Miserable Secrets Campaign

Books and inspirations

The world idea is based on Miserable Secrets by Fantasy Heartbreaker. There were some adjustments and expansions, a fleshing out of the world so to speak.

Note that the game has also an update that uses B/X-compatible system (an OSR clone): Shadows of Golgotha.

Rose Bailey, the magnificent person who created Miserable Secrets, can be supported through her Patreon.

The inspirations:

• All things technofantasy, or a romanticized fantasy seen through modern and cyber lenses.
• Vampire Hunter D
• Beowulf

The System and the PCs

That said, for this game I have created a CortexPrime hack.

CortexPrime system is quite simple: assemble a dicepool based on your stats, juggle it a bit to improve your chances, roll and then select three dice - add two of them to create your success total, select a third one to find out how well you succeeded. You need to exceed your difficulty number. If you fail, you take consequences (penalties) that accumulate until you're eliminated (it's a system where taking a first loss sets you on a bad path, so you either don't want to take a loss at all, or you want to recover from it as quickly as possible).

Heroes according to Dall-E

Here are the characters along with their pictures created by feeding their sheets to a Dall-E: Character sheets

An example of an adversary: A Cockroach Man

• Poses as a friendly drunk. Tries to separate a character from a party under the pretext of a letter left by the paladin, a romantic interest or a brief one night stand arrangement.
• Once he gets a character out of town using their little wagon, they switch to their horror shape and attack.
• Rance Belaire (Bumbling, charming, enduring adult M.), The Cockroach Man, It is a Wolf-in-Sheep’s Clothing (d6) Beast (d6) who Shapeshifts into a Human-Sized Cockroach (d8).
• The takeaway clue: This is a human modified by someone. Apparently there is a monstrous presence in town.

PC Introduction

The players were introduced to the story and the system via presentation.

This is a recap of the story provided in the setting book plus a few ideas expanding on it:

• The story takes place in 2424, in a region originally known as France.
• The civilized has recovered from an apocalypse somewhat, the dominating religion is Christianity (of sorts) with a cup filled with blood being the symbol, and the church is both a bastion of learning, a shield for the humanity and a diplomatic intermediary between humanity and agents of the divine, the Noblesse.
• The Noblesse share the knowledge through church, live in gothic megapalaces that descended from the skies three hundred years ago, and accept taxes of blood. Oh, and they don't tolerate sunlight.
• Otherwise, the world is a dark, gothic place, with superstition, supernatural and cybernetics going well hand in hand.
• The protagonists are outsiders, touched by something that awakened their latent talents (for example, one of them is a wolf that ascended to human body and intelligence, but needs to deal with their own inner issues). They work as lesser brethren for the order of Jeanne D'Arc to protect the people from supernatural threats.

Story recap: Requiem for a Paladin

The opening

A mighty paladin, madam Lefort (full name: Caroline Flannery Searlait Poncet), has fallen: her candle has lost its light in the Hall of Souls in New Paris.

A specialist team is dispatched to retrieve her body, her machine sword and her steel horse.

In the Silver Abbey on the outskirts of New Paris, there is a cathedral of Valiant Hope of St. Jeanne d’Arc. There, in the nave burn the soul candles representing various important personages, watched over by the Sisters of Jeanne. The candles are aglow as long as the personages are alive and well, flicker when they get sick or weak, and go out when they die.

Last night, a candle of Caroline Flannery Searlait Poncet sputtered and lost its flame. Apparently, a mighty Maid Paladin must have met her demise during a mission.

You, the Lesser Brethren, are requested to travel to the site of her mission and recover her body, her arms, and her steel steed. Righteous retribution is optional, though welcome.

The story so far

1. The heroes reached the town of Annecy over Thiou River, dealing with a group of bandits on their way. While dealing with the bandits they have discovered that the bandits were hired to attack them, and that all loose ends in the bandit camp were tied up by viral fungal infection that explosively killed all non-combatant members of the bandit group.

2. After long investigation, the heroes made acquaintance of local witch, learned about calamity twenty years ago and discovered the nature of their enemy. As a follow-up, they have killed Forest Baute, a shepherd for a horde of mutated sheep and the killer of madame Lefort (the maid paladin). Maid Paladin equipment was recovered and put in lead boxes (as mentioned in the intro, madame Lefort and her equipments are poisonous, and prolonged exposure is detrimental to health). 2.1 One of heroes was attacked by a cockroach-man. The things looked dire however the rest of the team arrived in time to shoot, maim and hack the monster to death.

3. Continuing their quest for righteous vengeance, the suspicious pianist from the local theatre was targeted. The said pianist is suspected to be a mastermind for a local network of agents of the Green.

4. A contact was made with a hidden handler of madame Lefort. She was able to translate last message from the Maid Paladin. The heroes gained confirmation that the agents of the Green search for a grave of their Herald (the Herald perished twenty years ago, in a massive landslide that costed the lives of half the town, and the Herald last resting place, a sealed steel sarcophagus, is located under villa of Raoul the Witch - a wheelchair bound man and a heir to an old aristocratic family).

5. Following olfactory afterimages (one of the heroes used their wolf heritage) of the pianist, heroes identified important agents of the Green:
   5.1 A mechanic working in a local agricultural cyber workshop (think beasts of burden with cybernetic implants). After a short tour of a cyber ox, the mechanic was confirmed to be no longer human, and was disabled. While being interrogated, the mechanic was confirmed to have been altered by mysterious pharmaceutical means provided by the pianist. Also, by inspecting his memories, other agents were identified: a cleaner from a local constabulary, a butcher's wife. Additional, the cockroach-man may have been one of them. The mechanic was killed, turning in a pile of vaguely human remains slowly dissolving into a smelly black goo.
   5.2 The cleaner at the constabulary, an old lady, was also isolated and dealt with.
   5.3 Apparently all these people lead normal lives until their health have begun to fail. Being desperate, they accepted drugs from the pianist, and over a period of a few months they were altered.

6. The heroes are pressed for time. The pianist is apparently a head of a major local gang, and they have large headquarters in the theatre. Two heroes left to deal with butcher's wife, while the main part of the party delved into secret tunnel to make a surprise attack on the pianist and his bandits.

Session 2024-08-27

1. The heroes delves into underground passage leading to the theatre. The passage was a part of an old underground complex, ruined and filled with rubble. There was mostly one way forward (the heroes followed a path) until they realized they have entered a territory of a predator (thanks to keen senses of Case Leleu). Yet it looked like they reached their next milestone (an underground lab) without issues until they were attacked by a menace, a Slithering Monster Face:

GM's note: I have intended the delve to be somewhat different, however, in a bout of mad inspiration this has become a garbage collection center, in the ruins of an abandoned underground shelter, that was formerly an underground railway station. The fight was a short one, the creature bit Elise's backpack (restraining her), Elise confused the creature further, and then Case severed creature's head from the rest of its body.

2. Behind the last pile of rubble, there was a secure and sturdy door to a lab. Javier took over a mind of a cyber-camera parrot behind the door to unlock digital lock. And so they let themselves in. Apparently, another altered human with spindly elongated libs was dozing off thanks to fumes coming out of lab cauldron. The heroes moved forward (yes, the minion died quickly in their sleep).

3. Faced with a choice of going left or right, the heroes decided on the left ending up in the theatre. To their surprise, the large theatre complex was empty and different from what they remembered. It looks like the festive party was partly an illusion, and the looming grand piano was behind it.

GM's note: The PCs suspect that the piano is the Second Herald of the Green. And that even its minions are too afraid to stay longer in its vicinity. Also, the PCs detected a number of weird winged mechanical skulls located on a big chandelier.

4. The PCs backtracked and found themselves facing actual headquarters of the gang. And our session finished there.

Session 2024-08-25

1. The heroes investigate the headquarters remotely, using camera budgies. There are three parts of the bandit HQ: the tavern rooms, the living quarters (upper floors; a guard) and the boss quarters (an elite guard). There are no apparent exists aside from the heavily fortified street-level entrance and the underground passage (two guards). They decide to burn it down... eventually.
2. The two guards manning the passage are put down to sleep using siren lullaby by Elise. Elise hacked into their dreams and also learned that:
   1. The bandits do not venture to the theatre unless their boss, the pianist, is present. Someone did, and was found as a pile of cleanly picked bones in the morning.
   2. Apparently, any festivities in the theatre are managed by the boss, who uses the piano to deploy powerful illusions. Then they rob visitors lightly, leaving guests with pleasant memories. The only way to protect oneself is to plug one's ears. Apparently all bandits know basics of the sign language, and the guards are deaf.
   3. The boss is assisted by weird folk, who are humanoids with strange tint of skin color, have elongated faces and limbs (yet still are shorter than bandits). These folk produce illegal pharmaceuticals.
   4. Another finding: the minds of the guards were meddled with somehow - they lost their ability to wonder about or question weirdness.
3. This confirmed heroes' suspicions that the grand piano was in fact the second Herald of the Green. They ventured back to the lab and assembled thermite.
4. Their plan: barricade the passage toward the bandit HQ, block their sense of hearing, stealthily plant thermite on the piano, set it on fire.
5. They did so - Case, being the most mobile did the deed. Unfortunately, they were right, it's just that the opposition was not a piano - it was a monstrous insect-like multisegmented creature that was able to alter everyone's perception, and Case, thanks to his keen senses, was still affected. The battle enfolded, with heroes hurling molotov cocktails and praying that the thermite will eventually burn through creature's carapace. Case kited the creature, while everyone tried to support his fight.
6. The monster finally succumbed to fire, Case got badly hurt, and the whole theatre was set to burn. The monster dispersed into its survival form - a swarm of dark beetles that tried to flew away, but the theatre started to transform into an inferno. The heroes escaped...
7. ... and clashed with the pianist who somehow got around the barricade. There was a short, intense gunfight, and the pianist fell down the stairs apparently breaking his neck. Pianist's hair went all white.

Session 2024-08-25, Epilogue

1. The theatre burned. Thanks to reinforced walls and years of plunder, the fire never got out, and the Herald beetles died.
2. The pianist, stopped playing dead once the PCs left (he used his last Dread Point), and departed for parts unknown, forever tainted by the Green, but yet again fully in control of his own senses.
3. The bandits, free from mind programming and panicked, killed boss assistants once they realized that weird inhuman beings were among them. Then they fled the town afraid townsfolk revenge.
4. The townsfolk, while obviously unhappy with burning of the theatre, pinned the blame on the bandits.
5. The heroes returned victorious, with the body and arms of the paladin.
6. The paladin's watcher, and Talbot the gunslinger, broke into butcher's house and have slain the butcher's wife. Yes, they were right - she was another agent of the Green in disguise. During the fight she almost killed her family trying to absorb them into her body.