Heroquest Glorantha: Highwall
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Highwall Inn by Ian Cooper Honoring Greg Stafford October 10th, 2019 #WeAreAllUs HIGHWALL INN WHAT IS THIS? CREDITS ighwall Inn is a scenario for Chaosium’s HeroQuest Author Glorantha role-playing game. A copy of that book is Ian Cooper necessary to play this game. No other HeroQuest game H Editing titles are required to play this game, but Sartar: Kingdom of Susan O’Brien Heroes and The Coming Storm expand upon the background of this scenario. Cover Art This scenario is the HeroQuest Glorantha scenario Valentina Romagnoli for #weareallus, the inaugural Greg Stafford memorial Art day. Greg created the world of Glorantha and founded Chaosium. Simon Bray, Eli Maffei, Cory Trego-Erdner, Petr Stovik On this day we hope that you will gather some friends and play a game together in his memory. Additional Contributions Jeff Richard Producer CORE ACTIVITY Michael O’Brien Graphic Design & Layout The PCs are travelers who take shelter in a remote inn, trying to Nicholas Nacario evade both a storm and a pack of ghouls. Cartography EMOTIONAL STAKES Simon Bray Play Testing The PCs have different reasons for being on the road in winter: Thanks to the many fans at conventions such as some seek to free a comrade captured by a Lunar bounty hunter, UK Games Expo, Dragonmeet and Kraken others to rob a wealthy merchant, one to proselytize his faith. All who have braved Highwall Inn. of them will come into conflict, either with each other or other travelers sheltering at the inn. As always, a special thank you and credit goes to At the same time, the ghouls and the inn’s murderous innkeepers Greg Stafford, without whom none of us would be reading this or playing games in Glorantha. present a threat to the guests at the inn. If they fail to co-operate they may die. HEROQUEST PREMISE Copyright ©2000, 2003, 2009, 2015 by Moon Design Publications, all rights reserved Several groups travel the road between Alone and Herongreen, braving the cold of Dark Season. One group is a bounty hunter HeroQuest and Glorantha are trademarks of and her prisoner, a notorious Sartarite rebel. Following them are Moon Design Publications the rebel’s comrades who seek to free her from her captor. Two thieves travel the road to meet with their partners-in-crime. They Chaosium Inc. hope to rob a merchant who travels the road after trading with 3450 Wooddale Ct. the trolls. A holy man defies the cold taking the word of his god, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 Yelmalio, the light in the darkness, with him. CHAOSIUM INC. 2019 A winter blizzard endangers the lives of all these travelers. The storm will kill anyone caught in the open without shelter. Ghouls HIGHWALL INN 1 from the Woods of the Dead use the darkness of the storm to hunt are worshippers of the goddess Krarsht, and have a deal with the the travelers, hoping for new meat. ghouls. They deliver meat to the ghouls, sourced from visitors to The travelers must seek shelter in Highwall Inn, the only safe their inn, in return for being left alone. location on the road. But the murderous owners of Highwall Inn Cheated of their meal, the ghouls besiege the inn. Meeting are worshippers of Krarsht, the goddess of the Waiting Mouth, with the innkeepers they demand that they provide them meat who have a deal with the ghouls to provide them with “meat,” a from their guests, or they will attack the inn and feast on everyone deal that has already claimed the lives of many visitors to the inn. inside, including the innkeepers. Faced with the threat from the ghouls, Jafoska and Baran must decide whether to procure more victims or flee through SITUATION their tunnels... As the scenario begins a violent Dark Season blizzard has blown into Dragon Pass from the North; a Valind Storm blown down CAST into the Pass by a gale force Howler. The Howler Umbroli screams and moans as it gusts its way through the Pass, uprooting trees, THE STAFF driving sleet and snow ahead of it. The temperature is about 5ºF, below freezing, but with the wind it feels more like -20ºF. At Jafoska and Baran run the Highwall Inn. They provide comfortable this temperature exposed skin develops frostbite in 30 minutes, rooms, good—though not exceptional—food, ale, and wine and hypothermia can set in within an hour. a warm welcome to their customers. The clouds conceal the rays of the sun and ghouls set out to They also murder guests who they believe will not be missed, hunt travelers along the road. They hope for easy pickings, preying and feed them to King Brangbane and his ghouls in macabre on those who flounder in the snow. feasts. They smuggle weapons, armor, and supplies that no other The PCs are on the road during the storm—they need shelter sane person would trade with the ghouls. from the weather, and the undead hunting them. And they worship Krarsht, the goddess of the Hungry Mouth. One refuge lies along the road, for those who mistime their journey and need to seek shelter: Highwall Inn. But the innkeepers JAFOSKA WARM-HEART EC? Jafoska Warm-Heart is a beautiful woman, who was born into the Bachad tribe. Trolls from the Redstone Caverns wiped out her WHERE TO FIND OUT MORE? clan when they tried to settle too close to the Indigo Mountains. The survivors fled to Alone. Orphaned, Jafoska survived for a There is more information on the Woods of the Dead time begging on the streets, until she was taken in by a brothel and its ghoulish inhabitants in the Heroquest Glorantha madam, and earned a living by whoring, mainly for Lunar soldiers. supplement, The Coming Storm. They also pose a threat She despised her life, and the men who called on her. She became in the campaign outlined in The Eleven Lights. cynical, preferred confessions of love from cheating husbands, and mercenary, learning that even her body could be traded by someone else. When one of her clients, Derik Finehair, offered CAN I PLAY THIS WITH MY OWN PCS? This scenario was originally written for convention play. Are your players thieves or bandits (which includes a lot The pregenerated characters have tensions with each other of adventurers)? Then they are part of the attempt to heist and the other residents of the inn, creating a stand-off. If Griselda Far-Walker. The victims in the cellar ought to be you choose to play this with your own PCs instead, you will known to the PCs, perhaps as members of their criminal need to engineer a similar setup. enterprise. It helps to answer a number of questions. Do your PCs have enemies in your campaign? A clan Why are the players on the road to or from Alone? they are feuding with? Are there Lunar soldiers or priests Replicating one of the motives of the pregenerated NPCs who appear as regular opponents for their rebel activities? may be the easiest option. If so, could you explain why they are in the inn? Your goal Are your players rebels against their Empire? Perhaps is to force the PCs into a decision—work with their enemies one of their number, or an NPC known to them, has been against the ghouls, or confront them. captured by the bounty-hunter Pharandra Glittering-Eye. You will need to decide if you are going to start in medias One of your PCs may take the place of Ralda Red-Hands as res, with the players arriving along with the snow, or if Pharandra’s captive. Or else, pick a rebel known to the PCs, you would prefer to play out the PC’s journey to Alone, or who you believe they would set out to rescue. back again. 2 HEROQUEST: GLORANTHA to buy her contract from her madam, she leapt at BARAN THE CHOP Ot? the chance to escape. Baran was born in the pens of Slavewall. Sold young Derik Finehair was a priest of Krarsht and enjoyed to a Lunarized family of the Hengkisi tribe, he very lucrative arrangements smuggling for the ghouls, toiled on their estates, biting his tongue, remaining Krarsht’s c divine who most normal people would never trade with, obedient, and gaining enough trust to be trained affinity enables including providing them with feasts of human as a butcher. All his rage boiled out one dark night, followers to emulate flesh. The embittered Jafoska, who had always felt when he used his knives to murder the family, and the Hungry Mouth abandoned by Ernalda, proved a willing convert to feast on their corpses, before fleeing. herself. She gives her goddess of the Hungry Mouth, but Derik was not Murder, crime, and desperation moved him worshippers the power the lover she sought. That was Derik’s apprentice, from city to city until he washed up in Highwall to transform their Baran the Chop, who proved an attentive and Inn, one step ahead of vengeance. Derik Finehair mouth into a fanged undemanding lover. recognized his worth and took him as a willing maw that drips acid, When Brangbane’s lieutenants suggested that initiate of Krarsht and cook. can spit acid, strike Jafoska might make a new finger-woman for their Try as he might, Baran could not persuade Derik up to 10 feet with an lord, Jafoska came up with a new arrangement and that one day the “good thing” they had at Highwall elongated shocking offered up Derik instead. Now, she runs the inn as Inn, smuggling metal, slaves, and flesh to ghouls, tongue, spit a sticky the new Tongue of Krarsht, and keeps to the old would end, when someone came looking for dead web called pratzim, arrangements with the ghouls.