I’m really happy with how my BtW/Dolmenwood campaign is going, my players got really into the High Wold shenanigans and already made a life-long enemy out of Lord Malbleat, which culminated nicely into the Emelda’s Song official module.
Now, I’m thinking, what other modules can I stick into that sandbox, so I can have a few more pre-made dungeons to play with?
One obvious answer is The Blackapple Brugh by Kyle Hettinger, a module released as part of the Basic Fantasy Project, which I was actually aware of before Dolmenwood even released. I actually even tried to run it once, but unfortunately the group fizzled out before we could conclude it.
It already has a lot of things going that makes it fit Dolmenwood really well:
- It is set in a village that borders a great enchanted wood.
- The resident clerics are implied to worship a saint linked to a monotheistic religion.
- The main villain is an old elf fairy lord, banished underground by ancient magic.
- The elves in general are all of the fae type, instead of the “standard” D&D Tolkien style elves.
As you can see, the gist of it is already surprisingly close to Dolmenwood in general, so it can be set there almost RAW, thou I have some considerations:
I want to set into the High Wold part of the setting, as it is the part my dear level 2 to 3 playr characters are currently exploring, and are involved with its dynamics and politics. The High Wold “civilized” society is jointly populated by both humans and breggles, caprine mortals who worship their ancestors and have a strong magical tradition. Yet Blackapple is almost exclusively populated by regular humans.
Interestingly, despite being a small village, it has a crap ton of low level magic users, with that in mind, the first change I will make is to turn most of the magical long term residents into short-horn breggles, probably leaving just the foreign born necromancer as a human.
The presence of breggles, on the other hand, introduces another issue, one of the recurring villain types are caprine fairies known as Ibix, so I will have to make an effort to distinguish between the two ancestries. I will do my best to describe them more like fucked up fauns than regular goat people, paying extra attention to the fact they are on average smaller and have a fae wrongness to them.
Now I have to think about how to include the resident Elf Lord in the setting’s lore, he doesn’t fit super well in any of the pre-established fairy courts, so I think I will simply make him an independent actor, that may have had a loose alliance with the Cold Prince back when he was in power, but wasn’t particularly close to him.
It is said this Elf Lord was banished underground by ancient magic users who used standing stones to keep him there. In the context of Dolmenwood, this is quite obviously work of the Drune. Since our adventurers already made contact and are in a loose alliance with them, that might the way I will introduce the module in the first place. The Drune may give them the quest to investigate the site, afraid that the local rumors might mean the banished elves are about to escape.
With all of this set, all I need is an actual hex I can fit the village, quite a simple answer: Hex 0411. It is set in the High Wold, it borders the wood from the west, it isn’t part of any other fae lord domain. It slips in like a glove, honestly.
I have one final personal touch to it, regarding the giant owl who lives in the southern shrine, but I’m aware my players read this blog, so lets keep it at that, haha ;)