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artwork by Rosedragon, check out her stuff and support her on www.patreon.com/rosedragon |
The Grove of Souls
As we know, the entire island of Babingepa is suffused by the essence of the Death Angel Golab. This has worn the Veil so thin here that countless of dead souls (both those of travellers marooned here, and those of their trauma-related associates, relatives, enemies, and victims) have been drawn here - and all find themselves inexplicably unable to leave.
All, that is, except for those few who at some point hear the call of Gaia, and follow it to the mysterious and unsettling place that can be seen illustrated above: The Grove of Souls.
(Illustration by the talented and incredibly prolific Rosedragon, who also did the artwork in the previous part of this series, and helped me on many aspects of the texts here with her local knowledge, since she comes from Indonesia and is thus deeply familiar with regional customs, beliefs, and other aspects of the culture. You have my endless thanks for your support, Rose!)
When you come here, you will find the place humid and foggy, the ground underneath your feet moist with decay. The stench of rot rises with the permanent mist right out of the earth. You will also notice that the trees here all seem to form oddly humanoid shapes - or are those actual human bodies, somehow getting absorbed into the plants? Some of them groan softly sometimes, and the bark of the trees is slimy to the touch and tries to stick to your fingers.
[PCs might have to Keep it Together upon coming here, although that perhaps depends on what happened before. They may have seen much more shocking and disgusting sights on the island already, and be numbed to the Grove's more subdued dread.]
[Adam's Enhanced Awareness will trigger here, and may yield the information below, or some of it.]
[Priya's (new PC, see pt.4) Involontary Medium will trigger too, and may for a change torment her with communication attempts from a different flavor of dead souls.]
The truth is that the Veil is extremely thin here, and what we see through the Illusion are not physical bodies merged with the trees, but rather the entrapped souls of once-restless ghosts.
What makes them come here?
What makes them stay and get entrapped/absorbed like this?
PCs might find out in any one or more of three ways:
- Adam's and Priya's extrasensory perceptions, as noted above
- through a legend known to the Yori and Abawi tribes
- on their own during the epilogue after the game concludes
The
natives are acutely aware of Golab's corrupting Influence on the
island's dead, even though they express it in their own terms. In their legends, the tribesmembers tell of how there is but one single place on all of Babingepa where the tormenting dominion of Babi Ngepet is not overpoweringly strong on all those who have passed over to the next world. It is the Boar God's sovereign power over the island that makes the dead act so vicious and vengeful.
These tales, however, also inform the listener that if you manage to lure or trick a ghost into coming with you to this hidden Grove of Souls - which the stories alternately locate in a valley, on a hill, in a canyon-like rift in the earth, or simply in the deepest part of the forest - then they may be freed of the Vile Boar's spiritual tyranny for a short while. Just long enough for the soul to perhaps decide that it wants to stay here instead of ever going back out to the rest of the island.
It doesn't always work, the legends caution the listener, but sometimes one may get rid of the haunting souls that torment any who come to the island.
After the game's final scenes, the PCs may also find out more about the Grove of Souls namely during their own epilogues. Any character who has died on Babingepa is unable to leave the island, regardless of anything else that happened in the finale (i.e. even if Harkness is dead, the statue of Babi Ngepet is destroyed, his temple desecrated, etc).
Of these PCs, some may have had ties to the Living Wilderness already before they came to the island. Most clearly this will be Simon and, from the new PCs (see pt.4), Laura... although in the course of the game, some aspects of other characters' backstories might come to light, which could also be construed as such ties. Such a closeness of your soul to Gaia will result in the ghost eventually hearing the Call of the Wilderness - which then lures it to the Grove of Souls.
Once there, the soul faces a choice: Rest but for a short moment, before returning to the island's permanent purgatorial torments, eventually to be dragged to Inferno into the citadel of Golab himself. Or remain here, and succumb willingly and completely to Gaia, the eroding and eradicating forces of nature incarnate.
Upon choosing the latter, the soul is trapped for many hundred years in a constant state of slow spiritual decomposition. But at least there will be peace from the cruel whippings of the Death Angel's Principle.
New NPC options and moves
Here are some new powers and abilities for the island's indigenous people, to vary up their stats and moves for when more attention falls on them during a longer game.
Leopard Champions of the Yori
As we have seen in part 1 of this series, the Yori tribe revers leopards as their spirit patrons, and use the magic of ilmu siluman macan tutul to imbue their chosen champions with the mental and spiritual ferocity of the sacred animal.
Exclusively found in the Yori tribe (as the Baluwa have abolished the practice in favor of worshipping Babi Ngepet, and the Abawi are spiritually much more closely aligned with the orang-utans than the predatorial great cats), their siluman become powerful hunters and fighters. They use the stats of Native Warriors (p.150 TaOT) but with the following additions/modifications.
Their Combat Attribute is [4] and they get an additional combat move. They also don't shoot poisonous arrows, so their combat moves are:
- call for reinforcements
- disappear into the jungle without a trace
- make an attack out of nowhere, striking first
- overwhelm [deals +1 Harm, PCs take -1 to all combat rolls against them]
Leopard champions always fight with stone knives, and the above abilities allow them to combine their normal Stab attack with their combat abilities for these additional options:
Leaping Ambush [2] [Distance: Room, victim unaware of the attacker's presence before the attack can only Avoid Harm]
Ferocious Slashes [3] [Distance: Arm, victim is at -1 to all rolls against the leopard champion]
Ferocious Ambush [3] [Distance: Room, victim unaware of the attacker's presence before the attack can only Avoid Harm, and is at -1 to all rolls against the leopard champion]
Siluman Warriors prefer not to kill their opponents outright, instead seeking to inflict crippling injuries so the defeated enemy can be captured, to be offered as a sacrifice to either Babi Ngepet or the island's jaguar spirits.
Wounds (lone champion) O O O O X
Wounds (hunting group led by a champion) O O O O O O O O O O O X
Shamanic Curses
In the original scenario text, only the Wild Boar Priests exist as spiritual leaders of the tribes. In this hack, we want to diversify that, so below you can find a variety of magical abilities that the various tribes' shamans might be able to use against the PCs (or possibly, if an alliance was forged, in favor of the PCs).
The original WIld Boar Priest has a move that is called
Death magic: Possess a Person [-2 Stability] [Distance: Room, Keep it Together to withstand being controlled for one action].
This is the indigenous magic known as santet tali gaib, in which the priest uses a small magical trinket (stone, knife, tree branch...) wrapped in ritually knotted ropes of hair or plant fibres to focus their will into briefly domineering another person's behaviour. If the trinket can be found and destroyed, the priest loses this magical power until s/he can make a new one.
Other magical abilities potentially known to the priests (of any tribe) are:
Santet susuk konde: Curse of Pierced Entrails [Serious Wound] [the ritual makes small cutting and piercing objects appear in the victim's stomach, such as thorny vines, shards of splintered seashells, or jagged stones. Another Serious Wound is taken when the hurtful objects are eventually excreted (or vomited up). Only magical healing (or modern surgery) can remove them without further harm.]
Teluh: Curse of Venomous Vermin [*] [the shaman conjures small vicious animals of the jungle to appear everywhere the victim goes. Poisonous scorpions, vipers, and large centipedes keep digging themselves out of the ground, dropping from trees, or slither forth from narrow crags in the rocks, whenever the victim wants to rest.]
Venomous Vermin: The first little critter requires you to have Observed the Situation and asked the right questions, or be forced to Avoid Harm at -2 to the roll as you suddenly notice it at your ankles or on your sleeve, shoulder, etc., ready to strike. It only has 1 Wound, but is at -2 to hit with anything except broad, swatting paddles or the like.
If you take too long to take care of it (and subsequently move away from the place), a swarm of them with 3 Wounds will accumulate. Their attacks inflict no Harm as such, but you must still Endure Injury (at no modifier) against their poison. On a (-9) you must choose one:
- one of your Wounds becomes infected (can't be stabilized or healed)
- one of your Serious Wounds becomes Critical
- take -2 ongoing to all rolls due to crippling pain, dizziness, and alternating bouts of fever and chills.
Tenung: Curse of Rotten Feasts [*] [this magic infests the victim's food with disgusting objects and creatures. You may find your meal suddenly crawling with bugs or intermingled with fetid mud, rotten tree sap, small bones with discolored shreds of meat still on them, or congealing into a stinking soup of slime. Alternately, you may not notice anything while eating but then feel nauseaous and throw up a gaggle of maggots (still wriggling and crawling) or several human eyes. The victim must Keep it Together every time it eats something.]
The three powers above are not used in direct confrontation (i.e. they're not to be seen as "combat spells"), but rather inflicted on a distant target the shaman or priest holds a grudge against. Reasons might include the PCs betraying the tribe's trust after forging an alliance, defeating a tribal champion by cheating or other methods considered dishonorable, or if they escaped from captivity by the tribe and the natives feel their gods would be angered if this is left to happen unpunished.
Buhul cacing abin: Transmit disease [*] [Distance: Room. Perhaps most fittingly known to Abawi shamans, this is a slight variation on a power the monstrous ape Mayas also has: The priest magically transmits a mundane or supernatural disease to someone. Use one of the example diseases in part 2 of this series, or make up your own.]
This, like santet tali gaib above, is much more of a "combat spell", and can very much be used in direct confrontations. The disease's onset may, at the GM's discretion, be supernaturally fast (read: immediate) or may follow a slightly slower course and become noticable only a little while later.
Semar mesem: Calling the Visitor [*] [this ritual involves fasting for an entire day and night in seclusion and darkness, and enables the shaman to compel anyone on the island to come to her. Victims will sense a strong compulsion to move in the shaman's direction (regardless of whether they know where she is) and must Keep it Together in order not to give in to that urge. The urge returns once every day, at sunrise, for three days.]
The shamans of Babingepa will most likely enact this ritual - the only one of the ones presented here that isn't expressly intended to be harmful - if their tribesmembers have told them of encountering the foreign travellers and they are intrigued by their presence and consider them potential allies they might want to talk to.
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| artwork looted from the net don't sue me, it's just a very cool pic |
In Need of even more Gaian Goodness?
So with this, we have attained a good part of our design goals for this scenario-hack. Hopefully, the creature, plant, location, and the additional NPC options introduced above provide fertile ground for enriching your games with.
If you want even more inspiration for horrifying Gaia-based critters, I may recommend taking a look at the fanmade scenario Wind on the Leaves, by Andrew Crag. You can find it here, in the Ryan Northcott Memorial Collection
Of the monsters in there, especially the God of Thirst and the Thing-That-Stings might be of interest, and both could just as easily be encountered in the jungles and swamps of Babingepa as in the hinterlands of South America.
This concludes part 3 of my quest to hack this scenario. The 4th and final part will consist of some notes on the scenario's themes and how they change with this hack, and of course the promised additional player characters.
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