A Black Pudding Adventure - Ghiki's Hole

Last Sunday, one of the GM's from my ttrpg group called off his game at short notice due to health reasons. With our usual Sunday evening game now not going ahead I offered to run a one-shot instead. For months I'd been itching to run the two page adventure, Ghiki's Hole, from James V. West's zine, Black Pudding issue #8. This was the perfect opportunity.

I had two willing volunteers and here's how the game went. NOTE: SPOILERS ahead!

SYNOPSIS

Eight Fingers Oran, the Grand Master of the Seapath thieves guild has had his magic ring of charms stolen by the outcast wizard, Zasto Fillistian. Oran is so enraged that he's chewed off yet another finger. He's out for blood and only Zasto's will cool his temper.

Oran wants you to infiltrate Zasto's warren, find the ring, and bring it back along with Zasto's tongue. There's only one problem - the warren is hidden somewhere amongst the Dweomerdrake Mountains. Oran has heard that Finni the Black has a map, but he was last seen lowering himself into Ghiki's hole.

Go to Ghiki's hole. Get the map off Finni the Black and make your way to Zasto's warren. Find Zasto, cut out his tongue and bring back that fecking ring!

The person that brings back the ring will be awarded 10,000 go and be inducted into the prestigious Veiled Brothers of the Night.

* * *

Your PC either:
1. is a member of the Seapath thieves guild
2. owes Eight... no, Seven Fingers Oran a very BIG favour
3. is a mercenary (very) desperate for cash

Using Old School Essentials rules and any other supporting product (including Black Pudding character classes), create a level 5 character. No laser guns or blackpowder weapons allowed. This is Sword & Sorcery at its best.

Will you survive Ghiki's hole? (BTW, no-one who has ever gone into Ghiki's hole has ever come out)

CHARACTERS

Hattori: Half-Orc Ninja, level 5. STR 12, INT 8, WIS 10,  DEX 10, CON 13, CHA 8, AC 11, HP 14.
(Ninja character class from Black Pudding #5, pg 6)

Shanks: Duergar, level 5. STR 10, INT 9, WIS 11,  DEX 11, CON 11, CHA 11, AC 16, HP 19.
(Duergar character class from Old School Essentials Advanced Player's Tome, pg 44)

OUTCOME

Hattori and Shanks approached Ghiki's hole. They found a 20 feet diameter iron grate unlocked and pulled aside enough for a human sized creature to squeeze down into the inky black shaft. They crawled on their bellies to peer down into the depths. Both had dark vision out to 60 feet, and so they could see that the shaft dropped down sheer and beyond their meagre sight range. Interestingly, they saw what looked like a lateral opening some 50 feet below.

Hattori uncoiled his 50 feet of rope (very handily the exact length he needed), tied it to the iron grate and lowered himself down. I asked him to make a climb check that he passed with significant ease. When he reached the lateral opening he swung himself over and landed lightly on his feet in the mouth of a dark passage.

Shanks followed close behind. Unlike Hattori, who was clothed in black cloth armour and carrying a fairly light pack, Shanks was wearing heavy plate armour and carrying a lot of gear. As Shanks doesn't have a climb skill, I asked him to give me a STR check as he began shimmying down the rope. He rolled right on the button. A pass and no more.

Shanks dropped down the rope. By the time he'd reached the side passage his arms were quaking and he was sweating profusely. He swung himself over and fell onto solid ground with a gasp of relief. Dusting himself down he joined Hattori to investigate what was before them.

The passage was short, about 40 - 50 feet in length. It opened into a rough cave-end, about 20 feet across and the same again high. In the gloom they spotted a sack lying amongst the cave debris. Picking it up and peering inside they were surprised to find a stinking, mouldering collection of severed feet and one milky-glazed eye.

Hattori: How odd. Are they matching pairs?

Me: Eh... yes.

Hattori: How many pairs?

Me: (WTF? I rolled 1d20) There are ten pairs of mouldering severed feet in various states of decay. Many are almost skeletal. A couple are fresh-ish.

Shanks: How have they been severed? Are they clean like they've been cut off with a sharp blade, or are they rough like they've been torn or bitten off?

Me: (I never contemplated this kind of questioning when I first read the two page adventure) Uhm, they're all roughly severed.

Hattori: Interesting. There may be a dangerous creature somewhere below us.

Shanks: Yes. We should proceed carefully.

Me: (No shit, sherlock)

Hattori searched the cave for any exits or secret doors, but didn't find any. They put the feet back in the sack and returned to the mouth of the passage. (I can only imagine the stench now clinging to their hands. Actually, I can imagine it, as I've smelled and dealt with dead people on many occasions (not for this blog))

BOAK!

The pair peered over the edge down into the darkness of the descending shaft. About 50 feet below (again, how fortunate) they could make out another lateral opening.

Shanks uncoiled his 50 feet of rope, banged in an iron spike to the lip of the shaft, tied off the rope and lowered it below. Then he came up with an ingenious idea. He didn't want to risk falling off the end of the rope if he failed another STR check, and so he used one of his Duergar class mental powers - Shrinking.

Reducing himself to 6 inches in height he settled himself in Hattori's pack for the climb down. Hattori deftly dropped down the rope and swung with grace and ease into the side passage below. Shanks jumped out of the pack and resumed his normal size.  

The passage they were in descended down worn carved steps until it reached a closed door. Shanks laid an ear against the door and listened for noises beyond. He could hear the murmurs of some feminine voices. Feeling bold, the pair swung open the door and jauntily strolled in. The steps continued down and opened up into a small illuminated room. Reclining upon a mouldering chaise lounge was a very fat woman in what appeared to be a large dark dress made entirely of feathers. Her face was slightly pinched towards the nose and mouth. Another two women, garbed in the same manner, but slimmer in size and shape, were seated in broken and dirty armchairs around a wonky small table.

Cuddly Aunt Mabel: Ooh, visitors! 

Aunt Bella: How positively delightful. Come in. Come in.

Aunt Clara: I love an unannounced visit. Come over here, dearie, and give your aunt Clara a kiss.

Hattori and Shanks were naturally on their guard. They explained that they were looking for a friend called Finni the Black, and asked if they had seen him? The three aunts hummed and hawed in their clucking manner and insisted that they must stay for tea. A tea pot and a brazier were produced along with a small pouch of herbal matter. Hattori pointedly looked the women over, and focused on Aunt Mabel's feet. He saw taloned claws, much like that of a bird of prey.

Shanks and Hattori: Really, it's very kind of you, but we don't want to take up your time. We'll just be going. Sorry to burst in on you like this.

At that point the three aunts launched into a clucking song about how they must stay for tea and have a blether about whether they'd seen their friend. (No, I didn't sing. I'm not that gifted)

I asked Hattori and Shanks to make a save versus Spells. They both failed. I explained that they had both been charmed and the three aunts seemed very plausible and endearing. They asked if they were compelled to do as they were bid. I explained that they could not discern any danger, and it would be incredibly rude to refuse the ladies some company over a cup of tea. The two promptly relented. Hattori seated himself next to Aunt Bella, whilst Shanks saw a box and sat on it.

"Ooft!" came a muffled voice from the box. Shanks stood up, opened the box and saw inside the severed head of an elf. It opened its eyes, looked at him and smiled. "Hello! Are you here to rescue me?"

Aunt Bella: Oh, that's just Wildflower. He's such a nuisance. You just can't shut him up. 

Tea was had. The aunts implored them to give them kisses, shucked their hair and pinched their cheeks. They'd learned through a short conversation that a young man had passed by recently, but he'd been terribly rude by not visiting. They'd not seen him since, and no doubt he'd been at dinner with Ghiki. They laughed.

Shanks and Hattori quickly stood up and retreated towards the door with a profusion of thanks, Shanks swiping Wildflower's box in the process.

Cuddly Aunt Mabel: Oh, you can't go without giving your auntie Mabel a big kiss.

Aunt Bella: Yes, kisses all round. It would be so rud...

SLAM!

Shanks closed the door behind him and the pair raced up the stairs for the shaft. They could hear muffled shrieks of dismay coming from the aunts. Looking down the shaft they couldn't see any more openings below. The shaft descended beyond their meagre dark vision. What's more, they had run out of rope. Behind them the door crashed open and light flooded up the stair.

Aunt Clara: Boys! How rude! You must stay for dinner. I insist.

Shanks shrunk himself down again and leapt into Hattori's pack. Hattori tied Wildflower's box to his belt, dropped over the lip of the shaft and scrambled down with all his freestyle climbing skill he could muster. I asked Hattori to roll his climbing skill (a whopping 94% chance of success). He rolled 05. Sweet.

Hattori descended another 50 - 60 feet. It's at this point that the adventure describes the shaft being spanned by a sticky web that requires a successful DEX check to pass through. Hattori failed his DEX check and promptly and inexplicably found himself stuck to the sticky strands.

Shanks opted to use another of his Duergar mental skills - Heat. OSE's Advanced Player's Tome describes the power thus:

A creature or object within sight is subjected to a scorching heat. Paper or cloth ignite, liquids boil, and metals glow. The heat lasts for one round per level of the duergar. Applied to flesh or to metal in contact with a creature (e.g. armour), the heat inflicts 1d4 damage per round.

I ruled that the web immolated out of existence, and Hattori, with Shanks, and Wildflower attached to him, fell the final 40 feet to the bottom and landed with a crash in a very large pile of loot and bones. I rolled 1d10 falling damage for Hattori and he took 6 damage. As Shanks was in the pack I decided he would take less damage, but not much less. I rolled 1d8 falling damage. I rolled an 8. 😱

On picking themselves up they realised they were in a wide circular chamber, one that was much bigger than their dark vision could pick out. They were surrounded by bones of every size and type, and lots of coin and items of value. It was at that point that they noticed a large dark shape scuttle towards them along the underside of the chamber's ceiling. A huge spider (known as Flyder, but they didn't know that as it didn't introduce itself. How rude!) dropped down towards them and they entered combat.

The fight was short. About three rounds. They won every initiative. They pounded the spider with arrows and sling stones, breaking her concentration and preventing her from casting spells she'd prepared. Flyder was outmatched, and after being reduced to half Hp, she ran away screaming, Ghiki! Ghiki! GHIKI!

The sound of rippling, sloshing water from an unseen pool in the darkest recesses of the chamber announced that they were not alone. A HUGE single-eyed, monstrous snake, slithered into the edge of their vision.

Initiative was rolled and Hattori and Shanks won. Shanks promptly hid behind a large giant's skull. Hattori melded one with the dark, and quietly crept his way around and behind the giant snake. Ghiki slid closer. "Hello," it said, "Have you come for lunch?"

Shanks again utilised his Heat mental skill and caused a small amount of damage. Hattori struck from the dark but failed to penetrate Ghiki's scaled hide. Ghiki struck back at Hattori, but missed. Shanks replied with more heat damage and Hattori struck true with his Kama, opening up a wound.

Ghiki swiped his tail and cleared away the giant's skull, revealing Shanks. Hattori struck again with his Kama, but Ghiki hardly noticed. Shanks, still huddled into himself, and thinking that Ghiki couldn't see him, applied more heat damage. Ghiki shrugged it off, lunged at him, bit, and swallowed Shanks whole.

At that point, Flyder the giant spider re-joined the fray and attacked Hattori, but missed. Hattori retreated into the darkness. He pulled out a smoke grenade, threw it and watched with grim satisfaction as it went off, engulfing both Flyder and Ghiki.

With a moment's respite Hattori fled to the outer reaches of the chamber and attempted to break through an iron grating he'd discovered. His strength failed him. Hattori turned around seeking a means of escape. 

Ghiki emerged out of the gloom. He lunged, bit, and swallowed him whole.

CONCLUSION

I really enjoyed running Ghiki's Hole. It was surprisingly (well, maybe not) my first TPK. I think, had Hattori and Shanks had at least one other half decent companion, they might have scraped victory from Ghiki's jaws.

The adventure is well written, quirky, short and succinct. It's quite humorous too. Sadly, Hattori and Shanks failed to defeat Ghiki and harvest the ENORMOUS wealth that had accumulated over the decades. Nor did they find Finni the Black's map, or go onto exact revenge against Zasto Fillistian, and recover Oran Eight... no, Seven Finger's magical ring of charms. Their bones were shat out and added to the bones of Finni the Black and a myriad other fools who had dared to enter Ghiki's Hole.

No-one who enters Ghiki's hole, ever comes out alive.

* * *

If you'd like to play Ghiki's Hole, you can find it on James V. West's itch.io page, or Drivethrurpg. If like me you prefer a dead tree in your hand then you can purchase Black Pudding zines from Squarehex in the UK.

KillChain - A Mass Combat System for the OSR

 For quite some time now, I have been searching for an easy to use mass combat system for my Old School Essentials (OSE) campaign, Riven Realm. My players, whilst hovering around the 4th - 5th level bracket, have advanced beyond mere monster bashing, and have struck it out as political power players within the local region.

The catalyst for this change in play style is their attempts to thwart the growing hegemony of the shadowy faction known as, the Gilded Eye. Furthermore, the king was assassinated and the southern neighbours, the Sais, blamed for it (the planted evidence was clumsy, but it served its purpose). This led to cross border warfare in both directions and heightened tensions, not to mention a domestic scrabble for power between the leading families.

I found that vanilla OSE is comfortably capable of simulating combat between thirty to forty individuals, but once you get into the realm of hundreds, or even thousands of combatants, there are no mechanics for it. I had a read of the mass combat rules in B/X, and also in Third Kingdom Games' Into the Wild and I utilised them for some combats, but I found them exceptionally crunchy and time consuming. I dabbled with GW's old game Mighty Empires, and whilst I found the rules very playable, they did not translate well into OSE or any form of early D&D games. I muddled through and handpicked the rules I liked, and we had some really interesting wins and defeats that hinged on a single roll of a d20 with modifiers, but I found it all finickity, inconsistent, and it lacked player agency.

   On a slight tangent, I've recently been working on producing domain management mechanics for my players, so they can effectively run and develop feudal, mercantile, faith-based, and arcane domains. I've chosen the excellent domain management system from TSR's Birthright setting for AD&D 2e. Birthright was released in 1995 and I played it at the time with my friends and loved it. I still have all the old box sets and domain packs that were released before TSR shelved the setting entirely in 1999. One aspect of Birthright was its mass combat system involving the use of unit cards, a battle map and a cross-reference chart to compare morale markers and attack vs defence margins. It was a decent system, but it was only really usable in face to face games.

My game is run virtually, and so I need something that is easy to understand and use, that meshes well with OSE and Birthright's domain mechanics, and can be played out on a virtual table top in a matter of minutes rather than hours.

I had been percolating ideas about using a simple d6 to-hit mechanic, with a successful hit translating to a wound on a unit. Whilst thinking about this, and how it could easily transfer into OSE I stumbled upon KillChain by Castle Grief. Castle Grief is a small game designer owned and operated by the New Jersey, USA based artist, Matt Killinger.

I found this about ten days ago and it perfectly fits my needs.

KillChain is based on early Chainmail rules, and other offshoots. I'll use the author's own words to describe KillChain's primary objective,

"...to A) further streamline the rules to avoid wargame levels of crunch and B) to avoid the need for miniatures and other wargaming setup and be able to determine the outcome of battles in a satisfying way and using graph paper only."

How does this rules-lite system meet my criteria?

1) To-hit rolls use a d6
2) Armour is described as light, medium and heavy, just like in OSE, and occupies the upper range of a d6 roll to hit - light 4+, medium 5+, heavy 6+
3) The system is abstract enough that it can be applied to units of any size
4) Unit hit points can directly relate to monster Hit Dice
5) The turn sequence mirrors the normal combat sequence in OSE
6) Movement rates are simplistic and easy to scale to OSE
7) Morale relates directly to OSE
8) Terrain modifiers, weapon qualities and optional rules are easy to apply without excessive crunch

I haven't entirely utilised the rules as written. I've adjusted them slightly for my own purposes and to gel nicely with both the domain management rules for military units, and with OSE monster stats. For example, I've tied hit points for units to their experience ratings:

Green - 2 Hp
Regular - 3 Hp
Veteran - 4 Hp
Mounted - +1 Hp

Some units may take a number of hits in a turn, such as ranged attacks and melee attacks. Unarmoured levies are vulnerable, as they have only 2 Hp and are hit on a 3+, whilst heavily armoured and mounted knights are kings of the battlefield with 6+ armour and 5 Hp.

In my setting of Riven Realm, military units number 200 individuals, as they also did in Birthright. The costs of raising and maintaining them closely align to the mercenaries costs in OSE. I've created simple stat blocks for units that can almost be lifted directly from their OSE stats. The following example is for a unit of Crossbowmen:

The Save numbers come from the Fighter progression chart in OSE. Ranges and Movement are counted in 10 yard squares. The saves come into their own when battle magic is used, or the unit faces area affect weapons or large monsters.

I'm quite pleased with the system of mechanics I now have. I'm working on making VTT tokens for each unit type so that players can move troop units on a gridded VTT map in the same manner they would their character tokens.

Overall, if your looking for a simple to use mass combat system for your OSR game, one that doesn't involve crunch and lots of calculations, then look no further than KillChain. All the art is hand drawn by Matt Killinger. I also heartily recommend his Kal-Arath game setting, of which an expansion is currently live on Kickstarter; there are 19 hours to go at time of publishing this. Think of Conan the Destroyer sword & sorcery style of setting. The artwork is excellent, as is the lore.

The Source of All Things - Developing an immersive workable religion for D&D play

It's been a little over three months since I last posted. Things got away from me. I contracted a bad throat infection that killed my vocal chords. I couldn't speak for around five weeks - much to the bliss of my wife and children. I was also off work for a good period of time. I quite frankly cannot do my job safely and effectively if I can't communicate clearly.

Anyhoo, I took the time given to me to delve into further world building for my Old School Essentials setting - Riven Realm. I wrote and published a twenty-six page player's guide to Source worship.

In my earlier The three seeds of Hen Ogledd blog post I stated, 

"I also wanted to get away from real world religious creeds and beliefs, so as to spare my players any potential dogmatic or spiritual issues. I had to come up with an alternative monotheistic religion in place of Christianity."

I don't know about you, but in many rpg settings, I have found the offered religions for clerics to be flat and without real foundation or explanation. For Riven Realm I wanted to create an immersive experience that would reflect the real world Scottish Renaissance, where religion and the threat of schism were a very important part in every day life, political culture, and the rule of law. But, as highlighted above, it had to be removed from real world Christianity, so as to avoid any dogmatic stumbling block for players.

The question I had to tackle as, "what major faith would exist if Jesus Christ hadn't been born?"

and,

"how would I faithfully recreate an alternate reality mirror to our real world religious reformations and schisms that took place during the Renaissance?"

A major influence for me was the English author, David Gemmell. His Drenai saga, and Rigante series were very influential on me in my late teens and early twenties. Gemmell was a devout Christian and his books reflected the eternal war between good and evil, and the concept of redemption from sin, even for the most hardened and evil psychopath. His books were punchy and gripping and did not shirk from exposing the greatest evils such as lust, rape, murder and betrayal.

Gemmell's god was the Source, an all pervading force for good, that could be tapped for 'powers' by those who held true belief. I like this portrayal of a god within a fantasy setting, as it reflected the real world Christian god without the troublesome baggage of history, politics and dogma. Gemmell's Source was a god available to anyone with simple faith.

In a way you could even say that the Source is similar to George Lucas' Force. Although, I'm still unsure about the concept of midichlorians, as introduced in The Phantom Menace, which removes the idea of universal access through faith, replacing it with a genetic lottery. You've either got it or you don't.

To adopt Gemmell's Source as my own I called it the Source of All Things. To further de-personify the faith so as to divorce it completely from Christianity, I chose to make it a faith built upon the foundation of the five elements - Fire, Air, Earth, Water, and Spirit.

I must admit to a fondness for Luc Besson's film, The Fifth Element. Imagine a faith founded on the principles of the balance between all of the elements as building blocks for creation. 

I know that in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the study of alchemy and the elements formed the foundation of scientific thinking. Couple that with the pseudo-science of astrology and you already had the case for a strong religion based on real world experience. Alchemy and astrology also gave an in for the presence of non-divine magic.

In our prime material plane of existence the medieval and renaissance church was the sole vehicle for education and the pursuit of knowledge within Europe, parts of the Eurasian steppe, and the Middle East. Priests of various ranks and creeds studied the sciences and developed philosophies in their search for understanding. Many were astrologers, and many studied and wrote about magic, necromancy, the summoning of demons, and the accruing of arcane knowledge that was, until then, the sole domain of God. Through study they sought the knowledge of life and death, and beyond. 

Now, about seven years ago I had a major mental breakdown that was brought on by significant stress both at work and at home. I couldn't escape it, and thus I became near suicidal. I transformed from a well meaning, conscientious, and empathic soul into a violent, aggressive, and reactionary arsehole. My whole understanding of Self shattered, and I was desperate to escape my life and to understand what was happening to me.

I craved inner peace and searched for it.

I read and listened to many podcasts and books on self-help. I discovered Dr Jordan Peterson, who is a phenomenal thinker for our time (whether you like his politics or not). I read The Chimp Paradox, which provides an eye-opening delve into the human psyche and how it works. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who is struggling to manage reactionary behaviour. It's easy to get into and is written for the ordinary person. Read it!

A work colleague introduced me to Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher.

Through Epictetus I was led to the study of other philosophers both ancient and modern. What I observed, and what is pertinent to what I'm trying to say here, is that the early Christian Church followed the teachings not only of Jesus Christ, but also of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinian and many more.

Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the first bishops of the early Christian Church, as adopted by the Roman Emperors, was a devoted philosopher and prolific writer of songs and guidance for the early Christian churches. Many of his sermons and teaching pamphlets extoled the lessons of Greek philosophy, which was also underpinned by a deep knowledge of alchemy and the elements.

All this knowledge I had accrued became grist for the mill years later when I began to ruminate and write on The Source of All Things.

So in my project, I wanted to achieve three things:

    1) provide a useable framework of religious practice, and a simple system of belief for any player who wished to play a Cleric or Paladin of the Source.
    2) further develop the five elements and their role in the church, as they provide the strongest flavour to this alternate reality religion
    3) provide Cleric players new spells aligned to whichever element they choose to follow, and ones not found in the OSE Classic or Advanced players books. 

In tackling the first part I mirrored quite a few structures within the pre-reformation Christian Church, but I renamed them and tweaked them to fit my own setting.

I adopted the Church of Scotland's version of the Nicean creed and heavily edited it to fit the Church of the Source.

I produced a cult of Saints using some existing Scottish saints, and invented a few more to better fit my narrative. To each saint I allocated one of the four elements.

    For example, Saint Brigid, or Bride as she is known in Scotland, is the patron saint of many trades and persons, but she also has significant ties to the Celtic goddess, Brigid, who was a goddess of Smiths and the creative arts. Thus I attributed to Brigid the element of Fire.

I did this because real life saints were influential people who provided teaching and living examples of how to live the Christian way of life. And so within the Riven Realm, Source priests would teach and provide living examples of the tenets of the five elements.

Each saint had a specific feast day and a devoted shrine, which helped me create a calendar of feasts and religious festivals, and a  physical path to pilgrimage.

I run my game following the real world calendar, which means that if we play a game session on the 8th day of May, then in the game world it will be the week where the 8th day of May falls. With the calendar to hand, it's easy to see if there is an influential religious event during the time a session is running.

I researched monasticism and took ideas from both the western Catholic church and from the eastern Orthodox church, and I adopted a shortened version of Saint Augustine's Rule for monastic life.

One real nugget of gold I found was a framework for every-day monastic devotion. I got this from the website of an Eastern Orthodox Monastery. I used it as a guide to create my own daily devotion framework that would give a taster for players to use as they see fit.

I was pretty happy with my progress so far.

To help make the five elements the core basis for my religion, I introduced divisions of hierarchy within the church for lay and ordained members, both secular and monastic. I also created special Orders for each of the five elements - Ordo Terrae, Ordo Aquae, Ordo Caeli, Ordo Ignis, and Ordo Spiritus. Each elemental Order was a restricted-entry institution within the greater organisation of the church.

These three divisions were:

a) The Presbyterium - for mainstream and secular clerical orders and offices
b) The Monasterium - for the eremitic orders
c) The Elementorum - for the five elemental orders.

In Renaissance Scotland there were many examples of bishops and senior prelates who were secular appointees, rather than true believers. Many senior churchmen gained their positions of authority because of their educational doctorates, or the influence of their patrons, be they religious or political.

    For example, in 1504 the Archbishop of St Andrews, the most senior bishopric in the Scottish Realm, was Alexander Stewart, eldest bastard son of the king, James IV. Alexander was only 11-years-old when he was appointed to the position. The King held the right to appoint bishops in Scotland, a right won from the Pope in previous centuries. The king had his son appointed Archbishop so that the revenues of the Archbishopric would accrue to the crown whilst the incumbent was a minor. A very nice and devious way to bolster the Crown's resources for a decade.

With all the frameworks provided for, my next step was to smooth the edges and fill out the loose parts. No religion is complete without associated military orders. Much like Christianity's Knights Templar, it was important for me to provide a place for Paladins within the Church of the Source.

After researching military orders of the Catholic church I came up with three orders for the Source. One would be Knights Hospitaller that provided security and succour to pilgrims travelling between the shrines of the Saints. Another was an aristocratic order who's role was to protect the sepulchres of the Saints, and to police the procurement and sale of holy relics. There are lots of charlatans peddling fake relics out there.  The final one was a small order devoted to the hunting of necromancers, lich lords, and beasts of the dark abyss.

My final task, and one which proved lengthy to complete, was to select or create spells/prayers/rites that were specific to each of the Elemental orders. These divine miracles would be in addition to the spells provided for by the core OSE books. I pillaged appropriate spells from AD&D 2nd edition core books and supplements, and streamlined them to fit the simplified mechanics of OSE play.

I'm pretty sure that some OSE players and GMs would criticise my complication of the OSE system of play by adding later edition spell mechanics. To those people I can only say that it was done so as to provide unique flavour within my own setting. I provided one or two spells per magic level to each of the elemental orders so as to give them unique powers that no other order had.

I'm pretty happy with what I've produced and I think it works. I've seen the RP between player characters change, as they now have specific in-depth information to work with. My group's cleric player, Graeme, now chants the Creed of the Pentarchy whenever he is about to abjure undead, or preach to a group of unbelievers. Whilst Murray has brought in a new character who is secretly an agent-enforcer of the Sacred Congregation - the Inquisition.

Currently the pdf document has various illustrations pilfered from the internet. One day I hope to produce my own, or commission illustrations from artists so as to make the work entirely of my own creation.

The work within (other than the illustrations) is entirely my own and written specifically for use in my homebrew setting of Riven Realm. I hope that you the reader will find inspiration from it for your own games, or at least provide you some light entertainment.

Riven Realm - Source Worship