The second adventure in the Doomstones campaign, Blood in Darkness was adapted from The Lost Shrine of Kasar-Khan, an AD&D adventure in The Complete Dungeon Master series. It was re-statted for WFRP by Brad Freeman and I developed it for Flame Publications. Art was sourced mainly from the Games Workshop archives, with occasional bespoke pieces by Tony Ackland.

The Art

I think the cover image came from a Warhammer fiction title, but I’ve been unable to confirm that. If any readers know where this image was originally used, please let me know in a comment!

There are no jokes in the interior art. Even Tony was unusually restrained. I think this was probably because Flame was still in its early days, and we were just rushing things through development and production as quickly as possible.

The Names

Kadar-Helgad was a name I made up. In everything I wrote, dwarfhold names all began with ‘Karak’ (inspired by Rick Priestley’s ‘Caraz-a-Carak’) and my intention was that the word ‘Karak’ meant ‘hold.’ Since this adventure involved a shrine rather than a hold, is used ‘Kadar’ for the prefix, intending that to mean ‘shrine’ and to be used in future names for Dwarf shrines. I followed that system when I named Kadar-Gravning in Dwarf Wars (of which more in a couple of weeks), but as far as I know no one else picked it up. The element ‘Helgad’ was inspired by words for ‘holy’ in real-world languages: hellig in Danish (the pocket dictionary I mostly used for creating Dwarven words), heilig in German, and so on. Hence, ‘holy shrine.’

The Ogres in the shrine had names that followed another of my systems, all ending in -agg, -ogg, or similar. My thinking was that ‘og’ might mean ‘Ogre’ in their language, so that Hrothyogg, for example, would mean ‘the Ogre called Hroth.’ Again, I’m not sure anyone else even knew of the system, much less used it.

The name of Xhardja the mud elemental was unchanged from the original AD&D adventure, as far as I recall – but I might be wrong about that.

This adventure might be the first ever mention of the smith-god Smednir. His name comes from the Danish smed, meaning a smith. The -nir suffix was probably inspired by a name from Norse mythology, such as Odin’s horse Sleipnir or his spear Gungnir.

The Adventure

As I had done with Fire in the Mountains, I padded the adventure out with more detailed travel sections in order to hit the target page count. I revisited the Twisted Lands and dreamed up some more chaotic terrain, and I added a section on mountain hazards. I also added the Troll Slayer encounter as a way for the party to replace a fallen PC, if they needed to.

The original adventure included some creatures that were new to WFRP, in particular the parasitic mud-worms and the mud elemental Xhardja. Brad had provided basic stats, but I tweaked them a little and fleshed out the descriptions and rules.

The pattern for the Crystal of Earth was another design from the book Mike Brunton had. I believe the mathematical name for this shape is a stellated dodecahedron. The runes on the crystal’s faces were designed by Tony, inspired by the object’s various powers.

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And Also…

August’s Monster of the Month is posted on my Patreon page.

The dullahan is a demonic rider from Ireland, who might be the ancestor of Sleepy Hollow’s headless horseman, Ghost Rider, and many others. This 5-page, system-agnostic, PDF monster toolkit includes:

Stat guidelines for d20-based, d100-based, and – through comparisons with common creatures from most settings – all other tabletop roleplaying systems.A full monster description with lists of basic and optional skills and traits.Three adventure seeds, covering fantasy, historical, and modern settings.

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