adventures to design after I have the characters in hand. Meanwhile I'm just sort of fishing for ideas that scream out "Gothic Horror Fantasy!" so if you have some then post them here.

 

[Piratecat]

Gothic horror fantasy: the location as intrinsically evil. Dealing with the old house up on the hill, which is haunted because the house itself is a bad place, plays right into tragic gothic tropes. Also, I'm looking for a few more buzzwords to make myself sound even more pretentious.

Other classic tropes: the evil within. A nice person turns into something horrible. Don't be afraid to think outside of the box here, utilizing some sort of consuming darkness beast instead of a werewolf.

And then there's the evil without. Something horrible blackmails/influences an otherwise good person, causing them to do the horrific. Ideally this arises from his own flaws. For instance, the butcher chops up people.. but not to feed to other people, oh no, despite his flourishing meat pie trade! He only feeds that meat to the carrion beetles. Makes you wonder why, and who asked for it.

 

[Rel]

Good stuff, PC!

One of the ideas that keeps coming up is how I want to underscore how this seemingly monolithic Church actually has lots and lots and lots of cracks that run very deep and are only now showing themselves. I really want to go all over the place with that concept from the fact that there are literally knights in shining armor who are paragons of what is good in the Church to the mysterious and dangerous Witch Hunters whom the Church has charged with going out to hunt down the "evil" spirits, many of which aren't evil at all.

I also dig the notion of people doing terrible things for all the right reasons such as stitching together a Frankenstein Monster out of all the fallen warriors whom they know to be righteous to make the perfect creature to fight the Darkness. Or the fact that there is a secret laboratory underneath one of the cathedrals where the priests are testing out the new alchemical Super Soldier Serum. Of course it must be given when the subject is young, so they had to visit the orphanage...

 

[kitsune9]

Hi Rel,

Here’s some of my adventure ideas.

Now, you’ll probably notice that I have a linear format that goes from Adventure A to B to C and such, but you can fill in the encounters to switch them around or fit it to your GMing style.

1. Murders in the City—the PC’s find themselves on the trail of a murder of a mutual good friend who helped each of them in some way. Their friend was brutally murdered and without any remorse. Clues lead to a crazy old man and a gang of thieves; however the Church gets involved when a lay priest is also murdered as well and suspicion falls on the PC’s. The PC’s eventually race against time to clear their names and find the real murderer.
Insight: The murderer is killing off certain people that belonged to a secret cult that penned a heretical book on gaining power through foul rituals and dark magic. As the PC’s investigate, they learn of this inner circle and can thwart the murderer before he gets to the final victim on the list. The heretical work in this adventure is nowhere to be found, but given that a member of the Church was one of the authors is a little secret that shouldn’t get out. The murderer’s goal is to get the book so he can please his dark masters who are unknown as well.

2. Blight in the Land—as the PC’s investigate a lead from the first adventure, it leads them to a logging village deep in the woods. They also realize that there is a ruin of a grand cathedral nearby too. The PC’s are immediately distrusted and looked upon with suspicion. The village folk have no use for newcomers so the PC’s stay in the village will be difficult to say the least. To accentuate the issue, the PC’s will find their inn bedroom door marked with some kind of “friend of evil” mark and such. However, given that the PC’s have weapons, they can intimidate their way around the village so long as they don’t overdo it and create a mob. The PC’s may visit the local parish for help and discover that the lay priest went missing a few days prior to their arrival. If the PC’s investigate, they will definitely see signs of a struggle and find notes from the priest that will help the PC’s investigation. The PC’s learn that the priest discovered that evil was afoot in the woods and that villagers turned up horribly mangled as if by some kind of large beast. The villagers don’t speak of such evil and don’t venture too far into the woods these days.
If the PC’s explore the wooded area, they find a Stonehenge where some of the villagers, guarded by diseased and feral animals are trying to summon some kind of demon to destroy the crops of the village and blight the wood that surrounds the village so it will starve to death.
Insight: The lead cultist was exposed to a tainted and corrupted object of power and gathered village outcasts as his personal minions. Through strange visions, he allowed himself to become possessed by a demon and now works to cause chaos and death. The true threat to him was the Church laypriest who his minions kidnapped and killed (or if you want to make it totally insane—they ate). The PC’s will not be able to destroy the object of power and possessing it over a length of time will eventually corrupt them.

3. Destroy the Relic—the PC’s have possession of a relic that they need to destroy. The lay priest was a scholar and collected a few works that discusses the relic in question and a ritual to destroy the item, but the ritual is penned in a book that is in the ruined cathedral. Unfortunately for the PC’s, the book was penned by a Church author who later was accused of vile witchcraft and all his works are considered heretical. Just to make things interesting, a bishop along with a contingent of soldiers visits the village to collect tithes for the Church. He won’t be too happy to discover that the lay priest is murdered and the villagers eager to blame the PC’s.
Insight: This is a short dungeon crawl through a ruined grand cathedral and the catacombs below to find the hidden library and destroy the work. The GM should play up the corrupting influence of the relic on whichever PC is stuck carrying it and when the PC’s begin exploring the catacombs, the relic can spontaneously animate skeletons and zombies to attack. Of course, the Church’s cathedral has many traps since they don’t want thieves in the catacombs and vaults.
When the PC’s are close to reaching the hidden library, they should find themselves on opposite sides with the soldiers and bishop who are after the PC’s.

4. Howl of the Night—the PC’s are on the run from the Church, but make it to another town safely. They plead their innocence with another bishop who decides to test their piety by giving them a task. They are to head to the north in the remote villages near the mountains and arrest a woman for witchcraft. She must then be brought back to the town to face Church justice (burning at the stake). The route the PC’s must take is through an old trail through a forest that is considered haunted and cursed unless. The PC’s know if they take the road around the woods, they will run into the other bishop who stop at nothing to kill the PC’s for their “crimes”.
While in the woods, the PC’s will realize that they are being hunted. First the mounts will be slaughtered and the weather plays against the PC’s (snow or rain) that it finishes off their rest of their mounts. Now they must get out of the woods alive on foot. Not only survival against whatever is hunting them important, but survival in the elements should be an important aspect as well.
Insight: There is a werewolf that considers the woods its lair. It will pick up the PC’s scent when they enter and play a cat-and-mouse game during their entire trip in the forest. The gothic aspect of this adventure is that the PC’s will run into parts of a ruined road, vine-covered statues of angels, and the occasional ruined building, and of course, a graveyard with freshly dug graves. Feel free to add creepy encounters. The other thing is that if you make the werewolf extremely difficult to kill (such as requiring a special ritual to be performed on a sacred weapon, etc.), that encounter will need to be worked in order to give the PC’s a chance.

5. The Witch and Her Dark Masters—the PC’s search around and find the witch that they are supposed to arrest. She doesn’t struggle and the PC’s put her in a prison cart and head their way back to the town (taking some other road to avoid being arrested). While along the way, she will try to turn the PC’s against one another and while working on that, the PC’s are attacked by terrible horrors such as ghouls and zombies (summoned by her, but unknown to the PCs).
Insight: The witch is a villain and will do her best to corrupt the PC’s to serve her while killing off the others. The PC’s will make their way back to town and turn over her over to the friendly bishop who grants his protection to the PC’s; however, at the conclusion of the adventure, one of the PC’s will realize that the bishop doesn’t cast a reflection. A way to be subtle by this is when the PC’s are served drinks in beautiful chalices that are shined to cast reflections and one of the PC’s will notice the oddity. At this point, the PC should be able to tell that one of the Dark Masters is the friendly bishop and he's eliminating his up and coming minion.

 

[Rel]

Excellent stuff, Kitsune! You're definitely on the track of the feel I'm going for.

I'm really hoping I can get them to settle on some characters on Monday because I think I'll have a lot better idea of what directions the players want to take things after that. So far all the players (only three this campaign, which I'm looking forward to so that each gets lots of plot focus) have basically said, "Wow, lots of cool character concepts suggest themselves!" without settling on one in particular.

Given the nature of the system I've really opened up their choices about what kinds of characters they can make. Witch Hunters or maybe one of the teenaged Albinos would be interesting options. But if somebody wanted to make a Werewolf or even play one of the Animistic Spirits then I'd be fine with that.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Forgive me if I missed it, but one trick seeming to be missing- albeit somewhat implied by PC- is corrupted agents/traditions of Light.

As in, the originals are still out there, trapped out of time, possibly even still fighting the Darkness, but those left behind who tried to "carry the torch," as it were...well, they got some of it wrong. And that let The Darkness in.

Over time, this corruption has increased, and some of those who seem most suffused with the Light- even manifesting amazing abilities- are actually those closest to total eclipse. Some of the scions of Light recognized this...but either too late (resulting in their being labeled anathema and being cast out of the Church) or have maintained a low profile while seeking out those who are still pure, perhaps maintaining a façade of dour intolerance not even the most overt corrupted one could penetrate while secretly being a bastion of pure doctrinal Light.

This means that powerful allies could turn out to be powerful foes, and at the most inopportune moments...and vice versa.

 

[Rel]

Had another awesome sounding board session with my wife last night. She is a fantastic player (but sitting out this campaign) and she comes up with awesome ideas for games too. In fact she's the one who came up with the whole Albino thing that is the catalyst for the civil war.

Anyway, my Velaedin Empire has some superficial resemblance to the Roman empire in a few respects (architecture is not among them). One idea that I think might be sort of cool is for there to be gladiatorial arenas in some areas.

There is no human slavery in the Empire due to the manner in which it was established. But the "Dark Races" (Orcs, Goblins, etc.) that were conquered and continue to come into conflict around the edges of civilization are considered sub-human and I can see the sort of decadent society I'm envisioning having them fight each other as the bloodsport of choice in some corners of the Empire.

I could even do the Sparticus thing and have an orcish slave uprising happen that is taking advantage of the chaos of civil war to break loose. More moral ambiguity for the win!

This particular concept isn't really all that Gothic. But I do think it would be cool to have a small army of escaped orcish gladiators battling their way across the Empire trying to escape TO the Darkness. That'd stir things up a bit more.

 

[Rel]

Forgive me if I missed it, but one trick seeming to be missing- albeit somewhat implied by PC- is corrupted agents/traditions of Light.

As in, the originals are still out there, trapped out of time, possibly even still fighting the Darkness, but those left behind who tried to "carry the torch," as it were...well, they got some of it wrong. And that let The Darkness in.

Over time, this corruption has increased, and some of those who seem most suffused with the Light- even manifesting amazing abilities- are actually those closest to total eclipse. Some of the scions of Light recognized this...but either too late (resulting in their being labeled anathema and being cast out of the Church) or have maintained a low profile while seeking out those who are still pure, perhaps maintaining a façade of dour intolerance not even the most overt corrupted one could penetrate while secretly being a bastion of pure doctrinal Light.

This means that powerful allies could turn out to be powerful foes, and at the most inopportune moments...and vice versa.

You are very much speaking my language here.

The GMing style I've developed over the last several years is to get the game started with some sort of adventure that will last maybe 3 sessions and then just see what develops from there, never planning more than a couple sessions ahead. Over the course of the campaign some themes and storylines will emerge as important and then I make a determination about how to tie various loose ends back into that main plotline as the thing that we're aiming toward for the conclusion of the campaign.

In short, I don't make final determinations about things before I have to so that things are flexible enough for me to twist into some semblance of a unified idea later in the game.

However...I've been sort of kicking around a couple ideas about what is really going on with the Darkness versus the Light and "what it all means". I'm not settling on anything yet but one idea that kind of grabs me is that there basically is no such thing as the Light as a "supreme being". The Prophets were in fact just a bunch of guys who had a shared delusion about divine inspiration that resonated with each other and with the masses.

But it worked! It got everybody working together to oppose the Darkness and that's what really needed to happen to push it back. Before the Prophets got the ball rolling, people were just too scared and full of despair to imagine that they could ever succeed against the Darkness. Once they were inspired by the Prophets and all working toward a common goal, they were unstoppable.

But over the years quibbles over their doctrinal differences became arguments became angry shouting matches and now things have descended into civil war. The people no longer have faith in a unified church and they've started to distrust one another, kill one another and the whole Empire is falling apart. And THAT is why the Darkness is emerging. Because Darkness and Chaos are the natural state of things where Hope, Faith and Cooperation are absent.

That's one theory anyway.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Speaking of "language" with a gothic horror setting and a battle between "Darkness" and "Light"...and a Church ascendant, language is going to play a key role in determining flavor & atmosphere ("atmosfear?"). Everyday words and expressions would take on new meaning:

Eclipsed
Dawned
In a new light
Left in the dark
Illuminated
Bright fellow

...all of these and more could have new and specific meanings.

Eclipsed for example, could mean excommunicated...especially if someone were suspected if being corrupted by Darkness.

 

[Rel]

I'm honestly not sure at all what exactly the first adventure is going to be at this point. But I've got an idea for a villain that I really like.

Basically this guy is the personification of the Spirit of Crows. He's all dressed in black. Big hook nose and dark cape. Crows follow him everywhere.

He can transform into a flock of crows and has various other crow-related powers (man I LOVE how easy this is to do with Savage Worlds!). In general he won't be an overpowering enemy but very difficult to kill.

He is motivated to encourage strife and war between the various Church factions because battle means a feast for the crows. He will be attempting to undermine any peace process and foster discord such that big battles are likely.

However down the line he may come to the realization that the Darkness is bad for business. With the power of undeath sweeping over the land, eventually the crows will have little to eat. So he may turn from enemy to...well if not friend then at least the enemy of their other enemy.