Over in this thread I posited the idea of writing up some addition inspirational material to achieve that elusive "Weird fantasy" feel that Lamentations of the Flame Princess calls for. Someone sent me a PM prodding to share my ideas as a supplement to what's in the Recommended Reading section of the LotFP Tutorial book.

Who am I to say no to such a request?

Once a week I'll get around to posting a different variant or flavor of the Weird to be used as a jumping off point for your own games. These won't be fully-realized, detailed settings; they will sketchy by design, intended to give you enough of a feel for the Weird so you can fill in the blanks and put your own unique spin on it.

If these come out well, I'll collect them and put them out as a free .pdf for all and sundry.

Feel free to ask questions or add your own thoughts on the Weird here in this thread. I'd love to see where people take this.

First up, the Weird North.

Weird Fantasy: The Weird North

"In the foggy embraces of maternal woods, where wolves and red riding hoods are lost and found, where strange becomings take place, at night, you can here howls, growls, and grunts. Inarticulate words create gothic soundscapes of abject horror and ritualistic transgression."
Aspasia Stephanou, "Playing Wolves and Red Riding Hoods in Black Metal"

George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones isn't a Weird tale, but the sections of the novel set at the Wall—an enormous barrier of ice that separates the Seven Kingdoms from the savage, unknown North—show all the signs of being rooted in the Weird tradition. The Wall is patrolled by the rangers of the Night's Watch. Theirs is a grim duty: they withstand the howling, bitter winds of the icy North, struggle against barbarian raiders and wild beasts, and act as wardens against an evil race of mysterious beings known only as the Others. Life at the Wall is a mundane grind of military discipline and preparations for the coming winter, but behind the banal trials and tribulations of the everyday lurks something ominous and supernatural that threatens to break through. This particular constellation of conventions is a specific kind of Weird tale; it is a tale of bleakness, of the mad chaos of natural sublimity and natural savagery, of roaring wind and deadly frost, and of bloody red against a field of snowy white. It is a tale of the Weird North.

The Setting: An isolated northern outpost at the border between the civilized world and the unknowable wilderness. The outpost can be a garrison, a keep and its surrounding fiefdom, a trade town, or a rough, ramshackle refuge for wanted criminals. The outpost is encircled by natural vistas that are both beautiful and threatening: dense, primordial forests and rugged, towering mountain ranges. Every journey from the outpost has the potential for danger; the wild beasts who live in the forests and mountains are ferocious and have a taste for human flesh. Beyond the outpost, the northlands become a blighted tundra that is both unmapped and home to a grave, unknown menace.

The Themes: The natural world is harsh and unforgiving—use the setting itself as an adversary against the characters. Emphasize the biting winds and the way the chilling frost can be felt in the characters' bones. Steal all warmth and comfort from them. Civilization versus the Wild—make the outpost a place that the characters have a vested interest in defending. Make it clear that the outpost is civilization's first and best line of defense against something monstrous that could spell doom for all humanity. Imperil their community; make them scramble to protect the life they know. Grim fatalism—death is inevitable in the weird north; it is something to faced with a stoic mien and a hard heart. Put them in the position of making tough, if not impossible choices. Final stands against the darkness are a must.

The Foes: The Frozen Dead—those who succumb to frostbite in the wilderness rise again as tireless enemies of mankind. Their beards covered in hoar and the axes rimed with frost, they will ceaselessly pursue the living through forest and mountain. Giants—not the dunderheaded giants usually found in fantasy, these are the vicious giants of northern legend. They are more than mortal, they are the corrupted remnants of once-godlike nature spirits who wish to cleanse the land itself from the taint of man's civilizing influence. Wolves—in all their forms: dire wolves, werewolves, wolves who speak of blood in the voices of men, wolves who prowl the streets during the nightside eclipse. Never a single wolf; always an uncountable multitude of wolves, a wolfing, an endless pack of tooth and claw. Wendigo—sometimes the howling of the winter wind is not just the howling of the winter wind, sometimes it is the ominous call of the wendigo. The wendigo has a voice like the bottomless depths, can lift a man from the earth with an unseen hand, burn him with cold, and drive him mad by showing him things no mortal was meant to see.

The Soundtrack: The Weird North requires a soundtrack that is both pummeling and funereal. Xasthur, Portal of Sorrow—indulge in the melancholia of mystical, suicidal black metal. Blood of the Black Owl, A Feral Spirit—introspective doom metal; a ritual invocation of sublime wildness. Wolves in the Throne Room, Two Hunters—a black metal explication of man's alienation from the natural world. Neurosis, Enemy of the Sun—crushing, churning existential doom.

Literary and Cinematic Inspirations: Algernon Blackwood's "The Wendigo," John Carpenter's The Thing, Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves," August Derleth's "Ithaqua," Cristophe Gans's Brotherhood of the Wolf, John Linqvist's Let the Right One In; Steve Niles, 30 Days of Night, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (particularly the frame narrative), and Snorri Sturlson's Prose Edda.

Gaming Inspirations: Death Frost Doom and Weird New World (for Lamentations of the Flame Princess) and Hellfrost (for Savage Worlds).

More bits and bobs:

Historical and Cryptozoological Inspirations: Alferd Packer and cannibalism, the Dyatlov Pass Incident, and the Yeti.

Random Weird North Scenario Kickstart Table (d4)
1. Something has been prowling outside the outpost's gate under the cover of darkness for a week.  The adventurers are tasked with venturing outside the outpost's walls, doing recognizance to figure out what that something is, and getting back inside to help form a plan of attack for dealing with it.
2. The monthly supply caravan is late with a crucial shipment of food.  There have been reports of avalanches along the Trade Road, so perhaps the caravan has been buried under fallen rock and snow.  The characters have been tasked with journeying up the Trade Road to discover what happened to the caravan and, if possible, retrieve the much-needed supplies.
3. A child has gone missing.  She was last seen picking berries at the edge of the forest. Over the last month strange piping sounds have been heard emanating from deep in the woods.  The characters have been tasked with finding the child and returning her to her parents' care.
4. A famous explorer arrives at the outpost with a charter from the Queen authorizing him to form a party to map the unknown regions in the howling northlands.  He offers good pay and the adventure of a lifetime, but perhaps he harbors ulterior motives for bringing a company of mortals into the frost-bitten north.

Quote from: misterguignol;458711Historical and Cryptozoological Inspirations: Alferd Packer and cannibalism, the Dyatlov Pass Incident, and the Yeti.

I could see running a more or less straight rip-off of Ravenous.

Quote from: Cole;458721I could see running a more or less straight rip-off of Ravenous.

I had exactly that same thought...and then forgot to put Ravenous on the list of inspirations.  I will amend my OpenOffice .doc for when I compile all these into a .pdf.

Weird Fantasy: Southern Gothic

"She remembered how it was here that she had seen a side of her mother that had frightened her, a scary, frenzied, secret self that normally hid behind soft bleached aprons and stoic silence. And it wasn't just her momma who changed. The services would transform familiar, ordinary people, people she saw every day, into creatures as fascinating and horrifying as the beautifully patterned scales of the serpents they caressed."
Linda Chandler Munson, Moonblind

War leaves lingering scars on both bodies and minds.  The conventions of the Southern Gothic use those scars to draw out the deeper tensions that exist in an antebellum society that has grown fallow after a great war.  The Southern Gothic depicts the world in grotesque terms; physical deformities and exaggerated bodily characteristics always sympathetically correspond to mental, emotional, and psychological aberations: the big-nosed woman in the house next door is invariably a gossip and a busybody, the lame-legged preacher possesses a soul crippled by guilt, and the twisted old man who presides over the town council is gripped by equally twisted desires.

Of course, not every scar is apparent on the surface.  In the Southern Gothic, things generally look peaceful, placid, and genteel, but dig a little deeper and you find a culture whose heart beats to a sickening rhythm.  There is always a sharp divide between a town's old, landed aristocracy and those who work with their hands for a living.  Though the days of the plantation were over after the war, the social chasm between the haves and the have-nots is a simmering cauldron of resentments apt to spill over into outright violence.  The tipping point is likely to be the inherent hypocrisy of the town's "moral" guardians; whether family patrician, pious man of God, or respectable debutante, the town's upstanding citizens all harbor dark secrets.

The Setting: A cheerily-named town of white-washed fences, grand plantation houses, and rough habitations on the wrong side of the tracks.  There is a town meeting hall where the various old families endless maneuver for pride of place and political power.  There is a well-attended church where a preacher delivers hellfire and brimstone sermons to his ever-sinning congregation.  (They may even handle poisonous snakes and speak in tongues to demonstrate their religious fervor.)  There is a bawdy tavern that everyone knows about, but no one ever mentions at the outskirts of town.  It's said that the drinks, women, and music there are all fast, fiery, and loose.

The Themes: Evil wears the mask of propriety—the town is rotting from the inside out.  There is no real outside threat to the town's existence; rather, it is the evil that men hold in their hearts that endangers the good people of the town.  This danger hides itself behind a facade of cultured manners and Southern charm, making it insidious and difficult to detect.   Class warfare—the town is home to barely-repressed social resentments.  The poor and the rich hate each other instinctively, the old money has a vested interest in keeping the middle and working classes from gaining too large a share of cultural capital, the disenfranchised minority is kept at the menial, abject fringes of society.  If your group has the stomach for it, you might even work racial tensions into this heady brew of contention.   The grotesque conflates revulsion with empathy—although the grotesque characters of the Southern Gothic tradition are engineered to illicit disgust, their very human fallibility also marks a point where they evoke our sympathies.  For every horrible secret that is revealed about a society matron's past, we should also learn a fact that puts her actions into perspective.  For every revolting detail that comes out about the secret life led by the pastor's son, there should also be some note of sympathy.  Though their actions can never be forgiven, there must be something about them that makes us wonder if we would have done any differently given the momentous choices they had at hand.

The Foes: The antagonists in the Southern Gothic are rarely explicitly supernatural or monstrous; instead, they illustrate that man is the worst monster of all.  The town father—he brings wealth and stability to the town, but what secret does he guard about his family's past?  What accursed deals has he struck to insure the town's prosperity? The preacher—a traveling man of the cloth who has set up a tent in the town's poorest district.  He claims that he wants to save the bodies and souls of the needy, but what if he were indoctrinating the indignant as his own personal army?  The belle—she's the beautiful young woman that all the unmarried men come to court.  She's the picture of proper behavior, grace, and unblemished reputation...until the sun sets.  Perhaps she might be found down by the river, introducing her suitors to strange, unwholesome rites.

The Soundtrack: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Papa Won't Leave You, Henry and Murder Ballads—filthy, murderous, outlaw music.  Various Artists, People Take Warning!—authentic recordings of Americana songs about death, catastrophe, and disaster rescued from the scrap heap of history.  Marissa Nadler, Ballads of Living and Dying—the sweetest of voices, cutting right to the bone.  The Scarring Party, Losing Teeth—uncanny and nasty, like a hex lurking at the bottom of a dry well.  

Literary and Cinematic Inspirations: Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls, Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, "A Rose for Emily," Daniel Knauf's Carnivale, Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Linda Chandler Munson's Moonblind, Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find and Wise Blood, Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf, Eudora Welty's "Clytie," and Tennessee Williams's Suddenly, Last Summer.

Historical and Cryptozoological Inspirations: Jim Crow laws, Pentecostalism, and Tent revivals.

Random Southern Gothic Scenario Kickstart Table (d4)
1. The patriarch of a powerful, wealthy family.  The characters have been tasked with taking his remains to a familial crypt on the outskirts of town.  They must be on their guard as a faction of town elders would like to make sure the corpse never reaches its final resting place—why?
2. The characters have been asked to escort the daughters of a old-blood family to a masked ball.  To decline the pleasure would be seen as an affront to the family's honor.  However, one of the daughters is not what she seems.
3. The town's pastor has asked the characters to infiltrate and investigate the doings of the traveling preacher who has set up a tent revival in the town square.  What does the pastor really want of them and what is the preacher's real reason for setting himself up in the heart of the town.
4. A worker from a local plantation has contacted the characters and wishes to meet with them.  The note he sent claims that he has something of terrifying importance to tell them, but before the characters can meet with him he turns up dead—drowned in the fountain in front of the mayor's home.  What mystery is being concealed here?  Can the characters uncover it before a secret from the town's past erupts to trouble the present?

Ha, I was thinking the Sound and the Fury as i read that. You will need to work Moby Dick and Blood Meridian into one of these.
Neat stuff.

Ooooh! Pentacostalism... I spent a while going to a Pentacostal church... that stuff still spooks me. Similarities to Voodoo and snake handler cults...

For the soundtrack I'd add some Handsome Family, such as 'Arlene' and 'Bottomless Hole'... and Tom Waits' 'Bone Machine' album (we got lost in the woods one night while listening to that...).

Manly Wade Wellman for if the PCs head to the hills.

Great suggestions, guys.  I will definitely work those into the "final product."

Behind the Facade of the Seaside Town

"During the winter of 1627-28 officials of the Federal government made a strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth.  The public first learned of it in February, when a vast series of raids and arrests occurred, followed by the deliberate burning and dynamiting—under suitable precautions—of an enormous number of crumbling, worm-eaten, and supposedly empty houses along the abandoned waterfront."
H.P. Lovecraft, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"

There will come a time in your campaign when the player characters will be tired of roughing it through the dangerous wilderness and weary of slumming through urban decay.  What better time for a trip to a quaint, scenic seaside town for a little rest and relaxation?  Of course, what at first appears to be a relaxing interlude between ventures into the unknown simply must turn out to be the characters' worst nightmare.  Behind the facade of the seaside town lurks something ancient and sinister; the town's gleaming white cottages, picturesque wharf, and overly-friendly inhabitants masks a corruption that resides within the very lifeblood of the community.

The Setting: A small, but charming, seaside town.  The town itself is mostly comprised of quaint cottages, fishing boats moored at the dock, a bustling cannery, and a series of attractive little shops along the high street.  However, there are some areas of the town that most people don't know about.  There are secret tunnels that lead from the caves near the beach to the crypts of the ancient burial grounds; these tunnels were formerly used by smugglers bringing their wares in under the cover of night, but they now serve to convey a far more disturbing traffic in human beings.  There is a surprisingly well-stocked library that counts a number of powerful eldritch tomes among its shelves.  There is an artist's colony in the town that produces strange, disquieting paintings.  There is a castle  not more than a day's journey from the town that is home to a mad inventor; will the inventor prove to be friend or foe?  There are twin lighthouses on an island off the coast.  What might the lighthouse keepers know about the doings in town?

The Themes: Outsiders are different from Family—while the people who reside in the town will be warm and welcoming at first, it should quickly become apparent that they keep outsiders at arm's length.  Characters will catch groups of townspeople eying them with suspicion before going about their business; there will be parts of town—perhaps the local temple—where they are bared entry.  Corruption is blood-deep—whatever is wrong in the seaside town is connected to the lineage of the town's inhabitants.  Are they descended from settlers who bear an ancestral curse?  Are they the product of centuries of interbreeding between man and something horrific from the depths of the sea?  Are they transplants from the Old World who have brought a blood malady—perhaps a blood-thirst—from the forsaken places of a forgotten country?  The sea demands sacrifice—the people of the seaside town depend on the ocean for their survival.  Without a plentiful catch of fish, the town would dry up and blow away.  To what lengths would the town's populace go to insure that the sea continues to provide for their needs?  

The Foes: The townspeople—sure, they're all smiles when the characters first encounter them, but then the characters will start noticing that there is something not quite right about them.  Perhaps it's the wide-set eyes, the disappearing chins, or the abrupt slope of the forehead, but the more time the characters spend in the town the more noticeable it becomes that the townspeople are less (or more) than human.  The beasts of the sea—a trip out to sea is dangerous for anyone who doesn't belong to the Family of the seaside town.  Sea serpents, giant squid, or other primordial beasts might rise from the depths to prevent the escape of visitors to the town.  The Deep Ones—the people of the town have an ongoing, illicit trade in the flesh of outsiders.  They bring captives through the tunnels and down to the beach, where they are met by inhuman, amphibious men from the ocean.  The Dark Gods of the Waves—the Deep Ones are the servants of something indescribably horrible and otherworldly that sleeps in a sunken kingdom off the coast.  While these "gods" slumber, they dream—and their dreams impart omens and maledictions to those who sleep within the town's borders.  

The Soundtrack: Reverend Glasseye and His Wooden Legs, Black River Falls—murder, madness, and despair in a New England mood.  The Unquiet Void, Poisoned Dreams and The Shadow-Haunted Outside—Lovecraftian ambient music, like a soundtrack for the damned.  The Tiger Lillies, The Sea—down-and-out at the dockside with the criminal castrati cabaret.  Lustmord, Where the Black Stars Hang and Heresy—more growling, abyssal ambient from the depths outside of the veil of time and place.

Literary and Cinematic Inspirations: Clive Barker's Galilee and "The Madonna," Dan Curtis's Dark Shadows, Sebastian Gutierrez's She Creature, H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadows Over Innsmouth," "The Call of Cthulhu," "Dagon," "Pickman's Model," and "The Dunwich Horror," Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

Historical and Fortean Inspirations: The Bloop, David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag, Hammond Castle, the Loch Ness Monster, J.P. O'Neill's The Great New England Sea Serpent, the Salem Witch Trials, the Vermont Eugenics Survey.

Gaming Inspirations: Kingsport and Arkham Now (for Call of Cthulhu), Freeport, Shrine of the Kuo-Toa (for D&D).

Behind the Facade of the Seaside Town Kickstart Table (d4)
1. The characters have been tasked by a wealthy art collector with locating a painter from the seaside town who has recently gone missing.  While investigating his disappearance, they will discover that his paintings have also gone missing; what horrible truths were disclosed by those canvasses?
2. The characters have been tasked by a merchant-prince with uncovering why all of the ships that have recently docked at the seaside town were never heard from again.  Is this the work of a wrecking crew or is something supernatural afoot?
3. The characters have been tasked by a scholar with taking notes on a rare tome owned by the seaside town's library.  While copying out the required section of the book, one character discovers something unnerving about their family history that points to the possible location of a lost inheritance that could be sought out and reclaimed.
4. The characters have been tasked by a smuggler to bring in barrels of rum through the "secret" tunnels that link the beach-caves to the ancient cemetery.  Of course, the tunnels are already in use...but by whom and for what purpose?

Dark Medieval Times

"Nay, said Balin, for this sword will I keep, but it be taken from me with force. Well, said the damosel, ye are not wise to keep the sword from me, for ye shall slay with the sword the best friend that ye have, and the man that ye most love in the world, and the sword shall be your destruction. I shall take the adventure, said Balin, that God will ordain me, but the sword ye shall not have at this time, by the faith of my body."
Thomas Mallory, Le Mort d'Arthur

Many gamers associate D&D and the like with the Middle Ages, but they couldn't be further off the mark.  The typical fantasy rpg kingdom is place devoid of grit; there might be a class division between peasant and lord, but it doesn't tend to amount to much: peasant boys leave home and return as knights in service to their liege, the common people toil happily under the protection of kindly kings, and monsters are a known quantity instead of mysterious, folkloric beings who defy rational thought.  All of that might be the stuff of typical fantasy, but it certainly isn't fit for a weird campaign.  In this case, the solution isn't to introduce more layers of the fantastic; rather,  a fantasy campaign has much to gain in darkness, blood, and strangeness if it incorporates real (or even faux) medievalisms into the fabric of its setting.

In the second introduction to his faux-medieval Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole claims that the purpose of his narrative was to explore how ordinary characters in a medieval setting would react to the sudden introduction of the supernatural.  That is the essence of Dark Medieval Times; crush the characters with the mundanity of their existence, then plunge them headlong into the weird.

The Setting: A petty fiefdom far from the centers of power.  The fiefdom is regulated by a steward, sheriff, or minor nobleman who has sworn fealty to the king.  Most of the fiefdom is farmland tended by peasants who live hand-to-mouth; their lot in life is one of backbreaking labor, squalid conditions, and early death, punctuated only by the brief joys of festival days.  The steward's lot is nothing to envy, but to the peasants it seems luxurious; of course, the steward's household only mixes with the peasantry when custom demands it.  There is a small church in town where a minor curate tends to the spiritual discipline of the community.  One end of the fief is bordered by a deep, nearly-impenetrable forest; some peasants, fed up with their toil, have fled their farms to take up banditry in the woods.  The other end of the fief is connected to the trade road, but few come or go—the fiefdom exists in isolation.

The Themes: Death is everywhere—life is brutal and short.  Adjust in-game healing times and the availability of healing magic to make it explicitly apparent how dangerous the world is.  Play up the high mortality rate; simple accidents will likely lead to fatal infections, the plague  is feared by all, and combat results in mangled bodies and shattered skulls.  Everyone is assigned a place by birth—emphasize the rigid social stratification of the setting.  You're born a peasant and you die a peasant, no exceptions.  Everyone in the setting knows their place and knows who is their social better.  The world beyond the fief is strange and mysterious—the vast majority of the fiefdom's residents will never leave the place where they were born.  Keep the action of your campaign isolated to the fief; even the characters should feel like they have no hope of ever seeing the greater world, even if they hear of marvelous things in lands they will never know.

The Foes: The Fair Folk—there are no silly sprites or cavorting leprechauns here.  Instead, the Fair Folk are unknowable and alien; their motives are utterly unguessable.  They have the power to beguile, ensnare, and lead astray.  They have no souls and may be the remnants of the Old Gods.  Some say they shoot men down in the fields with unseen arrows just for sport.  The Fell Pilgrims—wanderers and penitents who are not what they seem.  They arrive hooded and cloaked, tolling bells, and chanting the psalms, but what are they really after?  Do they bring disease or are they harbingers of the End Times?  The Usurped Specter—the land on which the fief stands has known many masters.  Perhaps the current steward gained the fief by wresting it from the rightful owner; the true lord of the land may have died mad and imprisoned.  His shade now walks the earth seeking vengeance for his betrayal.  The Great Worm—a horrible beast allied with the Devil is said to sleep beneath the standing stones within the woods to the east of the fiefdom.  All manner of malevolence is ascribed to the slumbering monster: when the crops fail, it is surely the work of the Worm; when a woman's child dies in infancy, it is surely the work of the Worm; when a man is possessed by demons, it is surely the work of the Worm.

The Soundtrack: Dead Can Dance, Aion and Within the Realm of a Dying Sun—by turns mystical and haunting.  The Soil Bleeds Black, Alchemie and The Knightly Years—neo-medieval compositions centered on occultism and fatalistic valor.  Arcana, The Dark Age of Reason—music from a Dark Age that never existed.  Unto Ashes, Moon Oppose Moon and Saturn Return—witchy medievalism that is dark and otherworldly.

Literary and Cinematic Inspirations: The anonymous Beowulf, the anonymous "Dream of the Rood," the anonymous Gawain and the Green Knight, Richard Carpenter's Robin of Sherwood, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, the lais of Marie de France, Thomas Malory's Le Mort d'Arthur, Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Macbeth, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi.

Historical and Fortean Inspirations: Arthurian myth, the Black Death, the dancing sickness and St. Vitus's Dance, Frances and Joseph Gies's Life in a Medieval Town, Gilles de Rais, the Grail mythos, Hildegard von Bingen, illuminated manuscripts and grimoires, the Knights Templar, Joan of Arc, leprosy, Marjorie Rowling's Life in Medieval Times, medieval alchemy, medieval heresies and demonology, Robin Hood.

Gaming Inspirations: Ars Magica, Conspiracy of Shadows, Cthulhu Dark Ages (for Call of Cthulhu), Harn, Middle Ages and Robin Hood (for GURPS), Pendragon, Kenneth Hite's "Travelin' Man: Sir John Mandeville," "Stalking the Wild Manticore," "There's More to Faeries Than There Glamour," "Into the Woods with Robin Hood," and "The Maiden and the Monster: Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais" (Suppressed Transmissions).

Dark Medieval Times Kickstart Table (d4)
1. Signs point to a witch in the midst of the fief.  The characters are tasked with rooted him or her out and putting them to swift justice.  But is the supernatural afoot, or is someone being framed for a slight real or imagined?
2. The fief has paid its yearly tribute to the lord of the land, but the collectors have gone missing. They were last seem at the outskirts of the fief; the characters have been tasked with discovering the errant tribute, else the fief face a crippling repayment to the lord.
3. The peasant farmers have been struck with a strange malady that causes them to sing, whirl, and dance until they die.  The characters have been tasked with discovering either the cause of this disease or its cure.
4. A dishonored knight has sought shelter within the border of the fiefdom.  Why has he come to this particular land?  Who pursues him?  What has he carried back with him from the Holy Land?

FYI, this thread is the most interesting thing, for me personally, that I have seen around here in a while.  Great ideas!  Can't wait to see more.


-TGA

Quote from: The Good Assyrian;461926FYI, this thread is the most interesting thing, for me personally, that I have seen around here in a while.  Great ideas!  Can't wait to see more.


-TGA

Wow, thank you very much!