Dark Continent Redux: Adventure Background

Dark Continent Redux

A Fantasy Core Adventure

© Jerry Harris 2016

Published here as Open Game Content.

(This link will take you to the Fantasy Core Playtest Rules.)

Dark Continent Index

Adventure Background

This adventure revolves around Kurtz, a wizard and an ambitious, adventurous ivory merchant.  He came seeking fame and fortune.  He managed to achieve both when he found the Dragon’s Boneyard deep in the Interior and made off with a haul of enchanted bones from there.  Fearing the graveyard’s guardian, a dragon named Hellion, Kurtz kept the location a secret and did not return.  Instead of returning to his home country, he built a magnificent mansion in the Interior near his station and sent for his Intended fiancée.  (Conrad didn’t name her.  I won’t either.)             

Hellion eventually found out about the theft and started to hunt for the thief.  Kurtz became aware of the hunt and kept his Intended at Home Station.  Needing more power, he decided to follow up on rumors of a Forbidden City.  No natives would go near it, so he set out with a large number of colonial adventurers.  (Hmm.  An opening for a possible prequel adventure?) 

Most of the party would be wiped out before the massive, ancient, devastated city was found and would be even further whittled down before they came to the Infinite Temple.  There they found hibernating Serpent Men, the previous legendary masters of this land, and their monstrous sleeping Master.  This trespass aroused the Serpent Men caretakers and the party would be captured, except for Kurtz.  His high-level magic powers bought him instant respect. The Serpent Men’s cause was, of course, re-conquest of the continent, but they lacked the ability to access even their own ancient knowledge, much less the discovery of new and more potent magic.  Kurtz threw in with them and his men did as well.  With Kurtz’s power added to the Serpent Men’s, suddenly a successful war was a possibility.

Kurtz began sending back missives to the colonial government about a native uprising that he was fighting.  Meanwhile wearing a new identity, he began inciting and bullying various native tribes into rebelling.  He has been leading both sides into destroying each other.  He might lead an attack on a colonial settlement in disguise, while later openly destroying a native village in retaliation for the attack.

After learning more magical knowledge from the Serpent Men’s old spell books and experimenting, Kurtz began enticing natives into the temple.  He and the Serpent Men used them as a mass sacrifice to summon a protective barrier around the temple isle and rendered it effectively invisible and invulnerable.  Using powerful summoning spells, Kurtz turned his own compatriots into demonic servitors. 

[Paladin Smite will have full effect on Kurtz’s Demon Host creatures (as will a Ghost Hunter’s Divine Radiance, though they’d be rather out-of-place in this setting).  They could conceivably be turned back into humans with an Exorcism ceremony.  Perhaps they could be valuable sources of information against Kurtz, perhaps they go hopelessly mad.  Who knows?]  

Several allied tribes of natives have been devolved into savage creatures.  Kurtz has taught some native Witchdoctors potent magic.  Other natives have been massacred and are in the process of being turned into undead.  Currently, Kurtz is hedging on waking up the rest of the Serpent Men (doesn’t trust them), and instead has been working on a ceremony to draw out the Serpent Men’s mysterious Master.

Now having some real power behind him, Kurtz confronted Hellion and proposed a peace.  He would keep the graveyard safe from further, inevitable intrusion.  In return, the dragon would support Kurtz’s coming campaign to drive out the colonists and subjugate the natives.  He also promised to dispatch agents to retrieve the stolen bones, as much as they might still be intact.

Other forces are now moving.  Certain members of the colonial leadership have become aware of Kurtz’s duplicity, and want him quietly eliminated.  Hellion is becoming increasingly apprehensive of Kurtz’s power and their relationship.  The dragon is now in a position of having to take orders and suspects that Kurtz is trying to have him killed off.  The natives themselves are not without an advocate.  A colossal, intelligent, giant snake named Satha is revered as their secret, living god deep in the jungle.  Of course, he is fighting the colonists and been working subtly against them.  Kurtz and the Serpent Men are now a more immediate threat.  Satha is moving to stop them, but many of his own natives have abandoned him.