THE MISERABLE BASIN: A Lesson on the Fourth Wall

    (This is a legacy post from my old website, so there may be some formatting issues. Feel free to email me if you notice anything out of the ordinary. Thanks!)

     Deep within the Haunted Wood, just two days east of the small village of Solitude, a small group of adventurers are wandering through the mist, led and bankrolled by the one-armed alchemist Gunter, in a desperate search for an undead merchant who sells cursed wares.

    When the players in my MÖRK BORG West Marches campaign had stumbled into the basin for the first time I hadn't anticipated much. I had written a small hour-long adventure about a death cult in a shining ziggurat with some details lifted from Cult: Feretory's adventure The Death Ziggurat, mostly just to have an excuse to plop a recognizable landmark in the center of the forest. But now the players had seen it, and decided to go do something else? Whatever. It just meant that it would sit on the back-burner for a couple sessions until someone decided to come back. But pretty soon other players kept seeing it in the distance, kept having to walk around the basin to get where they were going, some parties even didn't want to come near the place, foregoing the Haunted Wood altogether. They figured anywhere with a bright unholy beacon parting the cloud is somewhere they didn't want to be, and you know what, they were right! So I came back to the adventure I had written and added an extra encounter, some more detail, and an ex-cult member NPC.

Gunter had returned to the Miserable Basin. There was much talk of the basin among the meager adventuring guild and Gunter wanted to reach the treasure of the basin before anyone else got there first. They had practically interrogated Sarku the Betrayer about his involvement in the cult, discovering that an undead monarch in the ziggurat held an ancient treasure. Karva, the grizzled mercenary Gunter had paid, and Cassidy, a werebear companion of his, were grumbling about the inclusion of a fresh man in their party, Vrack, who had never adventured before. They were particularly troubled about his share of this "ancient powerful treasure."

Soon their arguing was cut off by the pounding of hooves as a cavalry of skeleton centaurs charged from the fog. Within minutes Cassidy had been impaled on a longsword, not given enough time to transform, and Vrack had been cut open, disemboweled by the skeleton riders. After Karva's barbaric tactics and Gunter's bow-shot forced the skeletal abominations to retreat, they had to choose between doing the same, or risking the entire mission.

Charge tactics make them fiercer on the first round of combat.

    Now I was in a pickle, the encounter I added had ended up being too much, and half the party members had died trying to reach this ziggurat. The remaining players were forced to leave, ending the session early, regaling the rest of the PCs of how there MUST be extremely good loot in there if there was this much resistance. With the hint that there were more beasts like these wandering the valley, they began to wonder whether this place was spawning them, and how much of a threat this place really posed to Solitude. So I retroactively decided that the PCs were right, this was the case. I jacked up the ziggurat, giving it traps and bigger fights, lore and treasure. I fleshed out the basin itself, adding poisonous flowers, villainous pyres and meditation circles. Stampeding waves of skeleton cavalry and mummified horn beasts. Now the players were uproarious, they had to return, and slay whatever villain was responsible for such a foul construct. Soon an extremely large group of PCs were ready to head in.

Gunter had become obsessed by the basin, entranced by it and the glories that must be held within. For the last time he strode past the cliff walls, through the valley, and down once more into the Miserable Basin, bringing a bona fide troop of mercenaries with him to siege the ziggurat. Together, they passed the hanged corpse of Sarku, executed for the crime of assisting these defilers in their holy mission into the basin. Ever since the beacon appeared, more and more undead had been spawned from this disgusting place, spreading out across and even outside the Haunted Wood, making Solitude less safe every day. They stopped in the center of the frozen lake, and steeled themselves to meet the undead emperor.

    As opposed to the lack-luster cult dogpile I had planned originally I replaced the center of the ziggurat with a boss fight, not against Emperor Nero, sorrowfully forced to cling to life, unable to move from his stone throne, barely alive to begin with, but against his eternal guardian and lover: Miora the Dread Axeman. Anyone able to get past her and slay Nero would not only claim the spoils, but halt the waves of undead surging from beneath the earth, a product of his own tearful dread. The best part of this adventure was that it hadn't been what I planned, it was something that had been created as a dual effort. The Miserable Basin was born from the PCs whispered gossip just as much as from my own toil. They and I had worked together to create an incredible locale and the most memorable adventure I have ever run. In a campaign that spanned over six months, with around twenty different players, the Miserable Basin claimed HALF of the total deaths over the entirety of the game's lifecycle.

The shed blood could not be seen on the dark red stone of the cavernous throne room, humid with panted breath. Gunter lay cut and bleeding, but alive on the step. Karva lifted the dessicated body of the still-living emperor, stepping past the dark shape of Miora's cloaked corpse, and dropped him in the beacon of his sorrow, the only thing capable of destroying him. With their pockets and satchels heavy with silver, they started on the long walk back to Solitude as the ziggurat began to quake.