Near the Haven Font your group readies to head into Winnie’s Tack and Tavern for ale and warmth when the bell on the wall chimes! All eyes drawn to guards stationed on the towering wall. They call down to the sergeant at arms, “A RUNNER APPROACHES!”. The thick iron gates groan and begrudgingly open as oxen laboriously press into their yokes as chains activate heavy wenches. The mists of the wilds follow the runner as his chest heaves, gasping for breath, “High Knoll has been sacked!”

As the crowd gathers you overhear that this prized motte and bailey style hamlet has fallen to the denizens of the mist-marshes! The only survivors are a small family of three. The sergeant at arms slaps the shaking man across the pate, “Where is the family?!”  The runner whimpers that he heard howls in the mists and panicked. He left them not 500 feet from the wall, resting in a gully. He cries as he reveals that the father, mother and their little son are too injured to make it here on their own. “Someone has to go out there.” Silence as a throng of peasants, threadbare merchants and sellswords try to rally some courage– no takers. Someone from the crowd yells out that the guards should go. Even the guards hesitate as all look beyond the gate to the dark night beyond, not 40 feet away–vision fails you as the roiling mists of Noctis blanket the land. Who will go? It’s only 500 feet away… (a loud series of howls stiffens the spine)

———————-

NOCTIS is a horror/steampunk, 5E compatible campaign setting which will be published through Double Critical LLC and Deerwood Press.

The book has numerous sub-classes, feats, backgrounds, magic items, and spells as well as new game mechanics to amplify dramatic play.  To help newer players and veterans alike acclimate to this campaign setting I’ve written a five adventure mini-campaign that takes 3-6 characters from 1st – 3rd level through levels 7th – 9th.

This campaign’s setting is technology vs nature. Most characters start in the Sol Spire, a tightly packed city-state that spans up and down the steepest peak of the Ordic mountain range.  Apart from this steampunk technological bastion of civilization defending itself from feral denizens of the wilds to the south.  The town must also contend with a strict religious dogma in combination with paranoid royal siblings vying for control even of the mountain’s meager resources.

The players in this series of adventures will take on the role of an Invictus: a religiously sanctioned elite task force that hunts down infected citizens and brings them to justice… but in this case they are tasked with looking for survivors and unravel the mystery of an important fiefdom.

New full Class:

• Inventor: Mad Scientist or Automat Specialist

New Class Archetypes (subclasses):

• Barbarian: Bog Reaver
• Fighter: Mist Knight
• Cleric: Mist Domain: Inquisitor
• Druid: Circle of Mist
• Bard/Rogue: Merchant Lord
• Sorcerer: Spirit Shaman
• Warlock: Wyrm Caller

New Backgrounds:

• Angelic Mark
• Inquisitor
• Blood Bonded
• Mistwalker
• Midspark Miner
• Outcast
• Wolf Pack Initiate

New Playable Races:

• Mindflayer (Ilithids)
• Orc Variant
• Lycanthrope Variant
•  Vampire Variant

+New Feats

+New Spells

+New Magic Items