Horror on the High Seas

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May 2022

Since the start of this year I’ve been GMing one game a month for Fence Macabre! I got my start with Fence in World of Warcraft, and we’ve been operating our campaign nights through Roll20 for quite a few months now. It has been great to continue offering stories for this fantastic group of people and their equally wonderful characters!

I became aware of Queen of Hordes – Horror on the High Seas through Penny talking about it on Twitter, and initially thought it would make for a fun side-adventure away from my main plot (which itself was born out of what was meant to be a one-shot). Pay What You Want and scalable for any level, it has an estimated play time of 2-3 hours. I ran it in about 2.5, which is really rare for me!

I don’t DM by voice. As a rule, that means anything I run I need to triple the expected time simply because typing takes longer than speaking! These sessions usually have a hard cap of two hours as I am in EST and need to do this pesky thing called ‘go to bed’. This was worth the thirty minute exception!

A lot of this adventure was put into a pre-game summary as, again, time constraints. Adaptations were also made for it to fit into the larger narrative I’ve been telling since January (and have it fit Azeroth’s lore). Finally, I don’t run for this group in 5E. Fence uses its own homebrew system which focuses on customization and speed. Combat especially  is focused on being quick, active, and player driven. It’s really simple, and because the system is so light it makes it really easy to pick up even if you’re only touching it once or twice a month!

Spoilers for Horror of the High Seas ahead!

The Story

“The Zombie Queen, Kallisti, believes she’s The Fairest in the land – and with hordes of undead sailors and zombie chickens at her command, she’s after your heart…”

The Group

We’ve already established that I DM via text, and that we aren’t running in 5e. The other unique part of this particular group is that I never actually know how many people are coming until we start. How do I prepare for that? Loosely!

The number of enemies present and/or how much health they have is scaled depending on how many people are present. Usually it’s around 4-5 people, it has been up to 9, and this time there were two of us in total!

This in itself? Not a challenge, not at all, but did necesitate a shift to how I was approaching the encounter. Initially, I was thinking about all the characters who have been part of this particular campaign so far, and the specific ways I could get them involved.

I’m a HUGE fan of using whispers to give additional information based on character backgrounds. It’s a great way to keep my players engaged, and also to get PCs sharing info to figure things out. It brings me immense joy, and my players like it for feeling like their characters really do have their respective specialised knowledge. Everyone gets to feel important, everyone gets to contribute. (Note: this doesn’t always work in practice but I try and that’s what matters)

Ultimately, the biggest change wasn’t in the content I was running (I cut out one of the four planned fights for sake of time) but in my emphasis and focus. I don’t usually bring my PCs out to events I’m GMing. I generally just don’t like doing it, and also find it too much to do on top of running the session and everything that entails. In this case however, I did so that my player wasn’t running through this encounter on their own (even if they honestly probably would have enjoyed getting to hack and slash their way through VERY much). I was able to take more pauses than I usually have time for, allowing these two characters chances to talk not just about the situation at hand but also, for a little while at least, themselves. It was a nice change from the usual “we gotta move”.

How It Went

So! First things first: Our session picked up at Chapter 4. Coming in halfway through an adventure is going to be an ongoing theme with whatever I run. It isn’t that I don’t think the previous chapters are cool –  they are, and I included them in the pre-game summary that gets everyone situated / starting to think about how their characters are feeling (my first post in session usually ends with ‘how is your character feeling’) but we’re running on very limited time. So, let’s start with that summary. Aside from a look at how I summarised three chapters, it also gives a bit more background for where this particular campaign is at.

It has been one month since Fence Macabre’s hunting trip to help resupply Amaltha’s camp. That trip, as you recall, ended with fighting a deer which had been twisted by some sort of corrupting dark magic. Your theory was that it was being changed and controlled by an outside influence, a fact which bodes ill for everyone.

Donovan, the hunter you rescued some months ago alongside the camp’s healer Maria, has now sent word to Vagrant’s Respite requesting your assistance. Terrible spring storms have been wreaking havoc on land and sea, and as a result a ship called The Lucky Sea Star has become stranded in shallow waters.

The combination of high winds and choppy seas over the course of days has left most of the crew’s supplies overboard. Its hull is leaking, its sails wrecked, and its water supply is contaminated. Amaltha instructed the camp to help as much as they could – they’re the last people to turn away those in need, but this is stretching them beyond their limit.

With the crew on rations and a seemingly impossible repair job before them, Donovan’s letter mentions that crew have been trying to steal what food yet remains for themselves, and that there has been increasing violence between those on board. Everyone is hungry and the hull, no matter how quickly they work, doesn’t seem to be improving at all.

Fence has journeyed out to the ship, and Donovan confirmed the crew was on the verge of mutiny until another ship appeared on the horizon earlier that afternoon. As you’re rowing out, he informs you that the ship approached and drew up alongside them but seems to be abandoned. The Lucky Sea Star’s Captain ordered the abandoned vessel to be searched, and to move all supplies – chests with water, food, clothing and treasure – onto his ship.

Night has fallen, and you are staying on board overnight to get a fresh and early start on repair work in the morning. You are free to have brought any additional supplies (food, water, medicine, clothes, material for/completed sails, etc.) that the Respite and its surrounding communities would have had on hand.

Note that originally this adventure takes place with you being on The Lucky Sea Star when the repairs, cleanup and general chaos is happening. I decided not to do that in order to tie it in more easily with the ongoing plot that we’ve been working with this year. This does mean missing out on really cool elements of the earlier chapters where PCs are completing various tasks about the ship, encountering hazards, and dealing with a series of events to really hammer home the idea that this ship is in a bad situation. Thus, when this other ship appears on the horizon it’s a real relief and when there’s supplies on board? There’s genuine hope there, they might survive being stranded after all!

We pick up on deck in the middle of the night. Neither PC is asleep as they’re both Undead, and as such, don’t sleep. My character, Loira, hasn’t been seen or heard from in several months (she’s been on another plane while she figures some stuff out). There’s a brief “so how’ve you been,” between these two characters who served in the army together, and who are both not great at casually socialising.

They’re interrupted by a blood-curdling scream, which is how Chapter 4 starts out. Being able to use the fact that these characters don’t sleep to give an alternate sort of start, and give them a bit of time to chat before launching into the action was fun! They both immediately then took off towards the source of the scream, ready for a fight. They get one!

They find the Captain dead and being eaten by an Undead. This gives half a moment of pause as the PCs are also Undead and my character, at least, is much less comfortable destroying others of their kind unless no other option is available. It quickly becomes clear that no other option is available, and so they dispatch it. Our PCs worked together as a team previously so on a personal character note it was cool to get to revisit that dynamic. They’re familiar with what the other can do, so over the course of this session when either of them did something the other hadn’t seen before it allowed for an opportunity of “well that’s new” which was fun!

Realising that the Undead who attacked the Captain had previously been a crew member, the PCs suspect magic is involved and head back to the deck. They’re both concerned over what could possibly raise people through proximity alone. They run into their pal Donovan, who nearly attacks them as it is night, they’re Undead, and he’s Gilnean which in this universe usually means there’s a baseline level of strain present but recognises them and so conflict is avoided!

Donovan tells them the crew below decks have started changing, and that he was attacked on his way up. He mentions having seen an eerie light coming from between some crates but didn’t stick around to investigate as that’s how you wind up dead. The PCs tell him to leave – he’s alive and whatever is happening here seems to be targeting the living. They reason that as they are already Undead, they can’t get more Undead.

Donovan takes off and there’s a brief conversation about whether either character has ever seen anything like this before. They haven’t. It’s suggested that should the source prove to be an item, my PC should bring it to the realm she’s been working in – it would put her in greater graces with a faction there, and those people are probably best suited to keeping it safe/away from the living.

They head below deck and are immediately set upon by another pair of turned crew members. At this point both characters are just a little bit pleased to not have to hold back. A fair amount of the time the name of the game is incapacitate, not kill, and there are several members of the wider group who simply will not kill people if they can at all avoid it. These two? Not so much! They enjoy a little bit of sending people to the grave.

They kill these Undead and immediately head towards this eerie glow Donovan mentioned, after taking a moment to try and heal. Max HP in our system is 7 points. My PC has 3, so when she gets hit it does in fact need to be addressed, as if she gets hit with a critical strike she’s out. I love it. (In the other homebrew game I run max HP is usually 15, but can be negotiated up to 20 in specific circumstances. My PC runs with 8 when in most realms, and 12 when she’s in the death realm as she is, in fact, stronger there. She’s meant to be physically fragile and having that reflected in her health is a delight.)

Kallisti, our big bad, makes her appearance and makes her offer to the PCs to join her as if they do, she’ll grant them power over death.

This was never going to end well for Kallisti. Neither of these PCs are on board with mind control or forcing people to become Undead. There’s a lot that my morally flexible character is unbothered by, but mess with the sanctity of the Undead and their free will? She will kill you. She will immediately want, and try to, kill you.

The warrior PC spends a moment pretending to entertain this idea while she prepares two small grenades to lob at Kallisti. The PC got a surprise round of damage for this before we launched into combat proper. Combat itself went for a few rounds, and because I was rapidly reaching “I really need to sleep” touched base with my player to see if they’d be okay with skipping ahead a few combat rounds to the last one. They were, so the assumption was that combat had just been ongoing! Kallisti is killed spectacularly, they find the amulet, and my PC leaves with it immediately.

This will be touched on next session, but with the amulet gone the remaining crew members return to their original living state. They elect a new captain, succeed in patching up their boat, and reward Amaltha’s camp and Fence handsomely for their help. Kallisti’s ship is brought back to the docks near Vagrant’s Respite. Fence gets another ship! They have two specifically for the group’s use: Loira’s Lady (not Loira’s ship, it was named this as a joke and Loira was very displeased when she finally found out about it) and this as-yet-unnamed and just acquired ship!

All’s well that ends well, minus y’know, the five dead crew members and dead Captain.

Thoughts

I had a great time running this, and even if there were multiple things I needed to adjust and cut to make it work for my group, I still feel like I benefited immensely from the adventure that was laid out in front of me. There was a lot of background information to work with, and the general idea of an Undead Queen turning people into her minions via a powerful artefact is just… cool. It was fun to play with, especially in a setting where the Undead have a recent history with a Queen who abandoned them (and committed numerous atrocities). Neither of the Undead in the party have an interest in bowing to another Undead Queen, even if their reasons for this differ.

I liked the setup of the adventure and thought the sense of urgency and desperation that is meant to be conveyed in the first chapters was very effective. I like that there are multiple tasks the PCs are assigned to complete and that they aren’t getting a chance to rest between these events, all while introducing characters on the ship itself. I think it was an effective way of creating that bond with the NPCS who are, you know, going to start being turned into Undead later in the adventure. It is harder to drive a sword through someone you’ve had a few conversations with, presumably!

In the same vein, I also like that sort of NPC introduction system because it does add to the sense of urgency encountered by the PCs once night falls and people start turning into Undead. They know some of these crew members, and once they realise that more of the crew are turning the more time passes, would be additionally motivated to find the source of this dark magic and see to its end! It is important to note that, as written, PCs don’t have to kill the Undead – they can restrain them, and once Kallisti is dealt with anyone impacted by her magic reverts to their prior state.

My party was made up of Undead, and I decided to have them be unaffected by the amulet in Kallisti’s possession for both speed and ease. That said, there’s no reason that they couldn’t have still felt a pull from the amulet, a drive to do her will – she is incredibly powerful, and having a ‘roll to resist her influence’ could have been an interesting way to add an additional layer of doubt and urgency. In a larger group, I absolutely would have asked if anyone was comfortable with their character being subject to the amulet’s effects to bring that sense of urgency and danger closer to home. If a PC had turned, it would be someone the party was close with, and they wouldn’t strike that person down.

There are some cool NPCs, and a bunch of chickens, that we didn’t get to meet in my running of this but which I thought added an interesting layer of depth to the ship’s crew. I was particularly fond of the moments when the chicken came up! I thought they added some levity to what is otherwise, really, quite a serious situation! It would be pretty terrifying to be stranded in the middle of the ocean only to have your crewmates start turning into zombies. A little bit of chicken hilarity? Great thing to throw in there to lighten things up a little bit!

I also like that there are a few different ending options presented. I, again, did not use these as my base setup for the adventure differed and so I made modifications to fit my party, but always enjoy seeing different potential outcomes laid out in front of me. It’s then equally fun when I see my players come up with something completely different! There’s never a dull moment and hey, that’s part of the fun of TTRPGs!

I think this adventure would have run completely differently had even one party member been different, and to me that’s the mark of a great story. The way characters react to the situations they find themselves in and their surroundings is really the integral part of the stories we are telling, and it’s always a delight when there’s time for brief narrative and social moments between characters!

You can find Horror on the High Seas as a Pay What You Want adventure on DMsGuild. It’s a fun one, filled with interesting encounters and events, a big ol’ evil Zombie Queen, and, of course, chickens.

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