Slayers of the Blood God

Rust — SMALL MINING VILLAGE

Rust is home to a hundred villagers, all working in a small iron mine, that allows the production of the red metal the Slayers of the Blood God are famous for.

A lot of wide-eyed teenagers come to the fortress to join the company. Rackhmoor pays a handsome fee to their families in exchange for a new "recruit".

Many villagers wonder what the soldiers eat. The fortress cook only buys enough food for two to five people. Some say the slayers are cannibals that eat their enemies.

No slayer comes to the village tavern, they only leave the fortress to go on a campaign.

There's a well inside the fortress, it draws water from a spring that can be entered from one of the mines if you're not afraid of cramped spaces. Heroes will need to pay up 50 coins to get this information and 50 more to get a miner guiding them to the source.

A hero with a noble or military background knows that these fortresses usually have at least one escape tunnel. The exit is located in the village's temple (which receives generous donations from Rackhmoor).

Samin Toras — FORTRESS OF THE SLAYERS

The main inspiration for Rackhmoor's fortress is Kerak castle in Jordan. You can find a lot of pictures online to give you a feel for the place.

An old castle that bears the scars of centuries old battles, made of a kind of red stone that gives it an ominous look at dusk and dawn, as though blood was seeping from its every wall. There is always half a dozen Blood Warriors manning the ramparts. Motionless figures standing guard, they only stir if someone tries to break into the castle or the alarm is sounded. The double doors of rusted steel only open when the company marches in or out. They have a postern and a peephole in case of visitors. Four Slayers are here at all times, close to a gong of red metal.

1. The barracks - The Slayers here are standing, motionless, in their red armour. They don't react to anything except being wounded, which immediately awakens all the warriors. One smaller barrack is currently occupied by four volunteers that want to join the ranks of the Blood God's army. They wear white robes and don't have access to any weapons. Their barrack is guarded day and night by two Blood Warriors. Two of the volunteers are starting to have serious doubts about their career choice and might join the heroes if given enough evidence (they will be sacrificed tonight).

2. The stables - The company's horses are made the same way as the Blood Warriors: they're born from the blood of slaughtered horses. They stand in the stables, clad in rust red armour, waiting for Rackhmoor's order to awaken.

3. Rackhmoor's tower — Level 1 Kitchen and cook's room: Marton the cook prepares Rackhmoor's meals, along with food for the volunteers when there are any. He regularly leaves the fortress to buy supplies in Rust and sleeps in a small room near the kitchen. He helped Rackhmoor drug his soldiers so he could slice their throats and create the Red Pool. Marton doesn't want to know what happened that night, or what has been happening since. He has very little work for generous pay. The screams of his master at night do disturb his sleep though.

Level 2 Rackhmoor's study: The place is a mess: maps, journals, contracts are piled up everywhere. This is where the heroes find Rackhmoor during the day, preparing for his next campaign. A ten-minute search will unearth Rackhmoor's diary. The last few entries talk of the sorcerer's capture and the very last one is just the words: "What have I done?" with multiple blood stains.

Level 3 Rackhmoor's bedroom: If the heroes get here at night, roll a d6, there are always 4 Blood Warriors standing guard outside his room. If the heroes come during the day, roll a d6. 1-3: Rackhmoor is here; 4-6: he's at the Red Pool. If they come during the night, the captain is here. Roll a d6. 1-3: he's sleeping fitfully; 4-6: his nightmares are keeping him awake. The Blood God is sending him horrific visions of the future as he's close to inadvertently creating the first legion. Note that if he's threatened, Rackhmoor can call on his Slayers with a thought.

Upper levels: This part of Samin Toras is in utter ruins. Light-footed characters might still be able to hide there. A fall would mean a broken leg at the very least (2d6 damage).

Infiltration and Stealth meter

Each time a character fails a DEX test or does something that can obviously reveal their presence they roll a d6 and subtract the result from the party's Stealth Meter. If you have three players or fewer, the group's Stealth Meter is equal to the highest Dexterity score in the group. If you have four players or more, add the lowest Dexterity score. If the Stealth Meter drops to 0, the fortress goes on high alert: the Blood Warriors (all hundred of them!) awaken until they're ordered by Rackhmoor to stand down.

Blood God visions

Any character dealing in magic (sorcery, demon pacts or spirit alliances) will have a vision of impending doom: a blood-red sea under a red sky with thousands of corpses floating around, as far as the eye can see.

Talking with Rackhmoor

If the heroes are immediately perceived as threatening, reaching out to Rackhmoor proves impossible. He tries to subdue the characters so he can use all their precious blood to create more Blood Warriors (but he will settle for however much isn't spilled if he has to kill them).

Characters who attempt to reason with him may very well see the proud captain break: the visions sent by the Blood God are slowly eating away at his sanity. He listens to any proposition to free him from the nightmares. A character may be able to entice a powerful spirit or demon to help here, but they make it clear that it means making an enemy of the Blood God. The Karst Brome society would agree to remove the ritual without killing him, flaying the skin off his torso and back before burning it. Roll a d6. 1-3: Rackhmoor dies; 4: he goes stark raving mad from the pain; 5-6: he is shaken but alive and sane. He will probably vow to spend the rest of his life hunting down all practitioners of magic.

4. The red pool

In the vaulted catacombs of the old fortress, along with larders and prisoner cells, was a temple to an elemental spirit lord. The fountain where ritual ablutions and drownings took place is now a large reservoir of blood, scarlet and undulating, almost like a miniature sea.

Here, volunteers to the Blood God's army get their throats slit. As their blood feeds the Red Pool, a new Slayer emerges from the pool, armed and armoured. Two other Blood Warriors help the newborn to their feet.

What happens when the heroes get there... Roll a d6.

• 1-3: the temple is empty except for the Pool. Everyone must make a Wisdom test: critical success — the hero has a vision of the sacrifice ceremony as a spectator; success — the character experiences a sacrifice as the executioner, Rackhmoor himself; failure — the PC lives through the sacrifice as the victim, with an unknown hand wielding the knife; critical failure — as above but the vision is so vivid that the character takes d4 damage.
• 4-6: the heroes arrive as a sacrifice is underway. Attacking immediately raises the alarm as the Slayers respond to Rackhmoor's psychic orders.

For each new Blood Warrior created, roll a d6. On a 6, it was the thousandth. The first Legion of the Blood God is now complete. It escapes Rackhmoor's control and starts slaughtering as many people as it can, creating new Red Pools as it conquers and slaughters its way across the land. Congrats! Your campaign world has now a new major threat.

Map key (Samin Toras dungeon level): 1 Well / To the mine; 2 Courtyards; 1 Tower's stairs / To the underground and the Red Pool; Empty cells; 3 Stairs to the escape tunnel; Empty cellar; 4 To the village's temple; To the ramparts.